Paradise

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1997

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-9

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1 Summary: “Ruby”

In July 1976, nine armed men enter the Convent: twins Deacon “Deek” and Steward Morgan, their nephew K. D. Smith, Arnold Fleetwood, his son Jefferson “Jeff” Fleetwood, Sargeant, Harper, Menus, and Wisdom. The building was once an embezzler’s mansion, a monument to the previous owner’s wealth. The mansion was later converted into a Convent for Arapaho girls. The nuns tried to remove remnants of its previous opulence—like suggestive statues—but small reminders remain. Now closed, the Convent is home to a handful of women.

As they make their way through the building, the men find evidence that supports their belief that the women are engaging in “sinful” behavior: hammocks instead of beds, astrology charts, and letters written in “blood.” The men are from Ruby, a small, all-Black town in Oklahoma 17 miles away. The leaders of Ruby have decided that the Convent is a threat to Ruby’s deliberate exclusion of outsiders and the security that ensures. They have, therefore, decided to eliminate it. This fear is born out of Ruby’s troubled past and its relationship to the failed, older city of Haven.

Established in 1889, Haven was an all-Black town of freedmen. The original inhabitants had traveled together from Mississippi and Louisiana, searching for a Black town to settle in. Repeatedly rejected and judged as “too poor, too bedraggled-looking” (14), they determined to settle their own town. At first, Haven thrived, but as folks moved away, descendants divvied up land, and white speculators came, it was a ghost town by 1948. When the twins returned from the war and found Haven failing, they convinced the remaining families to relocate and found a new town. They brought with them the big Oven, which the Old Fathers had built in 1890. When Ruby Morgan died—the first person to die in the new establishment—the town was named after her. She died because no doctor nearby would treat African Americans; this reinforces the town’s strict isolationism.

Ruby used to have a good relationship with the Convent women, who sell their garden’s produce. However, when Ruby’s normal peace is disrupted by random problems—babies born sick or two brothers shooting each other—the people blame the catastrophes on their unusual neighbors at the Convent. The armed men continue searching the mansion and find only more evidence that the women are evil. Then, they spot several Convent women fleeing. The men aim their rifles.

Chapter 2 Summary: “Mavis”

Chapter 2 begins with a journalist interviewing 27-year-old Mavis Albright about the accidental death of her twin babies, Merle and Pearl. The infants suffocated to death when Mavis drove with them to the store and left them in her husband Frank’s Cadillac. The photographer takes a picture of Mavis with her other sons, Frankie and Billie James, and 11-year-old daughter Sally “Sal.” While the journalist questions Mavis, the young children are disruptive, especially Sal, who covertly pinches and kicks her mother.

Mavis loves Frank’s mint green Cadillac more than he does. Frank is an abusive man, but that night he is lighthearted at dinner, forces a sexual encounter with Mavis, and says little about the incident. Mavis decides to sneak out later that night but is convinced that Sal is waiting up to kill her. Mavis succeeds in stealing the Cadillac and drives away from their home in Maryland. She takes the highway to her mother, Birdie Goodroe, who tells Mavis she must return home to raise her children. However, Mavis believes Frank is plotting with the kids to kill her; she has already decided to escape to California.

After a week, she leaves her mother’s house and has the Cadillac repainted magenta in New Jersey. On her way, she picks up hitchhikers. The last hitchhiker, Bennie (Dusty), is headed to San Diego and sings the entire drive. Dusty disappears at a pitstop in Kansas with Mavis’s raincoat and boots. At another gas station, Mavis spots a man whom she thinks is Frank. She speeds away before he can approach her. Flustered, she drives directionless until the car runs out of gas on route 18. She walks along the road until she finds the Convent.

There, she meets Consolata (Connie). In the big kitchen, they discuss Mavis’s plans and how Connie sells produce from the garden. Connie goes upstairs to check on Mother Superior (a.k.a. Mary Magna), the only other person living there. Then, Soane Morgan from Ruby arrives to buy from Connie. Soane agrees to have her sons help Mavis get gas. When she fills her car, Mavis goes back to the Convent to spend the night and never leaves.

Mavis accompanies Connie to care for Mother Superior, who is old and sick in bed upstairs. Mother is not Connie’s biological mother but a nun. Mavis stays at the Convent most of the time for two years, so she is there in 1976 when the armed men from Ruby come.

