Review of Jon Krakauer's Under The Banner of Heaven

Originally written for Goodreads, reproduced below:

I’d have easily given it 5, had it been Krakauer’s first novel I read. But that happened to be Into Thin Air – one of the few truly deserving of 5 stars - so this one has to settle for 4, owing largely to tedious details of the history of Mormonism that could have been easily avoided.

The book starts off with an electric shock to the brains of those who consider US as the last bastion of law and order in modern times. The Fundamentalist Mormon theocracies that dominate parts of Northwestern US and Canada are perhaps worse than Saudi Arabia, where women are treated as sex slaves, underage marriages and polygamy are rampant, and asking questions is a heresy.

But the book is far from a mere crime thriller, or a critique of Fundamentalist Mormonism for that matter. It's a brilliant, wholesome commentary on the nature of religion itself.

In the postscript, Krakauer says, “those who write about religion owe it to their readers to come clean about their own theological frame of reference”, so here’s mine – I am an atheist, and I firmly believe all religions are basically tools of mind control to allow its founders/leaders to exercise unencumbered authority over their followers.

Now that I have confessed to my confirmation bias, I will go ahead with the main bit of the review.

Reading about the mindless horrors committed by Lafferty Brothers – the near-decapitation of a young mother and her 15 month old daughter - at apparently the commandment of god, it’s natural to presume they were nothing but two mentally deranged individuals whose crime should be treated similar to that of another psychopathic murderer, without maligning Mormonism, or any other religion, on its pretext.

However, like a great music composition, this book reaches its crescendo towards the very end, when it establishes conclusively – by going into painstaking details of the trials of Lafferty Brothers – that these were two otherwise perfectly sane individuals who suffered from unwavering faith in their religion and the infallibility of their own actions. More worryingly, by deftly weaving together the story of Lafferty Brothers and that of the founders of Mormonism, Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, the readers are informed that the brothers shared these traits with the two founders, and derived complete justification for their most heinous actions from them. Such justification, given the call for “blood atonement” given by the founders as well as their complete disregard for laws of man in favour of laws of god, is only logical.

Perhaps Fundamentalist Mormonism is especially bad - its stalwarts rape their own minor daughters and take tens of wives - but an intelligent reader should be able to make the leap from the story of Lafferty Brothers to religion in general, and from Smith and Young to founders of all religions – ultimately, all religions are forms of mind control and all founders were deeply narcissistic individuals who were undoubtedly virtuous in some ways but, “at need a great liar and a great scoundrel” (words, not used by Krakauer, to describe Young) who were not afraid to lie, maim, kill and rape to establish their version of truth as the only valid one. At the risk of being labelled a bigot, I’d say this is most true of Abrahamic religions and their founders. In their narcissism, the founders of religions shared a trait also found in Hitler, Osama, Caesar, Napoleon, and indeed al-Baghdadi (founder of ISIS) – all great leaders cum murderers in history.

The unfortunate bit is that the control of religion over human psyche, despite millennia of scientific progress, has hardly loosened. If there was Joseph Smith then, there is Donald Trump now – an example of an individual who suffers from the same unabashed narcissism and an entrenched sense of infallibility. If Smith was a prophet, Trump is a demigod. The names change, the cycle perpetuates. Animal Farm isn’t one of the best books ever for no reason.

In Into Thin Air, Krakauer erred in blaming Boukreev for loss of lives, so I was open to reading logical rebuttals to this book by Mormons. Sadly, as expected, they consist of nothing but ad hominem attacks on the author, and laughable reiterations of their belief in Mormonism being the “one true faith”. If anything, they only strengthen my belief in the evil inherent to religion.  

The Doors

At the beginning, it was a big room full of people. My school friends, colony friends, and cousins, lots of cousins. Those in the room were mostly my age, though I could spot my elder cousins too. And oh, mummy-papa. They were always around.

Most people in the room were chatty and sociable. Not all of them talked among each other, but almost everyone talked with me. I liked it. I was too busy with friends and cousins to spend much time with mummy-papa, though from the corner of my eye I always saw them smiling beatifically at me. Only a very few people, along the fringes of the room, didn’t talk to me, though some of them did talk to mummy-papa. I didn’t care much about those people.

