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Black Robe
Black Robe , an account of the 17th-century encounter between the Huron and Iroquois the French called "Les Sauvages" and the French Jesuit missionaries the native people called "Blackrobes," is Brian Moore's most striking book. No other novel has so well captured both the intense--and disastrous--strangeness of each culture to one another, and their equal strangeness to our own much later understanding.
240 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1985
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1645 people want to read
About the author
Brian Moore
160 books169 followersBrian Moore (1921–1999) was born into a large, devoutly Catholic family in Belfast, Northern Ireland. His father was a surgeon and lecturer, and his mother had been a nurse. Moore left Ireland during World War II and in 1948 moved to Canada, where he worked for the Montreal Gazette, married his first wife, and began to write potboilers under various pen names, as he would continue to do throughout the 1950s.
The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1955, now available as an NYRB Classic), said to have been rejected by a dozen publishers, was the first book Moore published under his own name, and it was followed by nineteen subsequent novels written in a broad range of modes and styles, from the realistic to the historical to the quasi-fantastical, including The Luck of Ginger Coffey, An Answer from Limbo, The Emperor of Ice Cream, I Am Mary Dunne, Catholics, Black Robe, and The Statement. Three novels—Lies of Silence, The Colour of Blood, and The Magician’s Wife—were short-listed for the Booker Prize, and The Great Victorian Collection won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
After adapting The Luck of Ginger Coffey for film in 1964, Moore moved to California to work on the script for Alfred Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain. He remained in Malibu for the rest of his life, remarrying there and teaching at UCLA for some fifteen years. Shortly before his death, Moore wrote, “There are those stateless wanderers who, finding the larger world into which they have stumbled vast, varied and exciting, become confused in their loyalties and lose their sense of home. I am one of those wanderers.”
The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1955, now available as an NYRB Classic), said to have been rejected by a dozen publishers, was the first book Moore published under his own name, and it was followed by nineteen subsequent novels written in a broad range of modes and styles, from the realistic to the historical to the quasi-fantastical, including The Luck of Ginger Coffey, An Answer from Limbo, The Emperor of Ice Cream, I Am Mary Dunne, Catholics, Black Robe, and The Statement. Three novels—Lies of Silence, The Colour of Blood, and The Magician’s Wife—were short-listed for the Booker Prize, and The Great Victorian Collection won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
After adapting The Luck of Ginger Coffey for film in 1964, Moore moved to California to work on the script for Alfred Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain. He remained in Malibu for the rest of his life, remarrying there and teaching at UCLA for some fifteen years. Shortly before his death, Moore wrote, “There are those stateless wanderers who, finding the larger world into which they have stumbled vast, varied and exciting, become confused in their loyalties and lose their sense of home. I am one of those wanderers.”
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January 8, 2023
“[Father Laforgue] stopped and looked back. He was alone. It was as though he were the only living thing in this place. He bowed his head and began to sob, in a harsh broken rhythm, the sound oddly loud as it echoed across the moonlit waters of the river. He stood sobbing in that wild place, bereft of all hope, beyond all forgiveness. The moon faded, and gradually a bloody dawn was born in the sky. Laforgue turned away from the river and, taking out his knife, went again into the forest, coming back with some spruce boughs, trimmed and pliant, twisted to form a discipline. Again he faced the river, then lowered his cassock and unbuttoned his undershirt, leaving his torso bare. Methodically, as though he used a flail on wheat, he scourged his back, lash after lash, as blood spilt into the folds of his lowered robe, until his flayed back was purpled as the sky above. Only then did he cast discipline aside and, falling to his knees, try to say the prayers of penitence, the prayers of shame…”
- Brian Moore, Black Robe: A Novel
The central character in Brian Moore’s Black Robe is a sturdy old archetype: the Catholic priest struggling with his faith, especially the rigid constraints requiring him to renounce the very powerful, very human urges within him. The twist, here, is that Father Paul Laforgue is a Jesuit missionary in North America during the seventeenth century, tasked with bringing “salvation” to the Indians, who – quite obviously – already had a preexisting religious structure in place.
This setup allows Moore to explore Laforgue’s own spiritual crisis, but to have it play out against the backdrop of competing beliefs and cultures, and against the beautiful, inspiring, sometimes terrifying backdrop of untamed nature.
***
Plotwise, there is not much to say about Black Robe, which at 246-pages, is quite brisk. When it opens, we are introduced to Father Laforgue, who has arrived in the settlement of Quebec, governed by Samuel de Champlain. Within a few pages, Laforgue has been sent out into the wilderness, traveling upriver with a band of Algonquians to minister to the Huron. Among the party is Laforgue’s young assistant, Daniel; the Algonquian leader, Neehatin; and Chomina, whose daughter is in love with Daniel.
Without spoiling too much, I think it is safe to say that not all goes according to plan.
***
Black Robe is written in the third-person limited, shifting perspectives among Laforgue, Daniel, Neehatin, Chomina, and the daughter Annuka. For the most part, though, this is Laforgue’s story. We spend the most time inside his head, and get to know him the best. Nevertheless, Moore’s occasional shifting of viewpoints allows him to present the very different ways in which the French view the Algonquian, and the Algonquian view the French. Moreover, the farther we get into the book, the more we get to spend time with the Indian characters, especially Chomina, who turns out to be especially memorable.
To Laforgue, the Indians are “Savages,” a rudimentary people with crude habits and wild beliefs, who believe in evil spirits and a world of the dead that comes out at night. To the Algonquian, the “Blackrobes” or “Normans” are a greedy, grasping people who hoard what they have and refuse to share, and who blunder heedlessly about the land without attempting to understand its ancient patterns. Not surprisingly, this tension underlays almost every page of the book.
***
When I picked this up, I assumed that Black Robe was among that species of novel called “literary fiction,” with all the pretensions that entails. I was shockingly wrong.
Black Robe is written in a blunt and understated idiom that had me – at times – thinking of Ernest Hemingway by way of Graham Greene. The rhythms of the prose occasionally weave an incredibly effective spell. There are mesmerizing descriptions of the landscapes, and a visceral sense of the harsh weather. That spell, however, is frequently broken by outbursts of extremely graphic violence, very explicit sex, and dialogue so filthy that it would make HBO blush.
***
Moore’s depiction of the Algonquian is very interesting. It is clear that he has done a lot of research, and there are very precise scenes recounting how they built their habitations, cooked their food, worshipped, and interacted. He also shows them talking, joking, and laughing with each other, which includes prominent use of the f-word. This might seem anachronistic – I am not a linguist, so I don’t know if the Algonquian language has such a mutable, malleable curse – but it is actually quite successful at humanizing the Indians.
Too often, Indians in fiction are treated binarily, either as ferocious villains, or noble victims. While the latter is better than the former, it is still a bit condescending. These poorly-imagined Indians speak in a formalized, contraction-free English that seems ripped from the King James Bible. Their representation also fails an indigenous version of the Bechdel Test, with no two Indians ever having a conversation that isn’t about white men.
In Black Robe, the cursing, the sex jokes, and the scatological humor all serve to give dimension to the Algonquian. Though they are not presented without flaws, they are given agency, and an existence that is separate an apart from the white men threatening their way of life.
That said, Moore acknowledges that much of his preparation for Black Robe came from reading The Jesuit Relations, a massive collection of correspondence sent by French priests in the New World back to the Old. Relations has been compiled into seventy-three volumes consisting of thousands of pages. A translated and annotated version is even online for your perusal, if you have literally nothing else to do for the next few months.
Relations is an inarguably valuable primary source. It is also as far from objective as Quebec is from Paris. The priests who contributed to this document were propagandizing their cause, were obsessed with martyrdom, and were hopelessly ethnocentric in their portrayals of the native inhabitants. Even though I believe that Moore tried to capture the Indians accurately, it seems that some of the tenor of Relations leeched into Black Robe.
***
Black Robe is not a nonfiction history looking back at New France in the 1600s. It does not judge or evaluate France’s colonial project in modern terms. Rather, it is a novel that tries to subsume itself in its characters and setting. There is no authorial voice telling you this is right or this is wrong. You’re simply plopped into this vanished period of transition, which is bewildering to us, just as it was likely bewildering to them. Any moral conclusions to be drawn are left to the reader.
***
For such a fast-moving book, Black Robe covers a lot of ground. There are fights, chases, captures, and escapes. There are grueling instances of torture and disease. At moments it feels a comfortable companion to the works of James Fenimore Cooper. A thrilling adventure tale with some very sharp edges and naughty language.
At other times, Black Robe meditates on the nature of spirituality, conceding the existence of some higher power, yet struggling to define how that power exists and exerts its influence. Moore clearly set out to reconnoiter the contours of belief, yet does so through action rather than monologues, through experience rather than dialectics. This is set on the frontier of conviction, exploring the blurred line that distinguishes the profoundness of faith on the one side, and the arrogance of faith on the other.
- Brian Moore, Black Robe: A Novel
The central character in Brian Moore’s Black Robe is a sturdy old archetype: the Catholic priest struggling with his faith, especially the rigid constraints requiring him to renounce the very powerful, very human urges within him. The twist, here, is that Father Paul Laforgue is a Jesuit missionary in North America during the seventeenth century, tasked with bringing “salvation” to the Indians, who – quite obviously – already had a preexisting religious structure in place.
This setup allows Moore to explore Laforgue’s own spiritual crisis, but to have it play out against the backdrop of competing beliefs and cultures, and against the beautiful, inspiring, sometimes terrifying backdrop of untamed nature.
***
Plotwise, there is not much to say about Black Robe, which at 246-pages, is quite brisk. When it opens, we are introduced to Father Laforgue, who has arrived in the settlement of Quebec, governed by Samuel de Champlain. Within a few pages, Laforgue has been sent out into the wilderness, traveling upriver with a band of Algonquians to minister to the Huron. Among the party is Laforgue’s young assistant, Daniel; the Algonquian leader, Neehatin; and Chomina, whose daughter is in love with Daniel.
Without spoiling too much, I think it is safe to say that not all goes according to plan.
***
Black Robe is written in the third-person limited, shifting perspectives among Laforgue, Daniel, Neehatin, Chomina, and the daughter Annuka. For the most part, though, this is Laforgue’s story. We spend the most time inside his head, and get to know him the best. Nevertheless, Moore’s occasional shifting of viewpoints allows him to present the very different ways in which the French view the Algonquian, and the Algonquian view the French. Moreover, the farther we get into the book, the more we get to spend time with the Indian characters, especially Chomina, who turns out to be especially memorable.
To Laforgue, the Indians are “Savages,” a rudimentary people with crude habits and wild beliefs, who believe in evil spirits and a world of the dead that comes out at night. To the Algonquian, the “Blackrobes” or “Normans” are a greedy, grasping people who hoard what they have and refuse to share, and who blunder heedlessly about the land without attempting to understand its ancient patterns. Not surprisingly, this tension underlays almost every page of the book.
***
When I picked this up, I assumed that Black Robe was among that species of novel called “literary fiction,” with all the pretensions that entails. I was shockingly wrong.
Black Robe is written in a blunt and understated idiom that had me – at times – thinking of Ernest Hemingway by way of Graham Greene. The rhythms of the prose occasionally weave an incredibly effective spell. There are mesmerizing descriptions of the landscapes, and a visceral sense of the harsh weather. That spell, however, is frequently broken by outbursts of extremely graphic violence, very explicit sex, and dialogue so filthy that it would make HBO blush.
