Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?

Here are a few interesting parts of Chapter Five that I have picked out to comment on. Let me know what your thoughts are on these paragraphs or others.

We routinely disqualify testimony that would plead for extenuation. That is, we are so persuaded of the rightousness of our judgement as to invalidate evidence that does not confirm us in it. Nothing that deserves to be called truth could ever be arrived at by such means.
-Marilynne Robinson, The Death of Adam

Guess Who's Coming To Dinner, page 74

On the long stretch up the Gorge, Mack felt a creeping panic begin to penetrate his consciousness. He had tried to avoid thinking about what he was doing and just keep putting one foot in front of the other, but like grass pushing through concrete, the repressed feelings and fears somehow began to poke through. His eyes darkened and his hands tightened on the steering wheel as he fought the temptation at every off-ramp to turn around and go home. He knew he was driving straight into the center of his pain, the vortex of The Great Sadness that had so diminished his sense of being alive.


Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, page 78

And finally his heart exploded like a flash flood, releasing his pent up anger and letting it rush down the rocky canyon of his emotions, turning his eyes heavenward, he began screaming his anguished questions. " Why? Why did you let this happen? Why did you bring me here? Of all the places to meet you-why here? Wasn't it enough to kill my baby? Do you have to toy with me to?" In a blind rage, Mack grabbed the nearest chair and flung it at the window. It smashed into pieces. He picked up one of the legs and began destroying everything he could. Groans and moans of despair and fury spat through his lips as he beat his wrath into this terrible place. "I hate you!" In a frenzy he pounded out his rage until he was exhausted and spent.

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?, page87

Thoughts tumbled over eachother as Mack struggled to figure out what to do. Was one of these people God? What if they were hallucinations or angels, or God was coming later? That could be embarrassing. Since there were three of them, maybe this was a Trinity sort of thing. But two women and a man and none of them white? Then again, why had he naturally assumed that God would be white? He knew his mind was rambling, so he focused on the one question he most wanted answered.
"Then," Mack struggled to ask, "which one of you is God?"
"I am," said all three in unison. Mack looked from one to the next, and even though he couldn't begin to grasp what he was seeing and hearing, he somehow believed them.

Happy Reading!