Critique of Godless: Pete Hautman

I absolutely loved this book, in part because I have also struggled with religion throughout my life. My sister has as well, and it was nice to be able to discuss certain issues that the book brought up. Hautman does a really good job of showing how confident Jason is as he creates this new religion. Jason develops the commandments of sorts, and appoints different people for different positions, all the while really believing in what he is doing. Once Shin starts acting weird and gets way too involved in the religion, Jason explains that he doesn’t believe in the water tower as a god, but that he believes in what he is doing and how it challenges his own beliefs. There is also a big transformation with Henry, who appears macho to the community but is actually very smart and well-read behind closed doors. My favorite character is Shin, however, because the CTG gives him something to truly be a part of, and he ends up losing himself in it in the process. Shin goes from being satisfied with collecting snails to letting them die and focusing all his energy on climbing the water tower. He is so obsessed at the end that Jason has to call the police on him to retrieve him from inside the tower.

The small-town setting is great for the plot of this book. So often in small towns we hear of youth involved in drinking, smoking, getting into trouble. And while this group of teenagers doesn’t cause trouble in those ways, they do, in a sense, by creating their own religion. Their parents as well as the reverend and the members of PTO do not approve of what is going on, and think there needs to be more religious respect from the teens. But Jason is strong in his convictions, and has the time to carry them out.

Hautman really brings up some great questions about religion, about the differences between religion and faith, about society’s outlook and interpretation of how religion fits in with the people of the community. We get to see the development of Jason’s character as well as how his feelings parallel the activities of the CTG, and through that we are able to understand much more where he is coming from. Religion can be a difficult subject to bring up, especially because not everyone is involved the same way and not everyone participates equally in their church. Jason’s dry, sarcastic humor mixed with his willingness to challenge his religion and his parents is what truly brought this book together. Hautman’s writing of Jason’s thoughts is fantastic, and I love when Jason rationalizes religious activities for us:

“I once read a short story about some cannibals who didn't turn their victims into steaks and chops and roasts; they made them all into sausages. Because when you're eating a sausage you don't think so much about what you're eating.

It's the same with communion wafers. Hosts are little white disks that do not resemble any kind of real food. The closest thing I can think of would be a flattened, sugarless marshmallow. They have almost no taste, just a faint sourness, and they require no chewing. I think they're made out of some kind of digestible paper.

My point is, the miracle of Holy Communion is when the priest turns these little white disks into the flesh of Jesus Christ. They call it transubstantiation. So, if you buy that, then the host the priest places on your tongue is actually a sliver of Jesus meat. But they make the host as different from meat as they can, so that even though communion is a form of cannibalism, nobody gets grossed out. Like with the sausages."

This is my favorite passage from the book because it so wonderfully states something that I have felt since I can remember. Maybe I wouldn’t have stated it in the exact same way, but that’s what I love about Jason — he comes up with witty, almost nonsensical descriptions of real-life problems.