***
Moore’s depiction of the Algonquian is very interesting. It is clear that he has done a lot of research, and there are very precise scenes recounting how they built their habitations, cooked their food, worshipped, and interacted. He also shows them talking, joking, and laughing with each other, which includes prominent use of the f-word. This might seem anachronistic – I am not a linguist, so I don’t know if the Algonquian language has such a mutable, malleable curse – but it is actually quite successful at humanizing the Indians.
Too often, Indians in fiction are treated binarily, either as ferocious villains, or noble victims. While the latter is better than the former, it is still a bit condescending. These poorly-imagined Indians speak in a formalized, contraction-free English that seems ripped from the King James Bible. Their representation also fails an indigenous version of the Bechdel Test, with no two Indians ever having a conversation that isn’t about white men.
In Black Robe, the cursing, the sex jokes, and the scatological humor all serve to give dimension to the Algonquian. Though they are not presented without flaws, they are given agency, and an existence that is separate an apart from the white men threatening their way of life.
That said, Moore acknowledges that much of his preparation for Black Robe came from reading The Jesuit Relations, a massive collection of correspondence sent by French priests in the New World back to the Old. Relations has been compiled into seventy-three volumes consisting of thousands of pages. A translated and annotated version is even online for your perusal, if you have literally nothing else to do for the next few months.
Relations is an inarguably valuable primary source. It is also as far from objective as Quebec is from Paris. The priests who contributed to this document were propagandizing their cause, were obsessed with martyrdom, and were hopelessly ethnocentric in their portrayals of the native inhabitants. Even though I believe that Moore tried to capture the Indians accurately, it seems that some of the tenor of Relations leeched into Black Robe.
***
Black Robe is not a nonfiction history looking back at New France in the 1600s. It does not judge or evaluate France’s colonial project in modern terms. Rather, it is a novel that tries to subsume itself in its characters and setting. There is no authorial voice telling you this is right or this is wrong. You’re simply plopped into this vanished period of transition, which is bewildering to us, just as it was likely bewildering to them. Any moral conclusions to be drawn are left to the reader.
***
For such a fast-moving book, Black Robe covers a lot of ground. There are fights, chases, captures, and escapes. There are grueling instances of torture and disease. At moments it feels a comfortable companion to the works of James Fenimore Cooper. A thrilling adventure tale with some very sharp edges and naughty language.
At other times, Black Robe meditates on the nature of spirituality, conceding the existence of some higher power, yet struggling to define how that power exists and exerts its influence. Moore clearly set out to reconnoiter the contours of belief, yet does so through action rather than monologues, through experience rather than dialectics. This is set on the frontier of conviction, exploring the blurred line that distinguishes the profoundness of faith on the one side, and the arrogance of faith on the other.
May 26, 2015
Another of those I'm hoping to again savor, for the third time through ...
KIRKUS REVIEW
Don't be put off by Moore's dry, rather classroom-like introduction to this lean, powerful theological novel about a 17th-century Jesuit missionary in New France: ""From the works of anthropologists and historians. . . I was made doubly aware of the strange and gripping tragedy that occurred when the Indian belief in the world of night and in the power of dreams clashed with the Jesuits' preachments of Christianity and a paradise of death. This novel is an attempt to show that each of these beliefs inspired in the other fear, hostility, and despair, which later would result in the destruction and abandonment of the Jesuit missions, and the conquest of the Huron people by the Iroquois."" Yes, Moore's novel demonstrates all that--but it does so with a remarkable, un-didactic blend of stark drama and disturbing complexity. Father Laforgue, a French ""blackrobe"" (the Indian word for priest) who has been trained in Montreal, is about to set out on his dangerous first mission: he must journey to remote Ihonatiria, to assist (or replace) two Jesuits threatened by illness and Indian violence; together with a 20-year-old assistant, workman Daniel, Laforgue is to travel the rivers with a large, friendly group of Algonkin Indians; he eagerly looks forward to ""that place where martyrdom was more than just a pious hope."" But, en route, Laforgue's sure faith will soon be challenged, shaken, gouged. Daniel, formerly devout, is revealed to be utterly, lustfully attached to Algonkin girl Annuka--with nightly sex-fests that appall, yet arouse, the shamed, self-scourging Laforgue. Though the Algonkins have promised super-powerful Champlain that they will guide ""the fucking Normans"" to Ihonatiria, their dreams and sorcerers--more commanding than fear or politics--convince them otherwise: Laforgue and Daniel are breezily abandoned mid-journey. Then, when Annuka's father nobly turns back, ready to fulfill the Algonkin responsibility to Laforgue, he (along with wife and son) becomes the richly un-deserving victim of a grisly fate: the Frenchmen and their Algonkin friends are promptly captured by Iroquois enemies; ghastly atrocities ensue; Laforgue is deeply disturbed by the near-saintly death of Annuka's father, who refuses baptism to the end. (""The word mercy, mercy, mercy, repeated itself like a meaningless stammer in his brain. What mercy. . . does He show to these Savages who will never look on HIS face in Paradise, these He has cast into outer darkness, in this land which is the donjon of the devil and all his kind?"") And, though Laforgue will survive to reach the grim mission at Ihonatiria, he will look anew, full of doubt and despair, on the verities of martyrdom and baptism, ""Savagery"" and salvation. Like the strongest work by Graham Greene, Shusaku Endo, and other restless Catholic novelists: disturbing, haunting storytelling--bringing the period-background to life with raw, bold strokes (the Indians' nonstop obscenity, the strikingly plain sex and violence) instead of thick u
KIRKUS REVIEW
Don't be put off by Moore's dry, rather classroom-like introduction to this lean, powerful theological novel about a 17th-century Jesuit missionary in New France: ""From the works of anthropologists and historians. . . I was made doubly aware of the strange and gripping tragedy that occurred when the Indian belief in the world of night and in the power of dreams clashed with the Jesuits' preachments of Christianity and a paradise of death. This novel is an attempt to show that each of these beliefs inspired in the other fear, hostility, and despair, which later would result in the destruction and abandonment of the Jesuit missions, and the conquest of the Huron people by the Iroquois."" Yes, Moore's novel demonstrates all that--but it does so with a remarkable, un-didactic blend of stark drama and disturbing complexity. Father Laforgue, a French ""blackrobe"" (the Indian word for priest) who has been trained in Montreal, is about to set out on his dangerous first mission: he must journey to remote Ihonatiria, to assist (or replace) two Jesuits threatened by illness and Indian violence; together with a 20-year-old assistant, workman Daniel, Laforgue is to travel the rivers with a large, friendly group of Algonkin Indians; he eagerly looks forward to ""that place where martyrdom was more than just a pious hope."" But, en route, Laforgue's sure faith will soon be challenged, shaken, gouged. Daniel, formerly devout, is revealed to be utterly, lustfully attached to Algonkin girl Annuka--with nightly sex-fests that appall, yet arouse, the shamed, self-scourging Laforgue. Though the Algonkins have promised super-powerful Champlain that they will guide ""the fucking Normans"" to Ihonatiria, their dreams and sorcerers--more commanding than fear or politics--convince them otherwise: Laforgue and Daniel are breezily abandoned mid-journey. Then, when Annuka's father nobly turns back, ready to fulfill the Algonkin responsibility to Laforgue, he (along with wife and son) becomes the richly un-deserving victim of a grisly fate: the Frenchmen and their Algonkin friends are promptly captured by Iroquois enemies; ghastly atrocities ensue; Laforgue is deeply disturbed by the near-saintly death of Annuka's father, who refuses baptism to the end. (""The word mercy, mercy, mercy, repeated itself like a meaningless stammer in his brain. What mercy. . . does He show to these Savages who will never look on HIS face in Paradise, these He has cast into outer darkness, in this land which is the donjon of the devil and all his kind?"") And, though Laforgue will survive to reach the grim mission at Ihonatiria, he will look anew, full of doubt and despair, on the verities of martyrdom and baptism, ""Savagery"" and salvation. Like the strongest work by Graham Greene, Shusaku Endo, and other restless Catholic novelists: disturbing, haunting storytelling--bringing the period-background to life with raw, bold strokes (the Indians' nonstop obscenity, the strikingly plain sex and violence) instead of thick u
October 12, 2009
While an excellent read in itself, I found this work especially illuminating when read in conjunction with Alan Greer's selections from the Jesuit Relations, the historical backbone to the novel.
A work of historical fiction, the novel narrates the journey of one French Jesuit, Fr. Larogue, and his young French lay servant, from Quebec to a Jesuit mission deep in Huron country. A band of Algonquin natives guide Fr. Larogue towards his destination. They do so, however, not in a spirit of goodwill, and in their closed confidence they, increasingly filled with disgust and fear, conspire against Fr. Larogue and his companion.
Some reviewers of Black Robe bemoan that Brian depicts sex and vulgarity to excess. I disagree. Brian rather captures Native American norms and the humanity of the native people. Brian's situation of English curses in Algonquin tongues effectively connects the Algonquins and the French as human beings with the same passions and similar irritations--thereby keeping the two people on the same ground, elevating neither above the other.
Simultaneously, Brian, through a narrative succession of peeves, makes the reader confront foundational differences between native and European core values. Fr. Larogue becomes troubled at the sexual promiscuity around him, and at his own falling into sexual sin. The native Algonquins see priestly celibacy and the French disregard for how they interact with nature as stupid. The Jesuits seek common ground, and yet the native people live according to their own rules, their perception of reality remaining disparate to that of the French Jesuits.
A work of historical fiction, the novel narrates the journey of one French Jesuit, Fr. Larogue, and his young French lay servant, from Quebec to a Jesuit mission deep in Huron country. A band of Algonquin natives guide Fr. Larogue towards his destination. They do so, however, not in a spirit of goodwill, and in their closed confidence they, increasingly filled with disgust and fear, conspire against Fr. Larogue and his companion.
Some reviewers of Black Robe bemoan that Brian depicts sex and vulgarity to excess. I disagree. Brian rather captures Native American norms and the humanity of the native people. Brian's situation of English curses in Algonquin tongues effectively connects the Algonquins and the French as human beings with the same passions and similar irritations--thereby keeping the two people on the same ground, elevating neither above the other.
Simultaneously, Brian, through a narrative succession of peeves, makes the reader confront foundational differences between native and European core values. Fr. Larogue becomes troubled at the sexual promiscuity around him, and at his own falling into sexual sin. The native Algonquins see priestly celibacy and the French disregard for how they interact with nature as stupid. The Jesuits seek common ground, and yet the native people live according to their own rules, their perception of reality remaining disparate to that of the French Jesuits.
December 27, 2015
“We have become as bad as the Normans themselves. All we think of is things. We have become greedy and stupid like the hairy ones.”
“Yes that is true,” said Awandouie. “Perhaps that is how the Normans will destroy us. Not in war, but by a spell that makes us like them.”
Black Robe was recommended to me as being similar to The Orenda (one of my all time favourite reads), and after finishing it, I can say that the two books are not only similar but share many of the exact same details – the seventeenth-century Quebec/Ontario setting, a Jesuit travelling and living with “the Savages”, horrifying “caressing ceremonies”, an attempt to astound (and thereby control) the Natives with “Captain Clock” – and I can only assume that that means that both authors consulted the same source materials in an attempt to bring this era to life. While Black Robe is the much shorter (and, as one might infer, less in-depth) work, it did have some interesting things to say.
