Religion in the Fictional Town of Cold Sassy - 931 Words

Throughout centuries, humans have expressed different perspectives toward a single idea. The subject of religion invites challenging discussions from skeptical minds because religion is diversely interpreted based on personal faith. The authoress sets her novel in a fictional town, Cold Sassy, where religion plays a predominant role in people’s lives. Through Will Tweedy’s narration she explores the religious opinions of the town’s most prominent citizen Rucker Blakeslee, Will’s grandpa. Although Blakeslee spent his whole life in a religiously conservative town, he has a radical approach toward religious concepts such as predestination, suicide, funerals, faith, and God’s will, thus forcing him to challenge the traditional views of†¦show more content†¦The Crabtrees’ actions are an example of how much Cold Sassy despised suicides. On the contrary, when Uncle Camp committed suicide, Grandpa Blakeslee, being one of town’s p eople, did not scorn at Camp; instead, he arranged for a traditional funeral like for any other conventional deaths. When Will asked Grandpa whether Camp ends up in Hell for committing suicide, he replied that many people in the world have committed worse sins that God needs to attend to. He also conceded that Camp was not hateful or evil as those people. So, his lecture concludes saying that God would not refuse Camp into heaven because he unhappily chose suicide as an unavoidable option. (334) In all the above religious concepts, Grandpa has always contradicted his views with the organized religion of Cold Sassy. Grandpa’s reason for this contradiction is that Grandpa likes to hear about the loving, caring and forgiving God, instead of hearing about a threatening Lord from the preachers in his town. He also discloses to Miss Love that the only reason he went to church was to please his first wife, Miss Mattie Lou. This disclosure means that Grandpa did not ever agree with the traditional beliefs of his