Peace Shall Destroy Many

BY RUDY WIEBE

FICTION
Peace Shall Destroy Many
(1962)
First and Vital Candle
(1966)
The Blue Mountains of China
(1970)
The Temptations of Big Bear
(1973)
Where Is the Voice Coming From?
(1974)
The Scorched-Wood People
(1977)
Alberta/A Celebration
(1979)
The Mad Trapper
(1980)
The Angel of the Tar Sands
(1982)
My Lovely Enemy
(1983)
Chinook Christmas
(1992)
A Discovery of Strangers
(1994)
River of Stone: Fictions and Memories
(1995)
Sweeter Than All the World
(2001)

NON-FICTION
A Voice in the Land
(ed. by W. J. Keith) (1981)
War in the West: Voices of the 1885 Rebellion
(with Bob Beal) (1985)
Playing Dead: A Contemplation Concerning the Arctic
(1989)
Stolen Life: The Journey of a Cree Woman
(with Yvonne Johnson) (1998)

DRAMA
Far as the Eye Can See
(with Theatre Passe
Muraille) (1977)

T
HE
A
NABAPTISTS OF THE SIXTEENTH
century were the extreme evangelical wing of the Reformation movement. The name “Mennonite” was early attached to them, after Menno Simons, their sole early theological leader to survive persecution. Because the group’s literal biblicism expressed itself in believers’ baptism, a life of discipleship, separation of church and state, non-participation in war or government, the “Brethren,” as they preferred to call themselves, were savagely martyred by Catholic and Protestant alike. Restrained from open proselytizing, they could do no more than teach their faith to their children; what in 1523 began as a religious movement became in time a swarming of a particular people from various nationalities bound together by a faith: like ancient Israel, they were a religious nation without a country. They were driven from Switzerland to America, from Holland and northern Germany to Prussia, then Russia, finally to North and South America. Wherever they went they carried peculiar customs, a peculiar language, a peculiar faith in the literal meaning of the Bible.

Over the four hundred years of their existence, the Mennonites have divided into several fairly distinctive groups. Their extremely individualistic approach to religion could hardly have other results. In one form or another, they still hold essentially the principles which forced Conrad Grebel and his companions to part with the reform of Zwingli in Zurich.

The Mennonites portrayed in this book belong to no particular faction; they could belong to any one of several groups that came to Canada from Russia in the 1920s. All characters and situations are fictional.

D
ANIEL
8

T
HE SETTING OF
R
UDY
W
IEBE’S
first novel,
Peace Shall Destroy Many
, is a community which has cut itself off from the world to follow in the steps of Christ. The scene is the wilds of Saskatchewan, and the year is 1944. The outside world seems to be the source of evil, its tank tracks desecrating the earth which here is rightly turned by the plow, its war planes overhead tearing the serene sounds of a farmyard at evening. But the story told is of the inner strains that threaten this community and of the awakening of one of its sons to the need for a new way. The first view of Thom Wiens is of him plowing, following the traditional path of the fathers; the final view shows him driving, reins in hand, seemingly (in the mind of one of the characters) towards the brightest star in the east. Left behind, broken, is the former leader, Peter Block.

Peter Block, the founder and “rock” of the community, is the most interesting figure in the book. This is a didactic novel, and the analysis of Block is central to the intention of the author. Through the probing of this character is probed, too, the origins of the community and the motive beyond the apparent ones holding it together. Two events are central in Block’s life, the time the descending axe brought him face to face with his mortality, and the time he killed a man. Both have to do with his “son-necessity.” (see
this page
) That “son-necessity” is the driving motive of his life and the measure of his worldliness.
Mrs. Block condemns his subterfuge during the Russian famine in hiding food for his son. Her will is resigned to God’s. Not so, Block’s. To escape earthly oblivion is his need, his son his hope. Work for that son is his “only religion.” (see
this page
) Block’s true relation with his community in Canada, too, is questioned by his conduct in the old country. When he has to choose in Russia between the community and his son, there is no conflict. That other villagers will have to make up for the grain he withholds, “he cared not at all.” (see
this page
) Moments before he beats the Bashkir to death, the thought of his son without milk feeds his fury.