Laforgue is a Jesuit (what the Natives called a “black robe”) who came to Quebec from France with the fervent desire to spread the gospel to the Savages, and hopefully, martyr himself in the process. When news reaches Champlain that a fever has been ravaging a far away outpost (so far as I can tell, Ihonatiria was on the shore of Lake Huron in the Upper Bruce Peninsula; over a thousand km from Quebec City by road today), and with reports of one of the mission's priests having died, Laforgue's wish to enter the wilderness is granted. Having been paid in muskets, a group of Algonkians promises to lead the priest and his young assistant to a place “beyond the rapids”, but when the band's leader has a disquieting dream, a foreboding pall is cast over the trip.
The majority of Black Robe concerns this journey and is a tale of hard days of paddling, the nightly building of a communal shelter, the hunt for food, and the shifting points of view of the French men and the Algonkians as they consider each other and outline what they don't like or trust about each other. Laforgue is disgusted by the Natives' general uncleanliness (even if smearing themselves with dirt and grease keeps the mosquitoes away), their pagan beliefs, but mostly, their loose sexual ways (and the fact that this challenges his own vow of celibacy). The Natives don't understand the Normans' refusal to share everything they own, their insistence on living in private quarters, their disrespect for the spirits of the animals and trees. But the biggest difference between the two groups – and this is what I found to be the most significant difference between Black Robe and The Orenda – is the way that the Jesuits' beliefs are presented as a death cult: There is nothing that Laforgue wants more than to be martyred for his faith and thereby guarantee his place in heaven. This more than anything is what turns off those whom he would hope to convert –
How can we believe you? You have not seen this paradise of which you speak. I have not seen our world of night, but I know it is no paradise. You have no sense, Nicanis. No man should welcome death...Look around you. The sun, the forest, the animals. This is all we have. It is because you Normans are deaf and blind that you think this world is a world of darkness and the world of the dead is a world of light. We who can hear the forest and the river's warnings, we who speak with the animals and the fish and respect their bones, we know that is not the truth. If you have come here to change us, you are stupid. We know the truth. The world is a cruel place but it is the sunlight.
This idea of fundamentalist-religion-as-death-cult (even Lafargue's mother back in France wished for him to give his life for the faith) has resonance with the world we live in today, and if nothing else, it highlights the fact that belief systems can evolve; by the end of the book, both sides had doubts about their own traditions and were willing to make compromises. Black Robe was a worthwhile read, and although it pales in comparison to The Orenda, it would make an easy introduction to the era for anyone who doesn't have the time or interest for the heftier book.
November 12, 2020
Glaube, Liebe, Hoffnung – worauf?
Klassische Western oder die großen Abenteuerromane haben mich nie sonderlich gereizt. Warum, weiß ich nicht. Nun ja, jetzt habe ich mit „Schwarzrock“ von Brian Moore einen, äh, Abenteuerroman gelesen.
Wobei dieser Roman „tiefer“ geht. Es war nicht gerade Liebe auf die erste Zeile; nein – die „Zuneigung“ kam, je weiter die Reise ging, je mehr ich von der Kultur der indigenen Ureinwohner Nordamerikas (Huronen, Algonkin, Irokesen) gelesen habe.
Ähnlich geht es dem Jesuiten Laforgue, der gemeinsam mit einem jungen Helfer „die Wilden“ missionieren soll. Wenn ich hier „Wilde“ schreibe, so spiegelt das übrigens nicht meine persönliche Wortwahl wider, sondern soll die Authentizität von Moore´s Roman unterstreichen, der auf Tatsachenberichten beruht.
Laforgue und sein Gehilfe Daniel begeben sich auf eine Flussreise gen Norden, um dort eine Missionsstation zu betreuen. Begleitet werden sie dabei von einigen Algonkin. Während der Reise verliebt sich der junge Daniel in ein Algonkin-Mädchen und verliert zusehends seinen Glauben „aus den Augen“. Das Schicksal nimmt seinen Lauf...
Die auf die Augen des Betrachters zunächst äußerst „befremdliche“ Derbheit der Sprache der Ureinwohner, die durchaus Kopfkino entfachende Schilderung von Sex und später die glasklare Schilderung von Kannibalismus sorgen im wahrsten Sinne für Gänsehautfeeling. Doch warum sollte „zu Gunsten der Lesbarkeit“ bzw. den Empfindungen der Leser:innen auf Authentizität verzichtet werden? Ich persönlich hatte keinerlei Probleme damit.
Zwischen diesen Szenen gibt es aber auch immer wieder „Phasen“ der Erholung, der reinen Naturbetrachtung, der Wissensvermittlung über die Lebens- und Glaubensweise der Algonkin, die kulturellen und religiösen Unterschiede – ein Potpourri an Erkenntnissen.
Abgerundet durch mehr als lesenswerte Vor- und Nachworte von Brian Moore und Julian Barnes hat sich das Buch als eines der Highlights in diesem Jahr „herauskristallisiert“, dass ich garantiert noch öfter in die Hand nehmen werde!
Absolute Leseempfehlung und 5*.
©kingofmusic
Klassische Western oder die großen Abenteuerromane haben mich nie sonderlich gereizt. Warum, weiß ich nicht. Nun ja, jetzt habe ich mit „Schwarzrock“ von Brian Moore einen, äh, Abenteuerroman gelesen.
Wobei dieser Roman „tiefer“ geht. Es war nicht gerade Liebe auf die erste Zeile; nein – die „Zuneigung“ kam, je weiter die Reise ging, je mehr ich von der Kultur der indigenen Ureinwohner Nordamerikas (Huronen, Algonkin, Irokesen) gelesen habe.
Ähnlich geht es dem Jesuiten Laforgue, der gemeinsam mit einem jungen Helfer „die Wilden“ missionieren soll. Wenn ich hier „Wilde“ schreibe, so spiegelt das übrigens nicht meine persönliche Wortwahl wider, sondern soll die Authentizität von Moore´s Roman unterstreichen, der auf Tatsachenberichten beruht.
Laforgue und sein Gehilfe Daniel begeben sich auf eine Flussreise gen Norden, um dort eine Missionsstation zu betreuen. Begleitet werden sie dabei von einigen Algonkin. Während der Reise verliebt sich der junge Daniel in ein Algonkin-Mädchen und verliert zusehends seinen Glauben „aus den Augen“. Das Schicksal nimmt seinen Lauf...
Die auf die Augen des Betrachters zunächst äußerst „befremdliche“ Derbheit der Sprache der Ureinwohner, die durchaus Kopfkino entfachende Schilderung von Sex und später die glasklare Schilderung von Kannibalismus sorgen im wahrsten Sinne für Gänsehautfeeling. Doch warum sollte „zu Gunsten der Lesbarkeit“ bzw. den Empfindungen der Leser:innen auf Authentizität verzichtet werden? Ich persönlich hatte keinerlei Probleme damit.
Zwischen diesen Szenen gibt es aber auch immer wieder „Phasen“ der Erholung, der reinen Naturbetrachtung, der Wissensvermittlung über die Lebens- und Glaubensweise der Algonkin, die kulturellen und religiösen Unterschiede – ein Potpourri an Erkenntnissen.
Abgerundet durch mehr als lesenswerte Vor- und Nachworte von Brian Moore und Julian Barnes hat sich das Buch als eines der Highlights in diesem Jahr „herauskristallisiert“, dass ich garantiert noch öfter in die Hand nehmen werde!
Absolute Leseempfehlung und 5*.
©kingofmusic
April 18, 2019
I’ve always ranked Brian Moore as one of Ireland’s premiere writers, up there with John McGahern and William Trevor. In my mind’s eye, I see McGahern presenting the viewpoint of Catholic Ireland, Trevor giving the dispossessed Protestant angle on things and Moore representing Northern Ireland. Of course, I’m being unfair in ring fencing three of our greatest writers in such a cavalier fashion. All are far more versatile that that.
Moore, in particular, produced in his lifetime a wide ranging variety of novels. A good case in point is Black Robe, which is set in 17th Century Quebec and environs and tells the story of a French Catholic priest charged with travelling to a remote mission where the incumbent priests are feared either dead or very sick from a fever that is rumoured to be running through the local tribe of Indians.
The priest, Father Paul Laforgue, is helped in his journey by a group of Algonkian Indians and accompanied by lay person Daniel Davost, who has set his sights on becoming a priest. However, Daniel is drawn to Indian girl Annuka, who is part of the Algonkian group escorting them to their destination, and the stage is set for a story that explores a multitude is issues, from the nature, function and inherent contradictions of celibacy to the wholesale clash of cultures that threatens to destroy the local Indian tribes’ ways of life.
The misguided and manipulative interference of the Catholic Church is recounted with devastating clarity. The Indian Tribes are presented in an unsentimental light, Moore looking at the beauty of their worldview and outrageous cruelty in equal measure. In fact, there is a major turning point in the story about two thirds the way in that is so unexpectedly monstrous, it takes your breath away.
This is a novel that seriously deserves a new printing (although you can get copies via Amazon). In fact, the time is right for a publisher to look at reprinting Moore’s entire catalogue of work.
Moore, in particular, produced in his lifetime a wide ranging variety of novels. A good case in point is Black Robe, which is set in 17th Century Quebec and environs and tells the story of a French Catholic priest charged with travelling to a remote mission where the incumbent priests are feared either dead or very sick from a fever that is rumoured to be running through the local tribe of Indians.
The priest, Father Paul Laforgue, is helped in his journey by a group of Algonkian Indians and accompanied by lay person Daniel Davost, who has set his sights on becoming a priest. However, Daniel is drawn to Indian girl Annuka, who is part of the Algonkian group escorting them to their destination, and the stage is set for a story that explores a multitude is issues, from the nature, function and inherent contradictions of celibacy to the wholesale clash of cultures that threatens to destroy the local Indian tribes’ ways of life.
The misguided and manipulative interference of the Catholic Church is recounted with devastating clarity. The Indian Tribes are presented in an unsentimental light, Moore looking at the beauty of their worldview and outrageous cruelty in equal measure. In fact, there is a major turning point in the story about two thirds the way in that is so unexpectedly monstrous, it takes your breath away.
This is a novel that seriously deserves a new printing (although you can get copies via Amazon). In fact, the time is right for a publisher to look at reprinting Moore’s entire catalogue of work.
November 12, 2010
Although I can't attest to the vulgarity of the language or some of the customs, not being that familar with my history, I have read that Catholic priests of that era who ventured into those areas met with physical torture at least as extreme as described by Moore in this novel.
Not an "enjoyable" read, for me at least, but informative. The clash of cultures and depth of misunderstanding between the groups couldn't be more heartbreaking. It's a wonder there's any understanding, peace or compassion possible when human beings can do such things to each other. Tragic.
Not an "enjoyable" read, for me at least, but informative. The clash of cultures and depth of misunderstanding between the groups couldn't be more heartbreaking. It's a wonder there's any understanding, peace or compassion possible when human beings can do such things to each other. Tragic.
