To Make My Bread Literary Analysis

The Wilderness “For the poor shall never cease out of the land: therefore I command thee, saying, Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy poor, and to thy needy, in thy land” (Deuteronomy 15:11). Biblical scripture itself does not omit poverty from its pages. Messages of the vulnerable and poor are interwoven to express how pervasive their plight has been and will be in society. Religion assumes a righteous and perfect image outlined by preachers and painted by its followers. However, Grace Lumpkin’s To Make my Bread, exposes how easily religion can be transformed from a virtue to a vice. As characters address the conflict of the unknown and come face to face with existential questions which stem from their economic experience and suffering, they must decide whether their faith is real or imagined. They must inquire of their omniscient and omnipotent God, why they remain trapped in a …show more content…
God does not appear to intervene on behalf of those who arguably needed Him most. The idea that God divided society into the have and have nots, that He designed a class system that benefited the rich and abused the poor is a theme in the novel. It is evident that the McClures believe that God has established a social hierarchy in the world for a purpose, though that purpose be unknown. In Ora’s contempt of the status quo, Emma reminds her, “There’s no use in getting mad, Ora. Hit’s the way the Lord made things to be. There’s got to be a pore as well as the rich to make up this world” (Lumpkin 227). This notion that God designed their lives to be in an interminable state of poverty makes the reader question why they follow Him. They blindly follow as God leads them to a “promise land” void of milk and honey and instead filled with corruption and