![]() Before his death, Mason extracts two promises from Tarwater: that he will give Mason a Christian burial, and that he will find a way to baptize Bishop. To this day, Rayber fears that he will inherit Mason’s mental illness and goes to great lengths to quell any feelings of passion, even those toward his intellectually-disabled son, Bishop.Īt the start of the novel, Mason dies of a heart attack. ![]() It caused him to obsess over Jesus until the age of 14 when he finally renounced Christianity. Although his father retrieved him after only four days, the experience haunted Rayber. It is later revealed that Rayber, at the age of seven, was the victim of kidnapping by Mason. When Rayber and a social worker named Bernice attempt to retrieve Tarwater a few days later, Mason shoots Rayber in the leg and ear, causing the schoolteacher to take no further action to recover the boy. At only a few months old, Tarwater is kidnapped by Mason to a rural plot of land known as Powderhead. ![]() ![]() Having lost his mother in a car accident and his father in a subsequent suicide, the infant Tarwater is initially raised by his uncle Rayber, an atheist schoolteacher. This study guide refers to the 2007 edition published by Farrar, Strauss and Giroux.įor his entire life, 14-year-old Francis Marion Tarwater is groomed by his mentally ill great uncle Mason to become a Christian prophet like himself. ![]()
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