ourse, Tayo proves equal to the task. The half-healing, or the beginning of healing, which is marked in this passage, is fulfilled by the end of the book, when the "whirling darkness" or "the witchery" "stiffen[s] with the effects of its own witchery." The witchery 'is dead for now" and "sunrise" is asked to "accept this offering" (261-62). The passage, then, can be seen as a sort of half-way point in the healing of Tayo and the at least temporary victory of goodness over evil.
2. Russell Banks, in this pessimistic passage from his novel Continental Drift, has his protagonist everyman Bob express his disillusionment with respect to the American Dream. Bob extends his own disillusionment to the boy, who has not yet tasted that disillusionment himself.
The passage fits perfectly into the pessimistic message of the book, which paints a portrait of America that is decidedly dark, if not hopeless. Perhaps Banks himself would disagree with this appraisal, for he ends his book claiming that he is merely trying to "destroy the world as it is" (421). However, if the author has something better, or even different, in mind as a credible or feasible replacement for the "world as it is," this reader missed it. He does suggest that we feel empathy and compassion and grief for Bob and the other forlorn characters in his novel, but it is simply not reasonable to believe that such heartfelt identification and sorrow will change the greed and destructive materialism of America or the world as it is.
Whether Banks likes it or not, the passage accurately represents the bitterness which is at the heart of this book. The Haitian boy represents Bob in his younger years, when he still believed in the American Dream. Now, however, Bob merely "believes that he gave everything away in exchange for nothing, for a fantasy" (357).
Bob's problem is that he has no spiritual life. Had he some sense of his own spirituality, which he could nourish and d...