A Review of The Book of Mormon
I grew up a member of the Mormon church and so was exposed to a lot of opinions and personal beliefs from family members as well as people from church. Because of all the passion that is exhibited from the people around me, the purpose of this article is for me to take a more objective look at the book by summarizing and analyzing the story as well as finding actual themes and purposes by the author. Whether the book is fact or fiction, it is still an amazing literary work including many stories and parables that are included and tied in with an overarching storyline. The book stays very true to Judaic. Christian beliefs that it mentions in the introduction. The story is basically this, a man is told by God to leave his home in Jerusalem and travel across the ocean to start a life in the new world which they call “the Promised Land.” The man’s family grows until it becomes giant nations with factions, governments and wars. Many times, throughout the book the phrase ‘keep the commandments of God and you will prosper in the land’ is repeated by state and religious readers. We see through the story that this is proven again and again to the people. They go through a cycle of listening to prophets sent by God, betraying them because of pride and then becoming impressionable and submissive again through droughts, wars and social unrest. The story hits a climax when the people see a man descend from the sky saying he is Jesus Christ after his resurrection. He teaches them and then leaves. After this turning point there is no more real turning points in the character of the people. The rest of the book they become more animalistic and ferocious over time. It ends with the more civil nation of people who are keeping the record being all killed off and the book handed down to the last man who buries it in a hill for future people to find it. He believes it contains essential religious information. Overall the story is very complex and sometimes hard to follow but if pieced together it can be a very rewarding process. It is a nostalgic legacy of a fallen nation that the reader grows to love and identify with. A few interesting things I noticed is that although it was published in the 1830s it is written in 14th century English and can be incredibly hard to understand unless the reader has practice with that kind of language. Also it is written more as a compilation of journal entries that are pieced together by the narrator so there is a little time jumping in the chronology as he relays events that happened during the same time period. This makes the story a little confusing at parts. Overall this is an amazing literary work and full of twists and turns that will give you some serious brain fog. It can be enlightening and beautiful as the reader tries to understand why different stories were included and what they could mean. Millions of people religiously follow it’s teachings about fighting for liberty, protecting family and country, humility and God. From my perspective, it is definitely worth the read.
