The Dearly Beloved

“Nan almost always believed, as her father had, that even deep wounds could be repaired, that God healed all parts of us like skin: no matter how sharp the cut, it would someday knit itself back together and leave only a scar.”

This quote emphasizes Faith Versus Doubt by showing how Nan’s faith has changed over the years. She had previously believed God would heal or fix anything, which foreshadows the reveal of her childlike, simplistic faith in Part 1. Throughout the novel, this faith will be tested, with Nan maturing and growing in her faith.

“But this was not a wound; it was an amputation. There was no proxy for Charles. There was no replacement to be carted in like a sofa or hung, carefully as a picture, to hide the hole in the wall. James and Charles had ministered together for forty years. They had witnessed each other in pain, in desperation, in crises of faith, even as they struggled to inspire a congregation, to help them make sense of the course of events that engulfed the world.”

The quote incorporates Faith Versus Doubt by showing the complexity of Nan’s faith in her later adult years. While she previously believed that God would fix everything in time, she is now questioning that idea. She starts to consider the possibility that some pain never goes away and thinks that James might have to deal with his grief over Charles for the rest of his life.

“She tried not to wonder why it had happened, why she—who had always been the best lovely girl—had seen a naked man, standing there, staring at her. She tried to have faith that there was a purpose to it, that God had a greater understanding of these things, a purpose and a plan, no matter how much of a shock the sight had been.”

The passage shows Nan’s first crisis of faith and a loss of innocence in which she questions God’s plan for her. This foreshadows her major crisis of faith following her miscarriages and her grappling with God’s purpose for her.