Years after that killing, Block, now in Canada, founds his community; to be alone in the wilderness with the thought of his past act threatens to undo him utterly. Desperate personal need and the resolve to protect his son drive him to create a colony which will be wholesome and clean, from which the evil of the world will be barred. To shut out the world is an exacting task. Rules gain ascendant power. The effects of Block’s intense dedication are seen in his family, Mrs. Block always silent, Elizabeth listless, “all the bloom gone” (see
this page
), Pete, mechanical, replying to Thom’s invitation to let go, “ ‘How would that get the work done?’ ” (see
this page
). When Block shows a moment’s tenderness for his daughter, she looks “dully at him, as at a lump of mud” (see
this page
). His wife, at the funeral, shudders at his touch. Block’s faith in the saving power of work is ironically commented on as Elizabeth lies dying amid the busy sounds of harvesting. She is buried on the day set aside for the Thanksgiving Festival. Perhaps Block, reaping death, failing to redeem his sins of Russia is a figure of pathos; if so, the pathos emerges despite his readiness to repeat
the sins of the past. When he learns of Elizabeth’s fall, he thinks: “If the man had stood before him, he would have barehandedly torn him limb from limb” (see
this page
). Protection of his son is still an obsessive concern. He visits Louis, and when he leaves, “erect in the withering cold … he did not care … that he had, by every standard he ever believed, damned his own soul eternally. Wapiti was clean for his son” (see
this page
).

Block determines that as a consequence of what has happened to Elizabeth, “the breeds must go” (see
this page
). It is characteristic of him in coping with “evil” to focus on the external situation. Mrs. Wiens suggests that the evil within must be experienced to a degree if it is to be mastered. Block seeks to protect by limiting awareness. Too simple or rigid a concept of evil and how to cope with it can yield an ironical harvest, the novel seems to suggest.

The other major character through whom the author explores the life of the community is Thom Wiens, the youthful protagonist of the novel. Thom, starting guiltily in the first scene at his pause from work, begins orthodox; since the coming of Joseph the teacher, however, doubts have jolted his mind like the stones impede his plow. As the story progresses, he comes, through a series of moments of seeing, to question his community’s expression of its belief.

The meeting at which Joseph challenges their use of German (it prevents them carrying the gospel to their neighbours) and their non-participation in the war is one such moment. At the start of the meeting, Thom is confident of the church’s ability to deal finely with its problems. When, however, a reconciliation is sought by for
cing an apology from Joseph, he questions the kind of “peace” aimed at, one to be gained by ignoring the issues raised. The crooked figure of the grizzled old caretaker which holds his attention embodies a growing distrust in Thom of his elders. Torn between Joseph’s influence and his faith in his own community, he is left at the end wandering “alone where guide-posts bearing the same legend pointed over horizonless dunes in opposing directions” (see
this page
).

The meeting scene is explicit in stating its issues. A more satisfying moment portraying Thom’s awakening is the scene in which he stumbles over the skull of a wood-buffalo and pulls it up “moss and roots dangling” (see
this page
), more satisfying because more subtle and because to an extent the reader has to “see” for himself. Pulling up the skull, Thom is arrested by a sense of the past, and he gains in a flash a new consciousness of this country, Canada, which his community ignores, and of the dignity and mystery of its native people, the Indians, who have a history of their own. Pete scoffs at Thom’s moment of humility and wonder, and Thom is further isolated. The dwindling of the friendship of the two young men is a measure of Thom’s development. This episode along with others of similar effects, his glimpse of Two Poles at the picnic, for example, enlarges Thom’s awareness of what lies beyond his community’s limits and plays its part in altering his relation to the community.

Thom’s moments of insight do not alone motivate him, however. When he confronts the marriage of Herman and the “half-breed” girl, Madeleine, he feels revulsion: “A Christian can’t just up and marry any person the storm blows into his house,” he spits out at his
sister. “There have to be rules” (see
this page
). The author’s portrayal of his hero is not uncritical. Thom is tellingly exposed in the scene that juxtaposes the radio broadcast of the liberation of Paris with his brooding over the relation of Herman and Madeleine. Flowing from the radio is a great human experience. Thom is as good as deaf to the swelling sound “like the prayer of an innumerable multitude” (see
this page
). When “the great voice of the Parisian people blossomed in the room,” we are told ironically, he “could not help but listen” (see
this page
). But he is uncomprehending before the massive human emotions, childish. The juxtaposition of the great event and the local preoccupation in this scene and the kind of response Thom makes to each provides one perspective on the effects of withdrawal.