April 10, 2015
This is an effective narrative, which gathers momentum towards a climax reminiscent of Greene's "The Power and the Glory." It does a good job of conveying the incredible hardship experienced by the Jesuit priests who tried to convert the Indians of Canada. The inter-racial love story between Daniel and an Algonquin girl is the weakest element. It feels a bit too pat, and these characters aren't fully realized. Father Laforgue's inner life has more substance, but this isn't primarily a psychological novel. Although I can't assess how seriously Moore did his research, the novel is full of details about Indian customs and practices that have an air of authenticity. I particularly enjoyed the last 40 pages, describing Laforgue's arrival at his destination in a Huron village where he's been sent to rescue or replace priests who are known in Quebec to have had trouble as a result of a fever decimating the Indians. By the time he gets there, one of the 2 priests has been killed, and the other has suffered a stroke. There's much debate between the surviving Indians about whether to kill the sick priest and his acolyte, whose arrival looks utterly mysterious to them since he's come alone, something which is unheard of. Things could go either way, when a solar eclipse tips the balance, provoking fresh fears among the Indians. At the last minute, when most of the Indians have agreed to let themselves be baptized, Laforgue has doubts about the legitimacy of the proceeding, since it is clear the Indians are not true converts.
June 26, 2014
This is a tense, action-packed, river adventure about Jesuit missionaries trying to bring 'civilisation' to the Huron, Iroquois, and Algonkin tribes. Moore shows up some of the absurdities in the thinking of the Jesuits but is also quite sympathetic in his portrayal of them. I also liked the way he presented the Indians as earthy. They were sometimes vulgar, yes, but they could also be wise and funny. He didn't, though, present them monochromatically, as either unrepentant savages, or paragons of natural virtue. They were as real, shaded and individual as the Jesuits.
My only real criticism of the book is that I felt there were a few too many endings, and it would have been better to have stopped the story when the river journey finished. To me, that felt the natural place to cease proceedings, and it might have been nice to have left the protagonists' fates somewhat up in the air. I also felt that the scene with the eclipse was wildly unbelievable as regards its sheer fortuitous timing. It reminded me of a similar scene in 'Prisoner of the Sun' (one of the adventures of Tintin), but I actually feel the same idea was better handled in the comic book.
That said, apart from these few quibbles to do with the final stages of the book, I would still argue it was a great read, combining literary flair with a riveting thriller-stye plot.
My only real criticism of the book is that I felt there were a few too many endings, and it would have been better to have stopped the story when the river journey finished. To me, that felt the natural place to cease proceedings, and it might have been nice to have left the protagonists' fates somewhat up in the air. I also felt that the scene with the eclipse was wildly unbelievable as regards its sheer fortuitous timing. It reminded me of a similar scene in 'Prisoner of the Sun' (one of the adventures of Tintin), but I actually feel the same idea was better handled in the comic book.
That said, apart from these few quibbles to do with the final stages of the book, I would still argue it was a great read, combining literary flair with a riveting thriller-stye plot.
March 17, 2017
Fascinating historical novel about the French Jesuits and the Indians of Canada. Much of the source background was taken from the journals of the Jesuits living in Canada in the 1600s. This is not your typical white-man-steals-from-Indian story. It's the tale of religious men who sacrifice themselves in order to bring Christ to the "savages". Becoming a martyr may be the highest calling. The Indians, the "savages" are a dangerous people, who believe the Jesuits, "the Black Robes", are sorcerers.
There's some pretty shocking violence: torture and Cannibalism. Hard to believe.
Brian Moore continues to amaze me with his breadth of interest and unique story-telling.
There's some pretty shocking violence: torture and Cannibalism. Hard to believe.
Brian Moore continues to amaze me with his breadth of interest and unique story-telling.
January 21, 2024
The Context of the Novel:
The 17th century Canada and the main characters are the French Jesuits and the Natives of the Land. The Jesuits are motivated by the missionary spirit of the times - only the baptized will have the salvation and the rest will be doomed to eternal damnation as the souls are immortal. The Jesuits are impelled by the good intention - to save the souls.
The Conflict:
Do the Natives see the French Jesuits as the saviours? No. They see them as sorcerers from the across seas. The Belief Systems of European (Christian) West and the Native Beliefs of the Canadian Region are superbly contrasted.
Some of the Questions raised and answered in this novel are:
Can each society of each region have their own belief system?
Is there a need to impose on the other one's own belief system - even if the intention is good?
Or better still, do you need to understand the other customs and beliefs sympathetically before introducing one's own belief?
Can you judge a people based on one's own European upbringing?
What is the core of the religion - any religion? Is the answer 'Love for All People?'
These are some of the most significant missiological questions discussed today. Brian Moore in his own way addressed it in 1985 using an interesting historical (missiological) context.
It can serve as an interesting supplementary reader for the students of Missiology.
The 17th century Canada and the main characters are the French Jesuits and the Natives of the Land. The Jesuits are motivated by the missionary spirit of the times - only the baptized will have the salvation and the rest will be doomed to eternal damnation as the souls are immortal. The Jesuits are impelled by the good intention - to save the souls.
The Conflict:
Do the Natives see the French Jesuits as the saviours? No. They see them as sorcerers from the across seas. The Belief Systems of European (Christian) West and the Native Beliefs of the Canadian Region are superbly contrasted.
Some of the Questions raised and answered in this novel are:
Can each society of each region have their own belief system?
Is there a need to impose on the other one's own belief system - even if the intention is good?
Or better still, do you need to understand the other customs and beliefs sympathetically before introducing one's own belief?
Can you judge a people based on one's own European upbringing?
What is the core of the religion - any religion? Is the answer 'Love for All People?'
These are some of the most significant missiological questions discussed today. Brian Moore in his own way addressed it in 1985 using an interesting historical (missiological) context.
It can serve as an interesting supplementary reader for the students of Missiology.
December 2, 2022
"Doesn't it? It makes sense to me. We're not colonizing the Savages. They're colonizing us. Even the Commandant in that smelly fur robe is happier here than he ever was in France."
- p.23
"Her words made him blush. Surely it was foolish to compare him with a saint like Joan of Arc, but still it was true that every since the Order had granted his petition to be sent to New France he had dreamed of the glory of martyrdom in that faraway place."
- p.33
"At once, a tall Savage, his head dyed red, his eyes horrid yellow circles, a strip of reddish fur hanging from a pigtail down his back, went up to Chomina's little boy, took him by the hair and, with a gesture callous as though he killed a fowl, swiftly slit his throat. Blood gurgled from the child's mouth. Daniel, anguished, tried to go toward him, but a Savage tripped him, spilling him onto the ground. Chomina looked not at his dying son but up at the ceiling of the longhouse, singing a war chant as though he had seen nothing. And then, to his horror, Laforgue saw the child hacked to pieces with hatchets, its bloodied limbs thrown into a cooking kettle. He closed his eyes, as though unable to believe what he had witnessed."
- p.160
"In excruciating pain, Laforgue fell to his knees and then, in a scene so terrible that it surpassed horror or pity or forgiveness or rage, he saw three older women take from the cooking kettle the limbs of the dead child and pass them, parboiled, to the warriors paraded up and down before Chimina and his daughter, eating the flesh as though it were succulent meat. Chomina stood, singing loudly, his eyes on the rafters. The girl vomited on the ground."
- p.161
I loved this novel. The prose can be a little leaden at times, but the truths it probes are universal and sobering, and it features my favourite ingredient (and possibly the defining theme of my life): the clash of civilizations.
A spellbinding tale of sexuality, superstition and the clash of cultures in a hostile, pitiless, yet abundant land; on its surface, this is a tale of two cultures with equally compelling (and mutually excluding) belief systems trying to find a common ground between them, and failing, with their interactions mediated against a backdrop of war, conquest, colonialism, trade and greed; two equally strong and seemingly valid belief systems (to their adherents), each advanced in its own ways, misunderstanding and misinterpreting each other, but never quite understanding each other.
But at its heart, this book is about the struggle of a thoughtful, emotionally intelligent mind struggling to overcome the brainwashing of the exclusionary, imperialist culture it was born into.
Other notes and scattered thoughts, in no particular order:
- Basically explores the idea that civilizational complexity - and therefore morality (and its degree of organization) - is tied to the local climate, geography and availability of resources. Complex Western culture only took root here because of technological advances imported from Europe. Local cultures which evolved here in a harsh yet abundant landscape never developed beyond a certain level of complexity. Taking together Darwin and Jared Diamond, ultimately the land chooses the culture and civilizational complexity which is most sustainable upon it. Laforgue's Christianity is a civilisational overhang, excess baggage, that the land here does not need him to support. It is a product of an overcrowded, resource-limited Europe which developed a complex and nuanced civilisation to help people avoid war and violence, by providing them with outlets through which to carefully express themselves or channel their excess energies.
- Father Laforgue has a death wish. All the religious Catholic priests featured in the novel have a death wish. (I guess one would need to have one – and/or be a fanatic – in order to sign up to go eke an existence on the harsh frontier of 16th century Canada.) And the irreligious ones do too – but for a death involving wild abandon and risky pleasure-seeking; a death from too much devotion to the flesh, as it were, rather than the spirit.
- The descriptions of the "Algonkin" "Savages" remind me of some of the "lower class" Canadians living our cities today. Either these are working-class or poorer natives depicted in the novel, or they had a flatter and class-less society, or our underclasses are indigenizing to become more like theirs once was – ie. less structured, flatter, less constrained by formal Christian morality, more sensual and hedonistic, closer and more attuned to the natural world and interdependent with animals (their dogs live with them like humans).
- The Algonkins are shown living more nature-centric lives, more attuned to nature and their surrounding geography, even communing with it for advice, believing in demons and dreams and divination, and practicing a sexually and sensually free, unconstrained morality that sharply contrasts with the ascetic, sexually-repressed and hierarchical morality and social mores of the French Catholics.
- The descriptions the Algonkin use to describe places of reference ("the winter hunting place", "the middle place") reminds me of an article I once read about the work being done to discover how Anglo-Saxons navigated their local geography without creating maps. They must have had names for places but related to them in different, less objective and more subjective ways, perhaps using references that had personal meaning to each person or community doing the navigating, which meant that the world opened up uniquely to each person, according to the references cast by his/her mind, and therefore each person inhabited his/her own unique and personalized world.
- Even if both sides' religions are false and arbitrary, believing in their superstitions grants them different strengths, especially resilience in suffering.
- When you contrast the sexually freewheeling Algonkin "Savages" with the sexually uptight/repressed French Catholics, you begin to realize that the descendents of European settlers in Canada are beginning to indigenize and take the place of the people they once erased to make way for their own civilization. Something about the lush abundance of this landscape has seduced them, made them abandon their old ways and embrace a new lifestyle centred around openness. These are the Canadian and American liberals. Then there are those trying to preserve elements or the spirit of the old colonial ways. These are your conservatives.
- And yes, a portrait of an Indigenous culture both "savage" and enlightened, bloody and heroic in equal measure. These things would not be strange to the ancient Greeks. They knew that heroism and barbarism went together.
- The Savages are portrayed as scatalogical and untrustworthy. How much of this is authentic (rooted in history) vs colonial propaganda?
- The land absorbs all excess energies and only leaves that much that is enough to support the level of civilization that is sustainable upon it.
