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Similes
Chapter 20: So Help You God!
Explanation and Analysis—Two-Faced Family:
In Chapter 20, during the trial for Anna's murder, attorneys question Ernest and Bryan Burkhart. The trial uncovers sickening dramatic irony and situational irony that have been at play at least since Anna's murder:
The shocked attorney asked [Bryan], “You knew Anna Brown’s dead body was out there, didn’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
Morrison had been among the onlookers. Ernest had been there, too, comforting Mollie, even though he had known that Anna’s two killers were standing only a few feet away from them. Similarly, Ernest had known from the moment Rita and Bill Smith’s house exploded who was responsible; he had known the truth when, later that evening, he had crept into bed with Mollie, and he had known the whole time she had been desperately searching for the killers.
Bryan's testimony forces Mollie and others in the courtroom to think back to the day when Anna's body was discovered. Her grief-stricken family and friends stood together around the crime scene, taking solace in one another—or so they thought. Even then, some among them were feigning their shock. They either knew what had happened to Anna or had carried out the murder themselves. Even when Anna went missing, Mollie confided her fears for her sister in Ernest, Bryan, and others who were responsible for her death. The same thing happened over and over again as the white men Mollie once considered family picked off her loved ones.
There is situational irony in the fact that Ernest, Bryan, Morrison, and other murderers stood around mourning Anna and the other victims. If they had not conspired to commit murder, there would have been no one to mourn. Even crueler is the way they allowed Mollie to turn to them for comfort. Ernest's betrayal is the most acute. It is difficult to imagine how he could stomach the dramatic irony as he lay in bed next to Mollie, knowing that he held the answers she was looking for and that he was one of the people who had wrought unimaginable trauma on her and her family.
Perhaps the greatest and most tragic irony is in the fact that, despite the convictions that came out of the trials for the Osage murders, justice could never really happen. Not only did there remain a slew of unsolved and never-investigated murders, but the convictions—when they did come—failed to resurrect Anna or any of the others. Instead of bringing Mollie comfort, the trials exposed her husband's betrayal and left her to contend with more pain than ever.
Related Themes:
Chapter 22: Ghostlands
Explanation and Analysis—Reign of Terror:
The term "Reign of Terror," which Grann borrows from the newspaper coverage of the Osage murders, alludes to the French Revolution and highlights the devastating situational irony of white attitudes toward the Osage. One instance occurs in Chapter 22, when Grann describes a conversation with Margie Burkhart about her family history:
Her father, now deceased, was James “Cowboy” Burkhart—the son of Mollie and Ernest Burkhart. Cowboy and his sister, Elizabeth, also now dead, had witnessed the Reign of Terror from inside their father’s house of secrets.
The term "Reign of Terror" has historically been used to describe the extremely bloody French Revolution at the end of the 18th century. For a long time, many European governments had consolidated power and wealth among a small group of aristocrats who claimed to have a birthright to their elite social position. By the late 1780s, French revolutionaries rallied around the idea that the government should act in the interest of the "general will" of the people rather than to protect aristocratic power and wealth. They saw aristocrats and their sympathizers as tyrants, and a general tone of paranoia overtook French politics as some people went into hiding and others tried to hunt them down. Marie Antoinette is among the most famous aristocrats who were brutally executed during this period because of her title and what she represented. Many, many more people were killed (often by way of public beheading), supposedly to make way for a new, more egalitarian world order.
There are obvious parallels between the French Reign of Terror and the Osage Reign of Terror. Both involved violent killing sprees motivated by social struggles over power and money. In the case of Cowboy and Elizabeth, the term "Reign of Terror" helps capture the tone and stakes of their childhood growing up in Ernest's "house of secrets." It would have been bad enough to grow up with a father who betrayed their family by murdering their aunt and uncle. What Cowboy and Elizabeth experienced was even worse because Ernest's secrets and betrayal were connected to an entire political power struggle. That power struggle played out on the domestic stage, coloring the children's upbringing with the same kind of paranoia that French aristocrats faced during the French Revolution.
The tactics of the French revolutionaries remain controversial to this day. Whether or not the public executions were effective, it is undoubtedly ironic that so many people were murdered in the name of human rights without any kind of fair trial. Grann's regular use of the allusion invites thoughtful comparison of the two events. Ultimately, Grann emphasizes another layer of irony at play in Oklahoma during the 1920s and 1930s. White journalists felt compelled to describe the Osage murders as a repeat of the French Reign of Terror. However, whereas the French revolutionaries mobilized against an aristocratic class that had long been hoarding wealth and power from the rest of society, white Oklahomans began murdering the Osage in direct response to the Osage's sudden rise in socioeconomic status. Prior to gaining the oil headrights, the Osage had been systematically deprived of wealth and power by a white ruling class. In many ways, such as the appointment of white guardians, this was still the case even when the Osage were wealthy. By calling the Osage murders a "Reign of Terror," white journalists painted the Osage as a greedy ruling class and conveniently glossed over the real social history behind the racial violence.
Related Themes:
