the Lord's call himself and to be prepared for the day he would hear it."[2] Though he is a fundamentalist and a religious fanatic, Mason believes he has been cleansed by God in a forceful and thorough manner to know the truth. Mason prepares Francis for the day when he will be cleansed in a way that seems to foreshadow that this cleansing may be a violent form of revelation. "He had schooled him in the evils that befall prophets; in those that come from the world, which are trifling, and those that come from the Lord and burn the prophet clean; for he himself had been burned clean again. He had learned by fire."[3]
Mason teaches Francis his numbers and how to read and write, but when it comes to history, we are told the lessons "begin with Adam expelled from the Garden and go on down through the presidents to Herbert Hoover and on in speculation toward the Second Coming and the Day of Judgment."[4] The family structure in the novel is important because it pits Mason's fundamentalism against Rayber's secularism in a way that challenges Francis to discover redemption. The close ties of family bonds are shattered by opposing views of God that are both errant, much as a shattering of Francis' world will lead to a higher knowledge of God's truth. As Carol Wilson explains, the brand of revelation required, "The violence of a confrontation with Christ, which is apocalypse, is physical, a wrenching loose of the biological configuration which is man."[5] Francis will be raped before he is open enough and vulnerable enough to be able to receive God's grace.
If Mason's' fundamentalism sees family lineage as a means of extending God's revelation down through the ages, then Rayber, his nephew, views the family as having a sickness. Rayber is anti-religious and adopts a wholly secular lifestyle. His son Bishop was also kidnapped by Mason, but Rayber was able to retrieve his son before Mason could baptize him. He se...