Week 2

Summary

So in this section of the book, Krakauer is still focusing on talking about the modern mormon culture and polygamy. He explains this Canadian Mormon organization called Bountiful. We talk to a woman named Debbie who was a part of the Bountiful group. In this group, women are sent from Colorado to Bountiful to become plural wives regularly. Debbie talks about how she was abused in her family specifically from one of her Father's wives. Krakauer makes us really feel against the Bountiful organization and polygamy in general throughout this section of the book. Debbie says that the men in the polygamist family are very controlling and women don't have much of a say in things. It kind of makes me think that these plural wives are a lot like concubines, just like in The Joy Luck Club. Krakauer, then goes back and talks a little about Joseph Smith, the creator of the Mormon religion in the beginning of Chapter 5. Thats all I got to reading this week.


Here's an article talking about Warren Jeffs,                     This is the wikipedia page to Bountiful,
who was the leader of the Bountiful                                      British Columbia, which is the colony
organization, now in jail.                                                        they talk about in the book.

Warren Jeffs Article                                                                Bountiful Wikipedia


                                                  Here's an article that talks about
                                                  an inhumane thing Jeffs did.
                                                        (warning graphic)

                                                      Warren Jeffs Threat


              Warren Jeffs                                                                     Here's a polygamist family

 

Review

This section I read this week of the book was good. I found that the story of the woman named Debbie was really compelling. I liked hearing a negative view on polygamy from someone who was a polygamist herself. Also hearing about Warren Jeffs and reading articles about this man was captivating. He is a terrible man, but its also really interesting to read about what he did and the affects it had on the Mormon church and Bountiful. I think this part of the book was even better than the first. I guess you could say I have faith in Krakauer to make the book really good the whole way through.

Focus

This week I focused on the point of view of Krakauer as he writes the story. I highly doubt that Krakauer is a mormon himself, and I feel like he is quite neutral about the whole topic at hand. He is sharing a lot of negative things about mormons, which makes me think a little bit that he may be a little bit against mormonism. He seems to be strongly against Polygamy, but you can never be sure. He may be just trying to show bad things about mormons to represent factors that may be the reason that the Lafferty brothers killed the woman and the daughter. Overall, its very hard to say, but I think Krakauer is slightly against the whole mormon thing in general.