A Children's Bible

Although A Children’s Bible is a fairly straightforward tale of family conflict and natural disaster, it contains volumes of deeper symbolic meaning, for Millet embeds the story with references to much older works, giving each event multiple layers of meaning. Many of these references are from the Bible. For instance, the protagonist, Evie, is named for the biblical Eve, and when 11-year-old Kay attacks her sister Amy with a rock, this event obliquely alludes to Cain’s murder of his brother Abel in the Book of Genesis. A Children’s Bible also references more recent works, such as the 1954 dystopian novel Lord of the Flies, whose character Piggy finds an echo in the squat, bespectacled Terry. These allusions to well-known works, people, or events are used to evoke a wealth of meaning with a minimum of words, broadening the novel’s thematic significance.

Related to allusion, but more organic to a work, is the concept of allegory, which features prominently in A Children’s Bible. Allegory functions as a story within a story and uses parallels with historical events and past fictions to create a subtext of political, moral, religious, or philosophical messages. Many authors have employed allegory to deepen the meanings of their stories. A more modest “cousin” of the allegory is the parable, and in the Bible, Jesus often uses these small symbolic stories to cloak his true meanings. In a more modern example, George Orwell’s 1945 novel Animal Farm weaves a fable of a farmyard rebellion to satirize the rise of totalitarianism in Russia. In this case, Orwell uses political allegory to articulate complex ideas with simple language and an engaging narrative. In his allegory, the rebellion of the farm animals against their human oppressors symbolizes the Russian revolution; the power-hungry pig, Napoleon, becomes a proxy for the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, and the renewed slavery and exploitation of the animals by Napoleon and his minions symbolize the final betrayal of the revolution by the Soviet state. A Children’s Bible alludes specifically to Animal Farm in its depiction of the would-be dictator “the governor,” who, after his violent conquest of the farm, keeps one hand “stuck in his buttoned-down shirt, like a painting of Napoleon” (164).

In a sense, A Children’s Bible flips the Orwellian model. Instead of hiding the story’s deeper purpose, Millet places the novel’s politics front and center, critiquing the older generations’ culpability for global warming and other environmental depredations and explicitly detailing the worldwide crisis that awaits the human race. Because this catastrophe is far too dire and imminent for Millet to cloak in subtle metaphors, it is addressed explicitly and frequently by the novel’s younger characters. Meanwhile, the novel’s allegorical subtext reprises the most catastrophic events of the Bible, such as the loss of the Garden of Eden, Cain’s murder of Abel, Noah’s flood, the Exodus from Egypt, the crucifixion of Jesus, and the destruction of Jerusalem. Many of these scattered allusions are helpfully pointed out by the nine-year-old Jack, who is working his way through a children’s book of Bible stories. As the novel unfolds, Jack uses this book as a skeleton key to explain the chaotic events of the summer, which include storms, floods, and mass violence. Jack, whose visionary insights echo Simon’s in Lord of the Flies, watches as the biblical story of humanity repeats itself at an accelerated pace and hastens toward a final apocalypse. Mercifully, Jack’s storybook ends before the Book of Revelation’s dire prophecies of the end of the world, and by eliminating this portion of the original narrative, the author implies that there may still be hope for humanity. When it comes to the environment, Millet suggests, it is far easier and more human to hide one’s head in the sand than to read the writing on the wall. However, her allegory serves as a reminder that there has always been a terrible price to pay for human folly.