A cousin's journey from a conservative Mennonite community to Oxford University embodies both tragedy and romanticism, instilling a sense of intrigue and hope. His story serves as a cautionary tale against worldly evils while also representing possibilities for intellectual and artistic pursuits. The narrative takes the form of a letter from a grandmother to her grandchildren, expressing her hidden confessions and imparting life lessons after her death. Her crime of disturbing a grave symbolizes her inner struggle for forgiveness for not listening to her conscience.
His story stood, on the one hand, as a warning about the dark evils of the world—from which we Mennonites were attempting to isolate ourselves—but, on the other, as a tantalizing possibility.
The letter is a confession. It reveals something that she doesn't want to tell her grandchildren, or anyone, while she's alive. But she needs to say it.
She needs to confess her crime...but she also wants to impart something about living, or how it might be possible to live, to her grandchildren.
The crime she commits—digging up Roland's grave—is not really the thing that she wants to be forgiven for.
#mennonite-community #personal-identity #epistolary-narrative #family-confession #intellectual-pursuits
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