Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Paradise, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Gender, Race, and Power
Community
Motherhood and Intergenerational Trauma
Change vs. Tradition
God, Holiness, and Faith
Exclusion
Summary
Analysis
Lone drives away from the Convent after the women dismiss her warnings about an impending danger. Two hours ago, she heard the men “cooking” some “devilment” at the Oven. As she drives back to Ruby, she thinks of all the women who have walked this road to the Convent over the years. Lone only learned to drive recently, after Soane gave her the Morgans’ rundown Oldsmobile. She was thrilled at the independence and mobility that a car granted her, but she has had little cause to drive. The new generation of Ruby women prefer to give birth at the hospital in Demby instead of trusting a midwife, despite all the help and childcare Lone has provided for the town. Lone also knows that the townspeople blame her for the Fleetwood children’s disabilities, which further hurts her business.
The description of the men “cooking” their plans at the Oven highlights how the Oven has strayed from its original purpose. While once the people of Haven used the Oven to cook and share meals, the people of Ruby have rendered the Oven an impractical representation of the oppressive traditions they cling to. Despite Ruby’s devotion to tradition, the town is developing, as women choose to trust advanced medical science rather than the tradition of midwifery. This discrepancy hints that Ruby upholds traditions only when those traditions in turn uphold the patriarchy.
Themes
With her career mostly over, Lone relies on the generosity of neighbors and spends her time gathering medicinal herbs. It is on one of these expeditions that she overhears nine men at the Oven. They men discuss the unholy and intolerable ways in which Ruby has changed and formulate a plan to defend the town by attacking the Convent. They recall various incidents to highlight the Convent women’s evil: their behavior at K.D. and Arnette’s wedding, Mavis and Gigi’s fight on the road, Sweetie’s claim that they poisoned her, and Sweetie’s claim that she heard children crying in the Convent. One of the men claims the women grow marijuana, and another asserts that the women beat up Arnette and “did an abortion on her” against her will. They accuse Gigi of flirting with Roger Best when he drove her to the Convent, and they blame the women for Billie Delia’s rebellion.
The man distort every interaction between Ruby and the Convent that has taken place throughout the story in order to cast the Convent women as villains. Some of these claims, like the women growing marijuana and Gigi flirting with Roger Best, have almost no basis in reality, while others are exaggerations of second-hand accounts. Many of these accounts regard women and girls whom the Convent allegedly harmed, highlighting once again that the men of Ruby want to assert their ownership of the town’s women by protecting them against sin.
Themes
The men’s claims against the Convent women escalate. They accuse them of wanton drinking, hiding away abused children, and deviant (that is, lesbian) sexual activity. They also suggest the women are witches, recalling how Mary Magna’s body glowed. Finally, the blame the women for the deaths of the white family who stopped at Anna Flood’s store several years ago. Lone herself recently discovered the car full of skeletons, and the men blame the Convent’s witchcraft, instead of the family’s decision to ignore Anna’s warnings of an approaching blizzard. The men condemn these women who “don’t need men and […] don’t need God.”
The accusations of deviant sexuality and child abuse indicate the Convent women intimidate the men by not conforming to traditionally feminine roles. The women do not act as mothers, they embrace their sexualities, and some of the women are implied to enjoy sex with other women. The novel makes clear that these traits do make the women immoral, but the men view any deviation from traditional womanhood as a threat. Their accusations justify their fear: a woman who is not a mother must hate children, and a woman who enjoys sex must be deviant. Further, their claims of witchcraft stem from the interconnectedness of Christian and patriarchal institutions. The Convent women are Christians, but their religious observance challenges the latent sexism of many ancient religious institutions.
Themes
As Lone listens, she considers the personal biases of each man. Sargeant Person, a farmer, wants to own the Convent’s land. Wisdom Poole seeks justification for losing control over his family, especially Brood and Apollo, who have been fighting over Billie Delia. Arnold and Jeff Fleetwood want to take out their anger about the Fleetwood children. Menus Jury is simply angry at the world and seeking a fight, which Lone suspects is largely due to his own shame at giving up his light-skinned fiancée when the town demanded it. K.D. craves revenge against Gigi for rejecting him and against the Convent as a whole for killing his first child with Arnette.
The nine men offer many justifications for the raid on the Convent, asserting that their hatred of the women comes from a righteous desire to protect the town. Lone, though, recognizes that these declarations of protection conceal selfishness and wounded pride. This discrepancy between the justifications for hatred and its real sources emphasize that men’s desire to protect women has nothing to do with the women themselves. It is an urge driven by male ego.
Themes
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Lone fails to grasp the extent of Steward and Deek’s rage. She correctly assesses that they can’t abide by what they cannot control, but Steward also believes Arnette’s first child, a potential Morgan man, was killed in the Convent. He resents Connie for her affair with Deek, and he sees all the Convent women as a “degradation” of the twins’ memory of the 19 Black ladies. At the same time, Deek needs to maintain his pride by destroying the “kind of woman” he believes to be responsible for his shame.
Steward and Deek both perceive Connie and the other Convent women as a specific “type of woman,” an aberration of womanhood that insults, corrupts, and “degrades” their idealized version of femininity. Their understanding of women is black and white: either a woman fits into their notion of the delicate 19 ladies, in which case she is virtuous and worth defending, or a woman does not conform to that ideal, in which case she is sinful and a threat.
