The key, the life-blood of a Christian novel, is its characters, and there are many noteworthy ones in Blaggard's Moon.
There's Avery Wittle, a man on Delaney's crew who chose to die instead of become a pirate, who said "I can't rightly serve a pirate in this world and be prepared to meet my Maker in the next." (85). His voluntary death influenced and disturbed Delaney enough for him to think that maybe Avery had something Delaney didn't.
There's Shayla Flug/Stillmithers, who had a tough life and only wanted a better one for her daughter, Jenta. She sacrificed much so that her daughter could have a good life, and it caused her to realize that she had no control over the world. Self-reliant and distrustful, she was not the one who could save her daughter from evil people or a difficult life.
There's her daughter, Jenta, who had to endure so much at the hands of the pirate captain Conch Imbry and the worthless drunk Wentworth Ryland. But she remained resilient, faithful, and hopeful, even helping Wentworth and others realize the love and power of God.
There's Runsford Ryland, who lived his life for himself, always playing both sides, always looking to make more money. When he lost everything, it changed him, and he began to help others. Yet even then, when he had "learned his lesson," he tried to take most of the credit for himself, his redemption ambiguous.
There's Conch Imbry, the ruthless, unforgiving, and unrepentant pirate captain, who killed, schemed, and pillaged with success and who was still cursing everyone and everything as he was hanged for his crimes when everything was said and done. Not everyone responds well to the work of God.
I'd like to pay special attention to Smith Delaney, the character who had the most obvious change in his mindset and was eventually redeemed. It is that redemption that makes up the essence of the book.
We are in Delaney's head for the entire book. It is not always his thoughts, to be sure, but even when we are reading of a different story, like that of Damrick and Jenta, or the Rylands, or Conch Imbry, we are getting that story through Delaney's eyes and his memories. The stories within the overarching plot line of Delaney waiting for his death all fit into his thought process, which in turn leads to him coming to several epiphanies about the way God works - though most of the time, he doesn't put it in terms of God or religion.
At first, he has a legalistic view towards God, or perhaps I could call it a very "religious" view: Do good things, make God happy, and you'll be okay. Do bad things and God will be mad at you, and probably send you to hell. When thinking about the day he became a pirate, he muses, "back then, his sins didn't deserve the fate that the Horkan man had pronounced upon him [death]. But now they did. They deserved it precisely" (21).
Delaney used to steal for his father when he was a child, the guilt of which he feels to this day. That's how he got a fire-and-brimstone view of Christianity and became scared of priests.
Running away from priests and church was the reason he ever sailed in the first place, which led to him becoming pirate. Sometimes if we preach the "Law and wrath" side of God too much, we can push people down a path that actually leads away from God.
For most of the book, Delaney avoids thinking about the decision he regrets the most. But when he finally faces it, he remembers something about it that changes the way he's thinking. The Conch is ordering Delaney to shoot a man at point blank, a man that did nothing to wrong Delaney, and doesn't seem to be too bad of a person. The Conch says that either Delaney shoots the man and proves his loyalty to the pirate captain, or the Conch will shoot Delaney.
Delaney doesn't want to do it, but he feels forced to. He apologizes to the man he is about to shoot, and tries to explain that he's doing it only because he will get shot if he doesn't. The man "cock[s] his head just slightly, as though listening to something. Then for no reason Delaney [can] fathom, he [says], 'I forgive you'" (324-5).
The man forgives Delaney for what he is about to do, and Delaney describes it as "a stab, a sword that flashed straight into [his] chest, cutting him deep" (325). But he shoots the man anyway.
Finally recalling this, Delaney wishes he could die "right" like the man did, but feels like he can't because he's sinned too much. He thinks he now must die the "wrong" way.
Then an epiphany hits him. He deserves this death because he is "being judged for all the evil he'd ever done and got away with. Or thought he got away with. Every secret, every evil thought, every ugly word...it was just" (325). He feels "worthy of damnation" (326) and fully realizes that there is a God who cares and judges and sees everything, and who will one day make the world right. Suddenly, Delaney wants God's will to be done. He accepts that fact that he is about to die, and that he deserves it no matter how much good he ever did.
Now, Delaney doesn't end up dying after all, which isn't a shock if you know that he's a character in the Trophy Chase Trilogy by Polivka, which Blaggard's Moon is a prequel to. In this book, we don't get confirmation that Delaney becomes a Christian, only that he believes God exists and should be taken seriously. At the very end, Polivka writes that Delaney "had gotten down to the bottom of himself and found a darkness deeper than he knew could be. And yet he'd been raised up again...All of that meant something, and he purposed in his heart to find out what" (373).
In the first book of the trilogy, The Legend of the Firefish, the main character, Packer Throme, encounters Delaney while being held prisoner on a ship. Delaney takes care of him even though he shouldn't, and Packer, a Christian, notices a recent cross tattoo on Delaney's arm that has the word "brotherhood" on it. Later, Delaney admits that he has "been a believer only just a couple of years" (139). Packer observes that Delaney has "an odd sort of faith, unsoiled somehow by his blind obedience to the scurrilous commands of a pirate captain" (139). Delaney becomes a loyal supporter of Packer throughout his adventures, zealous in his obedience almost to a fault, like Peter to Jesus.
So that ends my abridged discussion on Blaggard's Moon, one of my favorite Christian Fiction books. There is a lot that I left out of this discussion that will be in my thesis paper, and that will be true for all of the books I discuss in this series of blog posts. Thesis papers are allowed to be fifty pages. Blog posts are not...