- The politics of religion between the Savage sorceror Mestigoit and Father Laforgue: even though Mestigoit is corrupt, creepy and conniving, Laforgue is no hero. He seeks to erase the very culture that shelters him.
- They may appear Savages, but they are enlightened. As Swami Vivekananda says, a caveman and a sage in a cave may look alike, but they represent two different ends of the development of the human spirit.
- Provides a rudimentary comparative analysis of the differences between the organized Christianity of the Europeans and the paganism of the native Algonkin. Shows you that Christianity (and other religions) can seem no less arbitrary, childish and/or illogical when taken out of their context or placed face to face with other equally strong and well-rooted beliefs.
- The conflict that emerges when the Jesuits encounter Europeans seduced by the rich mythology, nature-centric wisdom and easygoing lifestyle of "the Savages" and away from the strictures of Christianity...worse when they become tempted by it themselves.
- The harsh, sexually-repressed and fear-based culture of organized Christianity (that does practice charity to some extent) is contrasted with the freer, more open, easygoing, psychologically healthy, sexually open (or banal) and nature-centric (yet harsh and cruel at times) culture and lifestyle of the Savages…and comes off worse for wear, more apposite for a small, cramped and resource-starved Europe than a wild, empty, free and abundant Canada.
- Interesting that an Irish-origin author is writing this. One can detect a note of Gaelic/Celtic angst underneath his romanticization of the Savages, possibly resentment of the Anglo-Christian identity that has been thrust upon Irish society to make it lose its native Celtic pagan culture.
- Father Laforgue us actually a religious fanatic, and an anti-hero who thinks he's a hero. His willingness to go into the wild and risk is life is heroic, though, even if for questionable (ie. imperialistic/colonialist) reasons. Still, what Judeo-Christian culture fails to grasp that ancient and pagan cultures grasped (like the Greco-Roman, Hindu, Chinese, Slavic and others) is that villainy and acts of heroism can go together.
- Even simple things, like the fact that the French eat regular meals everyday, marks them out to be strange and different from the Algonkin.
- The interpretations of Christian behaviour through Savage eyes is insightful.
- The politics of the Savage world are no less vicious than that of the European Christians.
- The seeming cultural sophistication of the Europeans belies a very savage and crude set of beliefs. The outwardly crude Savages harbour a very sophisticated and enlightened set of beliefs, if crude in expression.
- The wild expanse of untamed Canadian wilderness plays a role in creating a sense of eerie atmosphere that serves as a backdrop to the events in the foreground. The sense of stifling isolation in a hostile territory that creeps up on Laforgue, especially when he is abandoned, is truly hair-raising. Truly a stranger in a stranger land, lost in an eerie and dangerous wilderness where it is quite possible to never cross paths with another soul, and die alone and unmemorialized.
- The act of writing and reading by Father Laforgue is seen as a form of magic. The books talk to people with the words they carry. Their who read then hear voices in their heads. In a way, the Savages are experiencing the thrill that bibliophiles experience. With the awe generated around writing, he is able to open a door to their conversion to Christianity.
- The Algonkin are distrustful but kind. The Iroquois are shown as brave but also cruel. Laforgue is heroic for questionable reasons, dubious motivations. The amorality or moral malleability of the characters and cultures is closer to reality than 99 percent of our literature.
- The scenes in the Iroquois village are not for the faint of heart, but likely reflect the historical reality, hence why this book is celebrated as a realistic rendering of the likely early encounters between Europeans and natives in North America in the early 17th century, based on original Jesuit accounts. How can such a beautiful and abundant land produce such cruel people? But then the Europeans are from a culture that was no less cruel at time, practicing no less breathtaking a form of cruelty. Those were late medieval/early modern times, after all.
- One gripe with this novel is that it almost seems to be justifying European colonialism by presenting a pageant of naked bloodletting and extreme, gratuitous and thoughtless violence as the alternative to European rule, as thought European culture was no less cruel and violent in its own ways.
- Chomina's innate Christian/Marxist-like nature is touching and prescient. But yes, against the firmness of the native belief system and how well it fits in with its environment, the Christianity offered by Laforgue seems childish.
- Tribes that are familiar: Algonquin, Huron, Iroquois, Montagnais, Mohawk, Allumette. The Indian world of the early settlers. They are visitors to their world of magic and mystery.
- The descriptions of the customs of the Europeans as interpreted by the natives is fascinating. Recalls to mind Elspeth Huxley's Red Strangers.
- Hard to believe this savage story is unfolding the very same peaceful landscape that we now traverse so effortlessly (between Quebec City and Ottawa). Clearly the landscape is ruthless and unforgiving in the absence of modern technology, comforts and conveniences. The Canadian wilderness is presented as a poisoned or tainted paradise: beautiful, but also filled with terrible dangers and mind-numbing savagery.
- The novel leaves comments on the validity of the beliefs open to interpretation...the Savages have dreams and visions that could be as easily be deemed coincidences as prescience. Christian ritual seems arbitrary and hollow in this new world, when shorn of its native context.
- Canoes were eventually for traversing this vast land, but only because of its wide and extensive network of rivers and lakes.
- Brian Moore has been able to revive the startling, lush, exotic and sensually vibrant - and dangerous - world of magic, mystery and superstition of the natives.
- This is not only a take of a physical journey but of a spiritual journey as well. Laforgue fulfills his quest but loses his faith along the way, or fuses it with the beliefs of these adopted lands to become one with it.
- The Catholics unethically prey on the ignorance of Savages to convert them.
- Brian Moore attempts to justify the Catholics' civilizing mission by presenting it as getting the Huron to give up practices that would seem regressive to the Western Christianized reader, but also exposes the cunning and duplicity of the Jesuit missionaries. Captures the colonial arrogance every well, and highlights the intolerance of Christian missionaries. Fitting now that Canadians are increasingly leaving this religion to revert to the old, pagan, nature-centric ways.
- By the end of the novel, Laforgue becomes a skeptic, even as he embraces his role, after realizing his naivete as a Christian. He realizes he is not a fanatic like Father Jerome, who lives up to the stereotype of the tricky Jesuit bent on conquest at the expense of authenticity. Brian Moore nuancedly kills Jerome off at the right time, once he exposes himself, and thus makes a comment about imperialism in the process.
- The interplay of religion, colonialism and disease in the final chapter is fascinating. You just know versions of this have been played out over the centuries with subalterns in different times and places. As someone who was targeted by missionaries before, I sympathize with the Huron. Father Jerome is a villain. Laforgue is an accomplice.
- The last scene captures the dynamics of a population undergoing conversion well. And yes, the Savages are called Savages are they portrayed as complex and thoughtful, especially in the last scene. Brian Moore basically demonstrates the Christian faith as being no less arbitrary and artificial as those of the locals, and attributes its spread more to trickery and circumstance than authenticity.
- It is fitting that in the end Laforgue gets his title and status and Christian soul harvest, but the price he pays for going along with the Christian agenda - despite his reservations - is that he loses Daniel to the Savage culture (that he was unable to keep Daniel in the fold)
- Laforgue's doubts about his beliefs and his mission make him a true Christian in a certain sense, while his doubts about the correctness of his actions and those of his compadres make him human. His final ruminations are the awakenings of a thinking mind to the taint of the cause it has served for far too long.
- Laforgue’s decision to forgo quick and easy conversions to instead earn the faith of the local tribes, and therefore the right to convert them honestly instead of taking shortcuts, redeems him, even if his mission is tainted. He decides to help them out of love and not self-serving imperial gain. Or so he tells himself, committing himself to rediscovering his faith one authentic act at a time.
- In the end, the Hurons who were wary of conversion turned out to be vindicated. Conversion did not help the Huron. It made them conquered and enslaved. Their descendants would curse them. Their way of life was destroyed and they were left neither here nor there. Ironic then that even as the Indigenous communities remain trapped in the religion of their former colonizers, the descendants of the same colonizers are slowly abandoning the ways of their ancestors to embrace the beliefs that once belonged to the natives - a more freewheeling, nature-centric lifestyle that is less formally religious. European empires may have conquered and absorbed these lands once, but now the land is conquering and absorbing their descendants in turn
- p.23
"Her words made him blush. Surely it was foolish to compare him with a saint like Joan of Arc, but still it was true that every since the Order had granted his petition to be sent to New France he had dreamed of the glory of martyrdom in that faraway place."
- p.33
"At once, a tall Savage, his head dyed red, his eyes horrid yellow circles, a strip of reddish fur hanging from a pigtail down his back, went up to Chomina's little boy, took him by the hair and, with a gesture callous as though he killed a fowl, swiftly slit his throat. Blood gurgled from the child's mouth. Daniel, anguished, tried to go toward him, but a Savage tripped him, spilling him onto the ground. Chomina looked not at his dying son but up at the ceiling of the longhouse, singing a war chant as though he had seen nothing. And then, to his horror, Laforgue saw the child hacked to pieces with hatchets, its bloodied limbs thrown into a cooking kettle. He closed his eyes, as though unable to believe what he had witnessed."
- p.160
"In excruciating pain, Laforgue fell to his knees and then, in a scene so terrible that it surpassed horror or pity or forgiveness or rage, he saw three older women take from the cooking kettle the limbs of the dead child and pass them, parboiled, to the warriors paraded up and down before Chimina and his daughter, eating the flesh as though it were succulent meat. Chomina stood, singing loudly, his eyes on the rafters. The girl vomited on the ground."
- p.161
I loved this novel. The prose can be a little leaden at times, but the truths it probes are universal and sobering, and it features my favourite ingredient (and possibly the defining theme of my life): the clash of civilizations.
A spellbinding tale of sexuality, superstition and the clash of cultures in a hostile, pitiless, yet abundant land; on its surface, this is a tale of two cultures with equally compelling (and mutually excluding) belief systems trying to find a common ground between them, and failing, with their interactions mediated against a backdrop of war, conquest, colonialism, trade and greed; two equally strong and seemingly valid belief systems (to their adherents), each advanced in its own ways, misunderstanding and misinterpreting each other, but never quite understanding each other.
But at its heart, this book is about the struggle of a thoughtful, emotionally intelligent mind struggling to overcome the brainwashing of the exclusionary, imperialist culture it was born into.
Other notes and scattered thoughts, in no particular order:
- Basically explores the idea that civilizational complexity - and therefore morality (and its degree of organization) - is tied to the local climate, geography and availability of resources. Complex Western culture only took root here because of technological advances imported from Europe. Local cultures which evolved here in a harsh yet abundant landscape never developed beyond a certain level of complexity. Taking together Darwin and Jared Diamond, ultimately the land chooses the culture and civilizational complexity which is most sustainable upon it. Laforgue's Christianity is a civilisational overhang, excess baggage, that the land here does not need him to support. It is a product of an overcrowded, resource-limited Europe which developed a complex and nuanced civilisation to help people avoid war and violence, by providing them with outlets through which to carefully express themselves or channel their excess energies.
- Father Laforgue has a death wish. All the religious Catholic priests featured in the novel have a death wish. (I guess one would need to have one – and/or be a fanatic – in order to sign up to go eke an existence on the harsh frontier of 16th century Canada.) And the irreligious ones do too – but for a death involving wild abandon and risky pleasure-seeking; a death from too much devotion to the flesh, as it were, rather than the spirit.
