Religion, Tradition, and Death Theme Analysis

Jacqueline Woodson’s novel Another Brooklyn looks at the beliefs and rituals people seek out to help them deal with death and uncertainty. The different ways that August and her younger brother conceptualize the loss of their mother is especially noteworthy, since their differing approaches highlight the emotional benefits of having strong systems of belief. To that end, August’s brother gravitates toward religion, joining their father in the Nation of Islam movement and, in doing so, adopting elements of the Islamic faith. This helps him acclimate to the idea that his mother won’t be returning and even allows him to later accept the death of his father. August, on the other hand, doesn’t devote herself to a religion and consequently has a harder time coping with her mother’s death. However, she later becomes interested in anthropology, studying the rituals and customs that other cultures have surrounding death. In this way, she devotes herself to learning about the various traditions people use to make sense of  mortality. Rather than conforming to just one philosophy, then, she remains open to many traditions. In turn, August finds a way of conceptualizing death without actually ascribing to a religion herself. With this in mind, Woodson suggests that exposure to tradition and ritual can help even the most secular person accept death as a natural, inevitable part of life.

Throughout Another Brooklyn, it’s overwhelmingly clear that religious faith helps August’s brother make sense of life. Following in the footsteps of his father, he joins the Nation of Islam, a popular African American movement in the 1960s and 1970s that incorporated Islamic teachings into its overall message about race relations. In the novel’s opening scene, August and her brother are adults and have just said goodbye to their father, who has died after a long illness. As they talk about what it will be like to live without their father in the world, August admits that she already misses him. Her brother, for his part, simply says, “Allah is good. All praise to Allah for calling him home.” This response emphasizes the extent to which his faith helps him respond to losing a loved one. Although he’s undoubtedly sad, it’s clear he isn’t completely at a loss, and this is because he has something to cling to: the idea that Allah (God) is a beneficent, guiding presence who can help him come to terms with the harsh reality that everyone dies at some point. This outlook makes sense, considering that August’s brother has always been somebody who appreciates strong underlying principles that explain the way things are. For instance, when he’s a child, he takes a liking to math because of its unwavering nature. Nothing, he points out, can ever change algebra or geometry. Applying this same fatalistic approach to his mother’s prolonged absence, he tries to get August to admit that she’s not coming back. “It’s absolute,” he says, using a math metaphor that reveals his tendency to gravitate toward ideas that help him make sense of a world that might otherwise feel uncertain. This, it seems, is the same comforting sense of certainty that religion lends to him.

For August, though, committing to a religion isn’t so easy. This is perhaps partly because she doesn’t see herself reflected in the Nation of Islam’s worldview. Although she respects Sister Loretta (the woman her father dates and who introduces the family to Islamic teachings) she has trouble living the life of a devoted Muslim woman. All the same, August tries to derive the same peace of mind from religion as her brother and father do. When she prays, though, she feels like her brain is “fuzzy with clouded memory”—an image that underscores just how far she is from gaining the kind of “clarity” she hopes religion can give her. As a result, she doesn’t take to the Islamic faith like her brother does, instead investing herself in her friendships and clinging to her hope that her mother will return. And though August’s friendships are certainly important, her unwillingness to acknowledge that her mother is dead implies that she needs something else, something that will help her cope with the difficult parts of life.

August eventually finds the “clarity” she’s looking for by becoming an anthropologist who studies how different cultures respond to death. Throughout the novel, she dispenses information about how various people around the world mourn deceased loved ones. She notes that she has “seen death in Indonesia and Korea,” along with countless other places; she explains the customs of each of these cultures, showing how familiar she has become with the ways in which people conceive of not only death itself, but the process of mourning. And though August doesn’t adopt any of these beliefs for herself, she does gain insight and peace of mind from observing such traditions. By the time August is an adult and her father dies, then, she’s familiar with “the deep relief and fear that [comes] with death.” This phrase is noteworthy because of its seemingly contradictory nature. August says that death comes with both “relief” and “fear,” two things most people wouldn’t necessarily associate with each other. But because August has spent so much time observing the way people react to death, she’s capable of building a nuanced perspective, one that acknowledges the complexities that come along with mortality. In other words, her study of other cultures and their funeral customs has allowed her to engage with tradition in a way that is similar to how she might benefit from religious rituals like praying, which otherwise feel unapproachable to her. Whether a person is religious or not, then, Woodson implies that tradition can help them cope with death.