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The Convent
The Oven represents Ruby’s deteriorating unity and sense of community. When the town’s forefathers build the Oven in Haven, it is significant as a place where the community gathers, but its primary purpose is practical: everyone in town uses the Oven to cook. The men who leave to found Ruby bring the Oven with them, which dismays their female traveling companions who wish they could use the extra space to pack functional goods. Even before Ruby is founded, the Oven has quietly divided its community. These divisions grow when the Oven is installed in Ruby, despite the town no longer using it to cook. The older and younger generations begin to argue about the meaning of the words engraved on the lip of the Oven, and the town leaders equate the youths’ perceived disrespect for the Oven with a disrespect for tradition. The intergenerational conflict escalates when the young people graffiti the Oven with a Black Power fist, indicating their desire to engage with the civil rights movement instead of keeping Ruby insulated, as tradition dictates. On the night that nine town leaders attack the Convent, rain undermines the foundation of the Oven, signifying once and for all that Ruby can never return to the unified community it once was.
The Oven Quotes in Paradise
The Paradise quotes below all refer to the symbol of The Oven. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Ruby
Quotes
As new fathers, who had fought the world, they could not (would not) be less than the Old Fathers who had outfoxed it; who had not let danger or natural evil keep them from cutting Haven out of mud and who knew enough to seal their triumph with that priority. An Oven. […] the Old Fathers did that first: put most of their strength into constructing the huge, flawlessly designed Oven that both nourished them and monumentalized what they had done.
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Seneca
Quotes
“No ex-slave would tell us to be scared all the time. To ‘beware’ God. […] No ex-slave who had the guts to make his own way, build a town out of nothing, could think like that. No ex-slave––”
Deacon Morgan cut him off. “That’s my grandfather you’re talking about. Quit calling him an ex-slave like that’s all he was. He was also an ex-lieutenant governor, an ex-banker, an ex-deacon and a whole lot of other exes, and he wasn’t making his own way; he was part of a whole group making their way.”
Having caught Reverend Misner’s eyes, the boy was firm. “He was born in slavery times, sir; he was a slave, wasn’t he?”
“Everybody born in slavery time wasn’t a slave. Not the way you mean it.”
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[Steward] wondered if that generation––Misner’s and K.D.’s––would have to be sacrificed to get to the next one. The grand- and great-grandchildren who could be trained, honed as his own father and grandfather had down for Steward’s generation. No breaks there; no slack cut then. Expectations were high and met. Nobody took more responsibility for their behavior than those good men.
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The women nodded when the men took the Oven apart, packed, moved, and reassembled it. But privately they resented the truck space given over to it––rather than a few more sacks of seed, rather than shoats or even a child’s crib. Resented also the hours spent putting it back together […]. Oh, how the men loved putting it back together; how proud it had made them, how devoted. A good thing, [Soane] thought, as far as it went, but it went too far. A utility became a shrine […].
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The Oven Symbol Timeline in Paradise
The timeline below shows where the symbol The Oven appears in Paradise. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Ruby
...remembers how he and the other founders of Ruby celebrated when they polished a 62-year-old Oven to reveal the words engraved on its lip. He imagines the “Old Fathers” building this...
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...the Convent, the nine men, who are community leaders, had a secret meeting at the Oven. They interpreted various tragedies and scandals as the fault of the Convent women. In the...
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...they remember vividly the story of their grandfather Zechariah, who engraved the words on the Oven. In the story, the founders of Haven are turned away by rich Choctaws, poor whites,...
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...create a town that could be protected from “Out There.” 15 families pack up the Oven and move deeper into Oklahoma. The brothers marvel that the Convent is a greater threat...
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Grace
...K.D., the nephew of Deek and Steward Morgan, is sitting with his friends by the Oven when he sees a woman (Gigi) step off a bus. She draws attention because she...
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Seneca
...children. Now he is losing a fight with Reverend Misner about the words on the Oven.
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The conflict over the Oven is worsened by Ruby’s young people “acting up,” though no one is willing to acknowledge...
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Reverend Misner holds an assembly to discuss the words on the Oven. A fragment has worn away, leaving only “…the Furrow of His Brow.” The older generation...
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...war overseas was safer for her boys than any American city. Soane thinks about the Oven, which has recently been graffitied with an image of a black fist with red fingernails....
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...tonic, 19 years ago, after she miscarried due to a “sin.” She reflects that the Oven has “no real value,” since Ruby does not need a communal place to cook the...
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The morning after the meeting about the Oven, Deek drives to the bank, taking in the prosperity of Ruby, which in his mind...
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From inside Anna Flood’s general store, Richard Misner and Anna watch Deek’s car circle the Oven. Anna complains that the Morgans get credit for founding the town when 15 families, including...
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Divine
...revealing clothing. When they find no alcohol at the party, the women wander to the Oven and play Otis Redding music so they can dance. Reverend Pulliam watches them with distaste,...
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Patricia
...Delia’s reputation as a deceitful, promiscuous girl, and after she caught Billie Delia at the Oven with Apollo and Brood Poole, Pat beat Billie Delia so violently that she ran away...
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Lone
...an impending danger. Two hours ago, she heard the men “cooking” some “devilment” at the Oven. As she drives back to Ruby, she thinks of all the women who have walked...
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...herbs. It is on one of these expeditions that she overhears nine men at the Oven. They men discuss the unholy and intolerable ways in which Ruby has changed and formulate...
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The citizens of Ruby arrive at the Oven, where the rain has undermined its foundation. Dovey and Soane, quickly set out for the...
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Save-Marie
...is granting Ruby a second chance. The young people have changed the graffiti on the Oven. Instead of “Be the Furrow of His Brow,” it now reads “We Are the Furrow...
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