- The descriptions of the "Algonkin" "Savages" remind me of some of the "lower class" Canadians living our cities today. Either these are working-class or poorer natives depicted in the novel, or they had a flatter and class-less society, or our underclasses are indigenizing to become more like theirs once was – ie. less structured, flatter, less constrained by formal Christian morality, more sensual and hedonistic, closer and more attuned to the natural world and interdependent with animals (their dogs live with them like humans).
- The Algonkins are shown living more nature-centric lives, more attuned to nature and their surrounding geography, even communing with it for advice, believing in demons and dreams and divination, and practicing a sexually and sensually free, unconstrained morality that sharply contrasts with the ascetic, sexually-repressed and hierarchical morality and social mores of the French Catholics.
- The descriptions the Algonkin use to describe places of reference ("the winter hunting place", "the middle place") reminds me of an article I once read about the work being done to discover how Anglo-Saxons navigated their local geography without creating maps. They must have had names for places but related to them in different, less objective and more subjective ways, perhaps using references that had personal meaning to each person or community doing the navigating, which meant that the world opened up uniquely to each person, according to the references cast by his/her mind, and therefore each person inhabited his/her own unique and personalized world.
- Even if both sides' religions are false and arbitrary, believing in their superstitions grants them different strengths, especially resilience in suffering.
- When you contrast the sexually freewheeling Algonkin "Savages" with the sexually uptight/repressed French Catholics, you begin to realize that the descendents of European settlers in Canada are beginning to indigenize and take the place of the people they once erased to make way for their own civilization. Something about the lush abundance of this landscape has seduced them, made them abandon their old ways and embrace a new lifestyle centred around openness. These are the Canadian and American liberals. Then there are those trying to preserve elements or the spirit of the old colonial ways. These are your conservatives.
- And yes, a portrait of an Indigenous culture both "savage" and enlightened, bloody and heroic in equal measure. These things would not be strange to the ancient Greeks. They knew that heroism and barbarism went together.
- The Savages are portrayed as scatalogical and untrustworthy. How much of this is authentic (rooted in history) vs colonial propaganda?
- The land absorbs all excess energies and only leaves that much that is enough to support the level of civilization that is sustainable upon it.
- The politics of religion between the Savage sorceror Mestigoit and Father Laforgue: even though Mestigoit is corrupt, creepy and conniving, Laforgue is no hero. He seeks to erase the very culture that shelters him.
- They may appear Savages, but they are enlightened. As Swami Vivekananda says, a caveman and a sage in a cave may look alike, but they represent two different ends of the development of the human spirit.
- Provides a rudimentary comparative analysis of the differences between the organized Christianity of the Europeans and the paganism of the native Algonkin. Shows you that Christianity (and other religions) can seem no less arbitrary, childish and/or illogical when taken out of their context or placed face to face with other equally strong and well-rooted beliefs.
- The conflict that emerges when the Jesuits encounter Europeans seduced by the rich mythology, nature-centric wisdom and easygoing lifestyle of "the Savages" and away from the strictures of Christianity...worse when they become tempted by it themselves.
- The harsh, sexually-repressed and fear-based culture of organized Christianity (that does practice charity to some extent) is contrasted with the freer, more open, easygoing, psychologically healthy, sexually open (or banal) and nature-centric (yet harsh and cruel at times) culture and lifestyle of the Savages…and comes off worse for wear, more apposite for a small, cramped and resource-starved Europe than a wild, empty, free and abundant Canada.
- Interesting that an Irish-origin author is writing this. One can detect a note of Gaelic/Celtic angst underneath his romanticization of the Savages, possibly resentment of the Anglo-Christian identity that has been thrust upon Irish society to make it lose its native Celtic pagan culture.
- Father Laforgue us actually a religious fanatic, and an anti-hero who thinks he's a hero. His willingness to go into the wild and risk is life is heroic, though, even if for questionable (ie. imperialistic/colonialist) reasons. Still, what Judeo-Christian culture fails to grasp that ancient and pagan cultures grasped (like the Greco-Roman, Hindu, Chinese, Slavic and others) is that villainy and acts of heroism can go together.
- Even simple things, like the fact that the French eat regular meals everyday, marks them out to be strange and different from the Algonkin.
- The interpretations of Christian behaviour through Savage eyes is insightful.
- The politics of the Savage world are no less vicious than that of the European Christians.
- The seeming cultural sophistication of the Europeans belies a very savage and crude set of beliefs. The outwardly crude Savages harbour a very sophisticated and enlightened set of beliefs, if crude in expression.
- The wild expanse of untamed Canadian wilderness plays a role in creating a sense of eerie atmosphere that serves as a backdrop to the events in the foreground. The sense of stifling isolation in a hostile territory that creeps up on Laforgue, especially when he is abandoned, is truly hair-raising. Truly a stranger in a stranger land, lost in an eerie and dangerous wilderness where it is quite possible to never cross paths with another soul, and die alone and unmemorialized.
- The act of writing and reading by Father Laforgue is seen as a form of magic. The books talk to people with the words they carry. Their who read then hear voices in their heads. In a way, the Savages are experiencing the thrill that bibliophiles experience. With the awe generated around writing, he is able to open a door to their conversion to Christianity.
- The Algonkin are distrustful but kind. The Iroquois are shown as brave but also cruel. Laforgue is heroic for questionable reasons, dubious motivations. The amorality or moral malleability of the characters and cultures is closer to reality than 99 percent of our literature.
- The scenes in the Iroquois village are not for the faint of heart, but likely reflect the historical reality, hence why this book is celebrated as a realistic rendering of the likely early encounters between Europeans and natives in North America in the early 17th century, based on original Jesuit accounts. How can such a beautiful and abundant land produce such cruel people? But then the Europeans are from a culture that was no less cruel at time, practicing no less breathtaking a form of cruelty. Those were late medieval/early modern times, after all.
- One gripe with this novel is that it almost seems to be justifying European colonialism by presenting a pageant of naked bloodletting and extreme, gratuitous and thoughtless violence as the alternative to European rule, as thought European culture was no less cruel and violent in its own ways.
- Chomina's innate Christian/Marxist-like nature is touching and prescient. But yes, against the firmness of the native belief system and how well it fits in with its environment, the Christianity offered by Laforgue seems childish.
- Tribes that are familiar: Algonquin, Huron, Iroquois, Montagnais, Mohawk, Allumette. The Indian world of the early settlers. They are visitors to their world of magic and mystery.
- The descriptions of the customs of the Europeans as interpreted by the natives is fascinating. Recalls to mind Elspeth Huxley's Red Strangers.
- Hard to believe this savage story is unfolding the very same peaceful landscape that we now traverse so effortlessly (between Quebec City and Ottawa). Clearly the landscape is ruthless and unforgiving in the absence of modern technology, comforts and conveniences. The Canadian wilderness is presented as a poisoned or tainted paradise: beautiful, but also filled with terrible dangers and mind-numbing savagery.
- The novel leaves comments on the validity of the beliefs open to interpretation...the Savages have dreams and visions that could be as easily be deemed coincidences as prescience. Christian ritual seems arbitrary and hollow in this new world, when shorn of its native context.
- Canoes were eventually for traversing this vast land, but only because of its wide and extensive network of rivers and lakes.
- Brian Moore has been able to revive the startling, lush, exotic and sensually vibrant - and dangerous - world of magic, mystery and superstition of the natives.
- This is not only a take of a physical journey but of a spiritual journey as well. Laforgue fulfills his quest but loses his faith along the way, or fuses it with the beliefs of these adopted lands to become one with it.
- The Catholics unethically prey on the ignorance of Savages to convert them.
- Brian Moore attempts to justify the Catholics' civilizing mission by presenting it as getting the Huron to give up practices that would seem regressive to the Western Christianized reader, but also exposes the cunning and duplicity of the Jesuit missionaries. Captures the colonial arrogance every well, and highlights the intolerance of Christian missionaries. Fitting now that Canadians are increasingly leaving this religion to revert to the old, pagan, nature-centric ways.
- By the end of the novel, Laforgue becomes a skeptic, even as he embraces his role, after realizing his naivete as a Christian. He realizes he is not a fanatic like Father Jerome, who lives up to the stereotype of the tricky Jesuit bent on conquest at the expense of authenticity. Brian Moore nuancedly kills Jerome off at the right time, once he exposes himself, and thus makes a comment about imperialism in the process.
- The interplay of religion, colonialism and disease in the final chapter is fascinating. You just know versions of this have been played out over the centuries with subalterns in different times and places. As someone who was targeted by missionaries before, I sympathize with the Huron. Father Jerome is a villain. Laforgue is an accomplice.
- The last scene captures the dynamics of a population undergoing conversion well. And yes, the Savages are called Savages are they portrayed as complex and thoughtful, especially in the last scene. Brian Moore basically demonstrates the Christian faith as being no less arbitrary and artificial as those of the locals, and attributes its spread more to trickery and circumstance than authenticity.
- It is fitting that in the end Laforgue gets his title and status and Christian soul harvest, but the price he pays for going along with the Christian agenda - despite his reservations - is that he loses Daniel to the Savage culture (that he was unable to keep Daniel in the fold)
- Laforgue's doubts about his beliefs and his mission make him a true Christian in a certain sense, while his doubts about the correctness of his actions and those of his compadres make him human. His final ruminations are the awakenings of a thinking mind to the taint of the cause it has served for far too long.
- Laforgue’s decision to forgo quick and easy conversions to instead earn the faith of the local tribes, and therefore the right to convert them honestly instead of taking shortcuts, redeems him, even if his mission is tainted. He decides to help them out of love and not self-serving imperial gain. Or so he tells himself, committing himself to rediscovering his faith one authentic act at a time.
- In the end, the Hurons who were wary of conversion turned out to be vindicated. Conversion did not help the Huron. It made them conquered and enslaved. Their descendants would curse them. Their way of life was destroyed and they were left neither here nor there. Ironic then that even as the Indigenous communities remain trapped in the religion of their former colonizers, the descendants of the same colonizers are slowly abandoning the ways of their ancestors to embrace the beliefs that once belonged to the natives - a more freewheeling, nature-centric lifestyle that is less formally religious. European empires may have conquered and absorbed these lands once, but now the land is conquering and absorbing their descendants in turn
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 9, 2009
Quite an interesting read, exploring the relationship between French colonists (especially Jesuit missionaries) and the Algonquins, Hurons and Iroquois in the harsh, untamed Canadian wilds. The book explores this clash of cultures and religions from various vantage points and managed to do so without whitewashing either side's nature. The middle of the book is also fairly suspenseful, as the sick priest travels with a group of Algonquins through Iroquoi country. He's just shy of being abandoned by his guides, who think him a dangerous sorcerer anyway. And to be captured by the Iroquois is to be "caressed unto death" by a people for whom horrendous torture resonates with religious significance.
Consider this somewhere between three and four stars.
EDIT: Bumping this up to four. I grow ever fonder of it the more I think back on it.
Consider this somewhere between three and four stars.
EDIT: Bumping this up to four. I grow ever fonder of it the more I think back on it.
September 5, 2025
Black Robe by Brian Moore
9.6 out of 10
You can find Black Robe on the New York Times' Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made list.
This is a wonderful motion picture, with a fascinating, tragic, compelling story of valor, dedication, faith, violence, superstition, proselytizing, self sacrifice.