Everyone in the room always walked, usually in a straight line. I didn’t mind it because I walked with them. Sometimes I would pause to spend time with some of them; they would pause too, but we found ourselves walking again, I had no clue why.

Every now and then I came upon a closed door. I was apprehensive of opening it, but found myself opening it anyway, I had no clue why. Walking through a door meant entering a new, though similar, room. It wasn’t so bad because most of the people around me walked through the same door that I did, so we kept seeing each other in the new room. Some people, though, did not. In case they walked through a different door, I never saw them again, I had no clue why. This usually happened with my school friends. My cousins and mummy-papa always queued up behind me to walk through the same door.

Sometimes after walking through a door, I saw unknown faces entering the new room through other doors that opened into it. Then, the unknown faces walked with me - they also became school friends. I liked it.

One day, I noticed someone who had been walking with me since the beginning was missing. I turned around and ran to the door I had come through to go back to the previous room. Maybe he was languishing at the end of the queue, and someone had shut the door. I tried really hard but the door never unlocked, I had no clue why. Soon, I found myself walking towards the next room.

After walking through hundreds of doors, I came upon another. As was usual, I waited for others to queue up behind me. But no one did. I looked around and saw everyone standing against a door of their own. Each and every one. I had no clue why. I tried really hard to not open the door, but found myself opening it anyway, I had no clue why.

Opening this door put me in an unusually big room. I saw uncountable new faces walking into it through still more uncountable doors. I looked around but I could see none of the old faces, only the new ones. I was scared. I ran back to the door and saw mummy-papa standing there. They were not walking with me but their presence in the same room was comforting. Somehow they’d managed to sneak in through the door when I was urging my friends and cousins to do so, which they never did. I hugged mummy-papa tight and asked them about others. They said every one of them had entered an unusually big room of their own, called college. I wondered why they didn’t walk into my room, it was big enough to accommodate them. I didn’t try unlocking the door because I knew it wouldn’t yield.

Some of the new people in this unusually big room soon became chatty and sociable - they became college friends. I liked it. The new big room was also likeable because there were no doors to walk through here. There was a lot of walking alright, but sans doors. My favourite faces were always visible, walking with me. Sometimes some of them turned less chatty, but they kept walking with me. The dreaded memory of walking through the last door was now distant.

While walking through this big room I was also bombarded with a host of old faces that had gone missing a long time back. They entered through blue-coloured “f”-shaped doors. I never cared much about them.

The best part about the new room was the discovery of hidden doors that lay off the walking path. Passing through them allowed me to enter another, smaller room where some of my old favourite faces became visible again. This place had a nice smell, I called it home. They told me they’d found secret doors in unusually big rooms of their own.

Mummy-papa were the only ones present in both the rooms, though I talked much more with them in the smaller one. Out there in the bigger one, I only saw them from the corner of my eye – smiling beatifically at me, as always. I sometimes wanted to spend more time in the smaller room, but I found myself walking back to the door that opened into the bigger room, I had no clue why. With time, however, I discovered that some of the old faces in the smaller room had become blurred or invisible, I had no clue why.

One day, my long walk in the big room was abruptly interrupted by a door. Trying to keep out memories of the previous door, I shut my eyes and desperately hoped for others to queue up behind me. But no one did. I looked around and saw everyone standing against a door of their own. Each and every one. For the first time, I had a clue why. Then, mummy-papa quietly queued up behind me. This time, I didn’t let them go unnoticed. Only they walked through this door with me, no one else. Not even one.

The new room that I walked into was much smaller than the previous one. I knew no one here and far fewer unknown faces entered it. It smelt bad, I called it workplace. Some of them were good, but it wasn’t the same as any of the previous rooms. I didn’t like it. To my delight I found that hidden doors to home still existed, but it was much harder to walk through them, and the faces on the other side had become ever more blurred and diminished.

I continue to walk through doors, or more accurately, somnambulate through them, for there’s hardly a familiar face to be left behind anymore. Well, mummy-papa are still around, but their presence grows stronger and clearer by the day.

I do secretly wish, though, for a really long walk in the opposite direction.