Chapter 3 Summary: “Grace”

A bus comes to Ruby and drops off Grace “Gigi” Gibson. Her clothes are revealing, and she attracts attention. Meanwhile, Arnette Fleetwood and Coffee “K.D.” Smith argue because he has gotten Arnette pregnant. Frustrated, he smacks her, and she storms away with her friend, Billie Delia. The pregnancy is an issue because Arnette is 15 years old and because it interferes with the legacy of the Morgans, Ruby’s founding family. His twin uncles, Steward and Deek, disapprove. The three of them go with Reverend Misner to Arnold “Fleet” Fleetwood’s house to discuss the pregnancy and the slap. They settle on a plan for the Morgans to put money toward Arnette’s college tuition.

Mikey Rood told his girlfriend Gigi that a rock formation on the I-3 in Wish, Arizona, looks like two people having sex. He told her it embarrasses the locals. When Mikey ends up in prison, they agree to meet at the rock formation upon his release. Gigi soon learns that neither the rock formation nor Wish exists. Mikey’s name is not even in the phone book. She takes a train where she meets a man named Dice in the dining car. He suggests she visit Ruby, where there are supposedly two trees that grow in each other’s arms.

When she gets to Ruby, Roger Best offers her a ride, but he stops by the Convent first. Mother Superior has died, and Roger will be transporting the body. Nervous about riding with a corpse, Gigi runs inside too. She stumbles into the kitchen and is eating food when Connie enters and lies down on the floor. Gigi tries to help, but Roger is in a hurry and leaves her behind. Connie asks Gigi to watch as she sleeps. Meanwhile, Gigi gets high, wanders the mansion, and soon Connie is awake again.

Gigi sleeps over, and the next morning, K.D.—who had spoken to her the day before—drives out to the Convent looking for her. Flirtatious, he invites her to go for a drive, and she agrees. Another day, Mavis returns to the Convent after being away for a month. She is surprised to see Gigi, a stranger, sunbathing naked. Connie soon comes and introduces them, but they don’t get along. Mavis learns that Mother Superior has died. The chapter ends with a young girl—Pallas Truelove—in tight clothes appearing and asking for help because she has been raped.

Chapters 1-3 Analysis

The town of Ruby maintains an isolationist mentality developed in response to racial and class discrimination. Ruby’s legacy includes the story of the failed town before it—Haven—whose inhabitants had traveled for miles and faced repeated rejection from other Black towns before founding their own. It was only when Haven became more open to outsiders that it fell apart. Once the people move and found a new town, they renew the importance of keeping people and businesses contained. When Ruby, the woman, dies, it is the result of being repeatedly turned away by doctors in the area who will not practice medicine on Black patients. The dead woman comes to represent the hurt and rejection that the whole town of Ruby feels and that has been passed down from the Old Fathers of Haven. However, the unifying isolationism that kept Ruby strong is the very ideology that leads the townspeople to replicate the same hurt their ancestors experienced. As they villainize and seek to murder the women at the Convent, they scapegoat these sinful outsiders for issues springing up from inside Ruby itself. These first few chapters introduce us to the hypocrisy that rots the town from the inside out.

In appearance and utility, the Convent has evolved over time. Originally a wealthy embezzler’s mansion of debauchery, the mansion was converted into a Catholic school for Arapaho girls. When the school shut down, it became a home for just a few women and a place of business. The Convent is a marker of change and shows the passage of time, an important element in this story that spans nearly a century. As a kind of character, the Convent is an ideological foil for the town of Ruby. While life at the mansion adapts to each change, the leaders of Ruby are reluctant to do the same. They regard the Convent women with suspicion. They are obsessive about inheritance, argue over the Oven, and continue telling the old stories of Haven. Considering the strained relationship between the Convent and Ruby, Paradise weighs the risk between the destructive potential of being resistant to change and the danger of forgetting where you’ve come from.

On Gigi’s train ride, she encounters a short man with gold jewelry and an afro in the dining car. When he tells her his name is Dice, she asks, “Like chopping small?” and he responds, “Like pair of” (66). The narration makes clear that Dice is a cool and stylish man; it is characteristic of him to prefer an explanation of his name that does not potentially poke fun at his height but rather one that associates him with glamour, gambling, and fun. More interesting, however, is that “pair of dice,” spoken casually, is a homophone for “paradise.” Dice recalls the book’s title. Being the one to suggest that Gigi go to Ruby, Dice is also responsible for leading her to a place that could be considered her paradise: the Convent where women are free to do as they please and live uninhibited by male control.