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Summary
Themes
and Colors
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
Nine men arrive at the Convent intending to murder the women who live there. They shoot a white woman and continue inside to find the rest of their intended victims. The men have never been inside the Convent, and they are struck by its grandeur, recalling that before the building was a Convent, it was the mansion of an embezzler. When the nuns took over the property, they destroyed as many reminders of the embezzler’s joy as they could and converted the space into a residential school for Arapaho girls. The nuns chipped away the art of nymphs on the walls, but remnants remain, making the men alert to “the female malice that hides here.”
The story starts at its climax, detailing a moment of violence before the following chapters go back in time to explain why this violence occurs. The opening of the book reveals little information about the characters, but it establishes crucial information about the Convent, highlighting that the Convent itself is as central to the story as the characters. The men’s wariness of “female malice” makes clear that the Convent is a feminine space that the men are invading. The fact that this violence is taking place in a Convent also introduces the theme of holiness that runs throughout the story. The Convent’s history complicates its status as a holy place: it was built by a criminal without God in mind and later converted to a residential school. Moreover, historical residential schools were notoriously abusive and violently asserted the superiority of Christianity over Indigenous religions.
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The men split up. Two of them go to the kitchen, where a meal has been abandoned in the middle of preparation. One of the men recalls his childhood in Haven, which, like Ruby, was an all-Black town. He knows that every all-Black town founded after the Civil War either crumbles within a few generations or merges with white towns. The man remembers how he and the other founders of Ruby celebrated when they polished a 62-year-old Oven to reveal the words engraved on its lip. He imagines the “Old Fathers” building this Oven, which “both nourished them and monumentalized what they had done.” The man wonders about the origin of the engraved words. They once seemed to bless the community, but now they proclaim the community has lost.
The continued focus on setting over character in this opening chapter emphasizes that the different communities that make up the story are just as significant (if not more so) than the individuals within them. The man’s pride in Ruby’s consistent isolation from white society indicates that the town has maintained its status quo longer most towns like it by excluding any unfamiliar and potentially dangerous outsiders. His recollection of Ruby’s “Old Fathers” suggests that Ruby is a patriarchal community in contrast to the distinctly feminine community of the Convent. The introduction of the Oven also speaks to the differences between Ruby and the Convent; while the Convent’s kitchen is in use, the Oven’s purpose is ceremonial rather than practical.
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Two other men explore the bedrooms, and the rooms’ contents reinforce the men’s belief that the residents are unnatural. The women sleep in hammocks instead of in beds “like normal people,” a 1968 calendar has dates marked with Xs with no pattern the men understand, an indecipherable letter is written in blood, and a fedora sits on a headless female mannequin. The men are most upset by a string of baby shoes hanging from a crib in the last room they enter. One of the men looks into the shoes, expecting to see blood or a severed toe. He wonders how women’s “plain brains” could conceive of the crimes that he believes these women to be guilty of. These isolated women make him question the worth of all the other women he knows. His community protects its women, which keeps them virtuous and orderly.
The two men leave the bedrooms and enter the bathrooms, where they each find a box of sanitary pads and a trash can of used feminine hygiene products. One mirror is covered in white paint, while the other is not. The man in the room with the functional mirror avoids looking at himself; he doesn’t want to see himself “stalking females or their liquid.” Downstairs, two other men enter the chapel. All the surrounding congregations agreed that getting rid of the Convent women is necessary. The men remember how the Convent existed long before the town, which was founded by 15 families 25 years ago.
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Most people believed that the Convent women were strange but harmless, but now the men know that the women’s acts of neighborly kindness have been a facade. Leading up to this attack on the Convent, the nine men, who are community leaders, had a secret meeting at the Oven. They interpreted various tragedies and scandals as the fault of the Convent women. In the Convent’s chapel, the two men (who are father and son) see that the women have removed Jesus from the cross.
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A pair of twins (Steward and Deek) approach the cellar. They are the town’s protectors and lead the charge against any violent white outsiders. The twins have strong memories, and they remember vividly the story of their grandfather Zechariah, who engraved the words on the Oven. In the story, the founders of Haven are turned away by rich Choctaws, poor whites, and then by their own people, as the leaders of all-Black towns only accept wealthy and “self-supporting” residents. The founding families of Haven traveled west, and the twins believe that their grandfather chose the words for the Oven when “he discovered how narrow the path of righteousness could be.” Once the Oven is engraved, the people of Haven start to build a town. By 1910, the town is flourishing, and everyone uses the Oven to cook. By 1934, the town is dying, but the Oven “stay[s] alive.”
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In 1949, Steward and Deek convince the other boys of Haven to join forces and create a town that could be protected from “Out There.” 15 families pack up the Oven and move deeper into Oklahoma. The brothers marvel that the Convent is a greater threat to their community than any of the dangers it has faced before. Back in the Convent, the two brothers and their nephew (K.D. Smith) break into the cellar. The former residents of Haven named their town after that nephew’s dead mother. The men had debated names for three years, but when this woman died, all the community’s women decided the town would be called Ruby in her honor. Ruby’s son became a fixture in the town, so his uncles include him in the New Fathers’ attack on the Convent.
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