Themes
Lone believes that because God showed her this conversation, he wants her to do something about it. She rushes to Reverend Misner’s house, but his neighbor, a DuPres, informs Lone that Misner and Anna are at a conference in Muskogee. Lone orders the neighbor to wake her husband, and although the man agrees to discuss the issue with the local reverends in the morning, he refuses Lone’s plea to intercept and stop the men. Lone sets out to find someone else to help, but all the women she trusts are connected to men she does distrusts. She plans to drive out to the neighboring ranches to find people not bound by family allegiances, but the Oldsmobile lacks windshield wipers to help Lone drive in the rain, and she runs the car into a ditch.
Lone wants to save the Convent women, but the interconnectedness of Ruby’s insular community stands in her way. Any potential allies are in some way related to the nine attackers, and Ruby is so dependent on loyalty among the community that Lone cannot trust anyone to act against their friends and neighbors. She goes to Misner, Ruby’s only outsider, but he has stepped into the outside world that Ruby refuses to engage with.
Themes
The Convent women dance together in the rain as Lone looks for Pious DuPres, who she considers family because the DuPreses took her in as a baby. She trusts that the DuPreses’ natural virtue will override their status as a founding family, and Pious proves her right when she tells him about the nine men. Pious leaps to action and sends his wife to bring the news to other allies, including Dovey and Soane Morgan. Meanwhile, the Convent women finish dancing and return inside, entreating Connie to tell them about a singing woman named Piedade as they dry themselves. She tells them stories until they fall asleep, and they wake early the next morning to prepare for the day.
Pious DuPres proves that the most privileged members of a community have the potential to tell right from wrong. His immediate horror at the nine men’s intended violence further highlights the evil of their actions, as it makes clear that their violence is not a default; it is a choice that they have made and continue to make. At the Convent, Connie’s stories about the character of Piedade likely refer to her childhood in Brazil. Piedade is a municipality in São Paulo. The word piedade also means “pity” and “piety” in Portuguese, tying back to Connie’s connection to Catholicism.
Themes
The men slowly approach the Convent. A white woman emerges, and Steward shoots her immediately, filling the other men with confidence. Deek gives the orders, and the men separate. Three women hear a shot and race out of the kitchen seconds before Arnold and Jeff come in. They move next to the game room, where the women are hiding. The women leap on the men, disarming them before they can fire shots. Then they rush to the hall, where they find Harper and Menus Jury, whom they also fight and defeat. The three women escape through the window. In the basement, Steward, Deek, and K.D. find the women’s “loud dreaming” drawings and take them as signs of “defilement and violence and perversions.”
As the men reach the Convent, the story presents the events of the first chapter with more context. Despite the additional context, though, the book does not make clear which women are present in the different rooms of the Convent, and it never identifies which resident of the Convent is white. The story deliberately obscures the races of the Convent women. This further contrasts the novel’s two communities: Ruby is a community defined by race, while the Convent seems to transcend it.
Themes
The citizens of Ruby arrive at the Oven, where the rain has undermined its foundation. Dovey and Soane, quickly set out for the Convent. Dovey thinks about how Steward’s successes have always led to loss, and she hopes that he will not ruin everything they’ve worked for by assuming that “because they lived away from white law they [are] beyond it.” Soane wishes she had talked to Deek about Connie and about the loss of their sons. Soane tells her sister that the men wouldn’t really hurt the Convent women, and they both express hope that the other men will be able to stop the nine.
The Oven symbolizes the community of Ruby. After years of debate over the Oven (and thus, by extension, the community), its foundation finally gives way on Ruby’s most polarizing night: the night that the town’s latent sexist violence becomes explosive. Dovey fears that the attack on the Convent, where a white woman lives, will bring “white law” down on Ruby, suggesting that the men’s efforts to maintain Ruby’s isolation have in fact jeopardized it. Dovey and Soane try to convince themselves that their husbands are not capable of murder, and they hope that someone stops the men before they can disprove that belief.
Themes
Connie finds the dying women by the entrance and tries to “step in” to save her. She is interrupted by shots in the next room, where the men are firing at the women fleeing out the window. Connie runs in to defend them, but she pauses and smiles when she sees Deek. Steward shoots her just as Dovey and Soane arrive to witness it.
When Connie sees the dead woman, she immediately assumes her leadership role and tries to “step in,” despite her own dislike of the power. She further proves her dedication to the community by rushing to protect the other women. Her protectiveness of the other Convent women contrasts the Ruby men’s protectiveness of the town’s women: Connie’s instinct to protect is utterly selfless.
Themes
Shortly after, Lone tends to the dying white woman, the first person shot in the massacre. She is never identified by name. Deek tends to Connie, and when Steward claims to Pious that the men were defending themselves and the town against the women’s wickedness, Deek steps in. He asserts that his brother is lying and that the responsibility for the incident lies solely with the men. Connie dies, murmuring that Pallas’s baby is asleep. Soane and Dovey’s relationship changes forever when Soane blames Steward alone for Connie’s murder and Dovey disagrees. Finally, the townspeople of Ruby leave the Convent. When Roger Best, who was out of town, drives up to the Convent to collect the bodies, he finds the place entirely empty. Even Mavis’s Cadillac is missing.
After 20 years apart, Connie and Deek are reunited. Deek came to the Convent to cure the shame he harbors from his affair with Connie, but witnessing his brother shoot his former lover has shaken Deek’s loyalties. He no longer stands with Steward, marking the first time in the novel the Morgan twins have disagreed on anything. The violence splits another pair of siblings when Dovey and Soane each ally with their respective husbands over the matter of Connie’s death. The disappearance of the women’s bodies echoes the Biblical story of Mary’s assumption into heaven, which tells of Mary’s body ascending with her soul to heaven rather than remaining in the earth to decay.
Themes