Lothaire Bluteau is excellent in the leading role of Black Robe.
This is the nickname used by natives for Laforgue, a Jesuit missionary who wants to reach the Huron tribe and is supposed to be helped in his quest by the Iroquois.
If favorable in the beginning, the Native Americans become ever more hostile.
One of their leaders, Chomina, has a dream in which Black Rock appears.
The omen of the dream or nightmare is not good.
Increasingly, others see Black Robe as a demon that they feel they should kill.
There are some interesting discussion over dogmatic matters.
Laforgue is evidently extremely religious and convinced that his faith is the right one, although his companion, Daniel, tries to argue at one point that the Natives have their own after world and they believe that the spirits of the dead haunt the forest and hunt the spirits of the animals.
Daniel is infatuated with Annuka, daughter of Chomina, and when the Jesuit sees them having sex, he uses flagella to atone for his sin...the sin of coveting, feeling desire.
He has no ropes or whip, so he uses branches from a tree.
There are quite a few instances wherein Black Robe is almost killed.
All of them are caught by a rival, vicious tribe, led by Kiotseaton and one child has her throat slit in front of them.
Black Robe is a fabulous, thought provoking movie, educational and inspirational.
9.6 out of 10
You can find Black Robe on the New York Times' Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made list.
This is a wonderful motion picture, with a fascinating, tragic, compelling story of valor, dedication, faith, violence, superstition, proselytizing, self sacrifice.
Lothaire Bluteau is excellent in the leading role of Black Robe.
This is the nickname used by natives for Laforgue, a Jesuit missionary who wants to reach the Huron tribe and is supposed to be helped in his quest by the Iroquois.
If favorable in the beginning, the Native Americans become ever more hostile.
One of their leaders, Chomina, has a dream in which Black Rock appears.
The omen of the dream or nightmare is not good.
Increasingly, others see Black Robe as a demon that they feel they should kill.
There are some interesting discussion over dogmatic matters.
Laforgue is evidently extremely religious and convinced that his faith is the right one, although his companion, Daniel, tries to argue at one point that the Natives have their own after world and they believe that the spirits of the dead haunt the forest and hunt the spirits of the animals.
Daniel is infatuated with Annuka, daughter of Chomina, and when the Jesuit sees them having sex, he uses flagella to atone for his sin...the sin of coveting, feeling desire.
He has no ropes or whip, so he uses branches from a tree.
There are quite a few instances wherein Black Robe is almost killed.
All of them are caught by a rival, vicious tribe, led by Kiotseaton and one child has her throat slit in front of them.
Black Robe is a fabulous, thought provoking movie, educational and inspirational.
January 31, 2024
Naturalistické románové zobrazenie stretu západnej viery so životom pôvodných obyvateľov Severnej Ameriky v okolí Veľkých jazier. Žiadny infantilný pokus o romantizovanie desivej a surovej histórie, otvorene a bez zdráhania vyrozprávaný príbeh s prihliadnutím na etnografiu a zápisky jezuitov.
Alebo V srdci temnoty na kanadský historický spôsob. Dlhé dni pádlovania v nehostinnej krajine a vzťahy balansujúce na ostrí sekerky...
Alebo V srdci temnoty na kanadský historický spôsob. Dlhé dni pádlovania v nehostinnej krajine a vzťahy balansujúce na ostrí sekerky...
July 25, 2025
Like The Orenda, but first
April 24, 2014
Black Robe offers a portrait of the fictional Father Laforgue, in his missionary work among the Huron people in the mid-17th century. The title of the book refers to the North American native term for Catholic missionary priests, who in this era were primarily French Jesuits.
Brian Moore did serious research in an effort to insure historical accuracy in this novel. Taking a clue from Graham Greene’s Essays, Moore located Francis Parkman’s 1867 history, The Jesuits in North America, Volume 2 of a seven-volume work, France and England in North America.
Parkman in turn led Moore to Relations, the collected letters written by real Jesuit missionaries as reports to their Superiors in France. Le Conseil des Arts du Canada also offered Moore access to anthropological records about Iroquois, Algonkin and Huron history and customs that augment and supplement the Jesuit records. [pp. vii-x]
Thus, the Great Lakes North American world into which perhaps naïve and possibly courageous Jesuit missionaries came, on fire for evangelization, apparently is accurately presented.
This book might illustrate the dangers of perhaps too much research by a dedicated scholar. It portrays a world so overwhelmingly filled with vicious shamanism, graphic violence, cannibalism, incessant vulgarity and profanity that I found myself constantly at the verge of vomiting, and barely could struggle through it.
Even over several tries, I was unable to keep track of the relations among different tribes who were friends or enemies or both, as they met along the upriver journey; or the different names for similar or the same characters, in different “Indian” languages. For a relatively small book, new peoples and new terms were introduced way too often. And I’m a trained anthropologist with fieldwork experience among Native Americans.
My Catholic heart was not uplifted by passages about Fr. Laforgue’s simplistically and briefly presented “faith”; while all his sacramental possessions were stolen and blasphemed; and every honorable native who honestly tried to help him reach his mission post was brutally raped, murdered and/or eaten by a rival tribe, time after time.
While I believe Moore sincerely meant this book to be a well-deserved tribute to the enduring faith and genuine heroism of the early Catholic pioneers, as a novel it did not work well for me. The protagonist priest, intended as the hero of the novel, did not receive enough character development, or page time, for me to appreciate him as a fully-rounded human being.
After glimpsing Fr. Laforgue cling to his repetitive ritual of baptism, confession and prayers (briefly presented) in the face of abomination after abomination (drawn on at substantial length) throughout the narrative, I still did not believe him at the end of the book:
“Spare them. Spare them, O Lord.”
“Do you love us?”
“Yes.”
[p.246]
Were the Jesuits reporting back to their superiors in France perhaps exaggerating the barbarism of the New World? Were they blocked by humility from exhibiting in correspondence their own personalities and struggles, beyond fond memories of prayer at their mother’s knees? Were the portraits of Native Americans in this book influenced by land disputes with the First Nations in Canadian Courts at the time of this book’s publication? I can’t know.
Moore is at least culpable, as author, for failure to sufficiently develop his main character. Sadly, I can only recommend this book to a reader with a high tolerance for shifting detail, and an unusually strong stomach for gore and foul language.
But perhaps the lasting message of Black Robe could be read as the incredible of Grace of God. Only He could have wished to save the souls of human beings portrayed as so completely overpowered by darkness. And only He could have used so pitiful an instrument as Father LaForgue, to accomplish that task.
Brian Moore did serious research in an effort to insure historical accuracy in this novel. Taking a clue from Graham Greene’s Essays, Moore located Francis Parkman’s 1867 history, The Jesuits in North America, Volume 2 of a seven-volume work, France and England in North America.
Parkman in turn led Moore to Relations, the collected letters written by real Jesuit missionaries as reports to their Superiors in France. Le Conseil des Arts du Canada also offered Moore access to anthropological records about Iroquois, Algonkin and Huron history and customs that augment and supplement the Jesuit records. [pp. vii-x]
Thus, the Great Lakes North American world into which perhaps naïve and possibly courageous Jesuit missionaries came, on fire for evangelization, apparently is accurately presented.
This book might illustrate the dangers of perhaps too much research by a dedicated scholar. It portrays a world so overwhelmingly filled with vicious shamanism, graphic violence, cannibalism, incessant vulgarity and profanity that I found myself constantly at the verge of vomiting, and barely could struggle through it.
Even over several tries, I was unable to keep track of the relations among different tribes who were friends or enemies or both, as they met along the upriver journey; or the different names for similar or the same characters, in different “Indian” languages. For a relatively small book, new peoples and new terms were introduced way too often. And I’m a trained anthropologist with fieldwork experience among Native Americans.
My Catholic heart was not uplifted by passages about Fr. Laforgue’s simplistically and briefly presented “faith”; while all his sacramental possessions were stolen and blasphemed; and every honorable native who honestly tried to help him reach his mission post was brutally raped, murdered and/or eaten by a rival tribe, time after time.
While I believe Moore sincerely meant this book to be a well-deserved tribute to the enduring faith and genuine heroism of the early Catholic pioneers, as a novel it did not work well for me. The protagonist priest, intended as the hero of the novel, did not receive enough character development, or page time, for me to appreciate him as a fully-rounded human being.
After glimpsing Fr. Laforgue cling to his repetitive ritual of baptism, confession and prayers (briefly presented) in the face of abomination after abomination (drawn on at substantial length) throughout the narrative, I still did not believe him at the end of the book:
“Spare them. Spare them, O Lord.”
“Do you love us?”
“Yes.”
[p.246]
Were the Jesuits reporting back to their superiors in France perhaps exaggerating the barbarism of the New World? Were they blocked by humility from exhibiting in correspondence their own personalities and struggles, beyond fond memories of prayer at their mother’s knees? Were the portraits of Native Americans in this book influenced by land disputes with the First Nations in Canadian Courts at the time of this book’s publication? I can’t know.
Moore is at least culpable, as author, for failure to sufficiently develop his main character. Sadly, I can only recommend this book to a reader with a high tolerance for shifting detail, and an unusually strong stomach for gore and foul language.
But perhaps the lasting message of Black Robe could be read as the incredible of Grace of God. Only He could have wished to save the souls of human beings portrayed as so completely overpowered by darkness. And only He could have used so pitiful an instrument as Father LaForgue, to accomplish that task.
April 30, 2022
***spoiler alert*****
Brian Moore's novel is a Canadian classic. This story is taken from historical letters that the Jesuits sent back to their motherhouse in France. Moore was inspired by the accounts of their life in the New World and wrote this novel. The protagonist is a missionary priest so sure that he is to die a martyr. He has visions of baptising the "savages" and bringing them to God. To accompany him on his trek to a Quebecois outpost, he has an acolyte who he thinks is looking to join the priesthood, but has already met a girl from the Algonquin tribe and is attempting to woo her. As they make their way through harrowing adventures, the priest turns from the idea of "superiority of faith" to lack of faith. He sees his own apparently civilised compatriots act barbarically with a lack of morality and a thirst for greed.
Likewise, he meets members of the tribe that challenge his way of thinking. At the very crux of the book, when he realises he may have his dream come true, he stops to think about the morality of what he is doing. It is in this "pause" that he truly meets God. The writing is beautiful when there is no dialogue! (I found the vulgarity of language, although apparently authentic, disturbing). However, I would hasten to add that this novel is an important one in Canadian history and in faith.
Brian Moore's novel is a Canadian classic. This story is taken from historical letters that the Jesuits sent back to their motherhouse in France. Moore was inspired by the accounts of their life in the New World and wrote this novel. The protagonist is a missionary priest so sure that he is to die a martyr. He has visions of baptising the "savages" and bringing them to God. To accompany him on his trek to a Quebecois outpost, he has an acolyte who he thinks is looking to join the priesthood, but has already met a girl from the Algonquin tribe and is attempting to woo her. As they make their way through harrowing adventures, the priest turns from the idea of "superiority of faith" to lack of faith. He sees his own apparently civilised compatriots act barbarically with a lack of morality and a thirst for greed.
Likewise, he meets members of the tribe that challenge his way of thinking. At the very crux of the book, when he realises he may have his dream come true, he stops to think about the morality of what he is doing. It is in this "pause" that he truly meets God. The writing is beautiful when there is no dialogue! (I found the vulgarity of language, although apparently authentic, disturbing). However, I would hasten to add that this novel is an important one in Canadian history and in faith.
