Reverend Ferdinand Greenleaf Character Analysis

A dictionary, even if this language isn’t mine alone, even if it’s something we grow into and then, living long enough, shrink away from. I am writing because the spirits are urging me to remember, and because the town needs to know that I remember, they need to know now more than ever before.

Worship came easy, so this news about a fella Jesus from the desert on the other side of the world who had all the instructions for heavenly ascent—well, that was alright with us. Problem is they didn’t let the Aborigine straddle the world he knew best—no more language or hunting or ceremonies. No more of our lore, only their law was forced. We were meant to be saved but we were still in bondage. We worshipped though, we bent low, dulbi-nya. We’d done it before in front of the giving honeybee, the generous possum, the loving sun, the plentiful waters—our lives were filled up with dulbi-nya long, long before.

That vile inhumanity practiced by the white-skinned Christian on his dark-skinned brother in order to obtain land and residence, for “peaceful acquisition”—that includes capture, chains, long marches, whipping, death on the roadside, or, if surviving all these—the far more terrible fate—being sold like brutes of the field as unpaid labor to the highest bidder.

I acknowledge that [other prisoners] endured a terrible fate: their family bonds broken, businesses shut down, and livelihoods taken from them—but they haven’t become the enemy to two crowds.

I retired to my hut during the days when I heard the wagon and vehicles arriving to take the children away. I kept pressing upon the residents that my hands were bound, that I could not do a thing against the Law. They ceased to address me fondly as gudyi and turned from me, as they should have, as I deserved, with a deep and wounding contempt.

She was trying to figure out how people valued a thing, what made something revered while other things were overlooked. Who decided what was out with the old, what had to have a replacement? What traditions stayed and what tools, household items, art, things, evidence of someone, languages, fell away. But when she tried to draw a vague line to the artifacts of Prosperous she was stumped—why the artifacts of Middlesbrough were important and not those from home.

The words! What have we done by taking the words of our God and turning them on their heads for our own purposes? And I am of that number. What have I done, dear Dr. Cross, that I feel such guilt in replacing Baymee with the Lord? What right had I to erasure? What right did I have to say one belief begs another? What right does any person? What has man done to man?