May 14, 2012
I read this in advance of a road trip to Georgian Bay, Ontario. It is really the story of two men, a young French migrant named Daniel and Father Laforgue, a Jesuit priest on a mission to bend First Nations to the worship of God. Both learn to love the natives, the first in a carnal/romantic way, the latter in a more wholistic fashion.
Many scenes in the book are graphic: of sex, of torture, of a terrible malaria epidemic that lays a whole village to waste. Moore also chooses to personify the natives with modern epithets like "prick" and "f---." This never failed to derail the story for me. It's not like I expected them to speak the Queen's English, but I have seen better use of native dialogue than here.
Moore's embodiment of the native religions--their sorcery and the lurking Manitous of the forest--is spot on, however. He's done his research. It's a worthwhile read if you're ever headed to the northern Great Lakes.
Many scenes in the book are graphic: of sex, of torture, of a terrible malaria epidemic that lays a whole village to waste. Moore also chooses to personify the natives with modern epithets like "prick" and "f---." This never failed to derail the story for me. It's not like I expected them to speak the Queen's English, but I have seen better use of native dialogue than here.
Moore's embodiment of the native religions--their sorcery and the lurking Manitous of the forest--is spot on, however. He's done his research. It's a worthwhile read if you're ever headed to the northern Great Lakes.
July 11, 2011
The point-of-view shifts aren't as complete as they should be -- would an Algonquian really call his own people "savage"? This kept me from enjoying the novel as much as I might have. Moore's attempt at native-eye view is impressive all the same, even if incomplete. The crude language and torture scenes, so off-putting to some readers *did* fit the frontier/war environment. And despite a few too many "deus ex machina" devices at the end of the novel, I did like the portrayal of Laforgue's crisis of faith ... and how he's trapped into carrying on despite it.
And for those seeking a real Native-eye view, go look up writers such as Sherman Alexie, Beth Brant, Paula Gunn Allen, Rita Joe, and Louise Erdrich. There's a lot of First-Nation talent out there.
And for those seeking a real Native-eye view, go look up writers such as Sherman Alexie, Beth Brant, Paula Gunn Allen, Rita Joe, and Louise Erdrich. There's a lot of First-Nation talent out there.
May 30, 2023
This was one of the books I read that was suggested by someone as an introduction to their cultural identity. In the 1600's in New France, an Algonquin tribe takes a priest several weeks up river to a Jesuit mission. As payment for acting as his guides, the tribe is paid in muskets. The priest intends to take prayer and salvation to a fever ridden Huron village before winter. On the journey, he treats his guides as savages, and they openly mock his faith. He is captured and tortured by an Iroquois tribe. And all the while there are the baptisms and small pox. Fantastic historical fiction that questions faith, salvation versus savagery, and a great place to start if you are both Native American and Catholic, and wonder how that might have happened.
August 21, 2015
A Jesuit priest heads upriver in New France with Algonquin guides in a desperate attempt to make contact with a mission that hasn't been heard from in some time. The land is brutal and so are the people who live in it: French, Huron, Algonquin and Iroquois alike. There is distrust on all sides and understanding of the disease that's killing the natives and originating from the French is centuries away from these people. There is only the slightest hint of sentimentality, in the closing pages of the novel. Partially based on the Jesuit Relations, early chronicles from missionaries in New France.
July 25, 2011
This is one of the very few examples I can say that the movie is better than the novel. There are some pretty critical differences between the film and the text, and i would say that while the film has its historical problems, the book suffers from some severe ones, not the least of which is its animalistic portrayal of Native Americans. In this case, I'd watch the film and skip the book.
February 14, 2023
Black Robe is a simple story about a 17th century priest trying to make it out to an isolated mission near the Great Lakes. He is to be guided by a small group of Algonquian in exchange for six muskets and a few other items. The main theme that is in the faces of the reader is the clash of cultures. Two ways of thinking so disparate, it is hard to imagine any bridge large enough to span the chasm. Moore avoids the easy trap of making caricatures of either side, but instead presents both the priest and his guides with an even sympathetic hand. An interesting undercurrent to the book was the idea of contingency. While reading the book you get the feeling that you as the reader have as much control over the outcome of events as the characters inside the book. There is a long string of events that leads Father Laforgue to his current mission, stretching all the way back to scenes from his childhood where statues to martyrs have shaped his dreams and life ambitions. Likewise, the Algonquian, uneasy and fully aware of tectonic shifts occurring are grasping at any hand hold they can find to buy some extra time as they slowly slide towards oblivion. The priest relies on his guides, who in turn are at the mercy of autocratic fort captains who in turn bend the knee to the pope. Like a cancerous tumor, trade spreads and starts to erode cultures into a single melting pot of "necessary" relations. Inside this maelstrom of turmoil Father Laforgue attempts to do and be good, but as Moore painstakingly makes clear that is no simple matter. The story is interesting, dark, and at times moving. The Algonquian's way of speaking in the book is heavily laced with profanity, this (from an author's note) is supposed to be historically accurate, and it increased the strange juxtaposition between their speech and the speech of a 17th century priest. That being said, at times it was so informal as to be distracting and reminded me a little of the "jive" language from Airplane. Really enjoyed the setting and look forward to reading more stories from around this era.
October 4, 2025
An interesting, engaging historical fiction novel set in 17th century Canada. Father Laforgue,a French ‘black robe’ (the Indian word for priest), must journey to remote Ihonatiria to help or replace two ill jesuits. Daniel , a 20 year old assistant workman is to accompany Laforgue. They travel with friendly Algonkin Indians. Their journey is an adventure with obstacles. Daniel, formerly devout, lusts for an Algonkin girl named Annuka. Midway through their journey the Algonkin’s decide to go no further and not provide the two Algonkin men that had been promised to accompany Laforgue and Daniel to Ihonatiria.
A haunting, disturbing, gripping novel, well worth reading.
This book was first published in 1985.
A haunting, disturbing, gripping novel, well worth reading.
This book was first published in 1985.
September 11, 2025
Wow so good, but too short for the subject matter!
September 19, 2024
Brian Moore is very hit or miss for me, but I find his writing so intriguing. Black Robe is grim and uncomfortable, but credit to him, he gave it a surprisingly hopeful ending.
January 24, 2023
This is a challenging book in many ways, and I am still grappling with my full thoughts. Brian Moore is a Irish-Canadian author who constructed a narrative about Jesuit and Indigenous relations in early America. There are very little indigenous writing from this time accessible in the present, so most of the history known about these native tribes in the Great Lakes region comes from Jesuit accounts (which Moore clarifies as his main source of information, along with a look at some of the limited tribal sources). What he produces here, though, does not read like a history. Moore has written a violent, bloody, gruesome, erotic thriller. To me, this is inappropriate.
This is certainly a divisive book, but I am still shocked at how positive many of these reviews are. In Moore's author's note, he mentions his intentions of portraying the Alqonkin, Iroquois, and Huron tribes in an honest way. However, in trying to subvert the harmful "savage" stereotypes already present and harmfully perpetuated in modern day, all Moore does is further exoticize and mystify early Americans. Despite what his intentions may be, the way Moore portrays our main character (a Jesuit priest) as sympathetic contrasts with the ways his portrayals of natives are violent. While I can recognize the truth in early America's history of violent contact, with very real accounts of sexual, brutal, and even cannabilistic violence present in native history, I worry about how sensationalizing this violence in a book within the thriller genre might continue harmful prejudices. Is this the narrative we should be connecting to indigenous tribes? Why are we portraying our French protagonist in a sympathetic light when the colonization caused by Europeans is the root of many of the problems in this novel? Is it productive to portray a colonial indigenous history as a thriller at all, or is it tokenizing the genocides? Would this story have looked different if an indigenous author had written?
If I wasn't reading this book for a class, I probably wouldn't have finished it. I'm leading a discussion for this novel in my seminar, and I clearly have a lot of thoughts to get off my chest.
This is certainly a divisive book, but I am still shocked at how positive many of these reviews are. In Moore's author's note, he mentions his intentions of portraying the Alqonkin, Iroquois, and Huron tribes in an honest way. However, in trying to subvert the harmful "savage" stereotypes already present and harmfully perpetuated in modern day, all Moore does is further exoticize and mystify early Americans. Despite what his intentions may be, the way Moore portrays our main character (a Jesuit priest) as sympathetic contrasts with the ways his portrayals of natives are violent. While I can recognize the truth in early America's history of violent contact, with very real accounts of sexual, brutal, and even cannabilistic violence present in native history, I worry about how sensationalizing this violence in a book within the thriller genre might continue harmful prejudices. Is this the narrative we should be connecting to indigenous tribes? Why are we portraying our French protagonist in a sympathetic light when the colonization caused by Europeans is the root of many of the problems in this novel? Is it productive to portray a colonial indigenous history as a thriller at all, or is it tokenizing the genocides? Would this story have looked different if an indigenous author had written?
If I wasn't reading this book for a class, I probably wouldn't have finished it. I'm leading a discussion for this novel in my seminar, and I clearly have a lot of thoughts to get off my chest.
November 21, 2011
Brian Moore has written many diverse and excellent novels, but "Black Robe" stands out for me as a particularly powerful and extraordinary book. On one level, it is a dramatic re-telling of the penetration of the entirely new world of 1600's central Canada by the French Jesuits and other European arrivals -- a mind-shattering adventure for many of them that shook their fundamental beliefs and styles of life. On another level, it is a remarkable exploration of the interplay of two mutually uncomprehending cultures -- the aboriginal world of migratory life, mystic spirits and shared community -- and the French Catholic world of settlements, an afterlife based on conversion, and privacy and individual possession. Written with stark prose and unsparing descriptions of harsh living conditions and cruel tortures by warring aboriginal bands, this is not an easy book -- but it provides compelling reading, as the Jesuit priest's self-focused soul is challenged and changed, and his companion Daniel follows his passion for a confident young Algonquin woman into an entirely different cultural context. Based on historical records from the 1600's, and on recent studies of the aboriginal worldview, this book presents a balanced and sensitive picture of a complex process of contact, at a time before European coercion of aboriginal communities had been imposed by force. The focus therefore is on the interconnections amongst a few individuals and how these play out. The result is an excellent novel, full of tension and pathos and passion.
September 26, 2008
I saw the movie like 10 years ago in a history class and I liked it so when I saw the book I figured I would give it a shot.
This is a great book if you like historical fiction and a very fast read. It's raunchy, violent, and philosophical-that's pretty much all you need as far as I'm concerned. It gives what seems like a very realistic picture of early colonial Quebec and the interactions between the Jesuits and the Native people.
The author spends a lot of time contrasting the religious/moral/social views of the Jesuits versus the Natives. This made for a fascinating juxtaposition, but who knows how accurate it is.
This is a great book if you like historical fiction and a very fast read. It's raunchy, violent, and philosophical-that's pretty much all you need as far as I'm concerned. It gives what seems like a very realistic picture of early colonial Quebec and the interactions between the Jesuits and the Native people.
The author spends a lot of time contrasting the religious/moral/social views of the Jesuits versus the Natives. This made for a fascinating juxtaposition, but who knows how accurate it is.
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