The Shack: Resisting our faith in the author

Even though The Shack fulfills the expectations of being a tragic, though heartwarming story, the way it goes about doing it almost makes you scratch your head and wonder why, why couldn’t the author have taken a much simpler approach in to how he told the story? Upon this blog, I will be analyzing the rhetoric of its narrative and point out the main reasons as to why we are resisting an author who only had good intentions.

The Shack is about a man whose faith is restored from losing his daughter after meeting with God in, well, a shack. Take a gander at Liz’s blog for a more explicit description.

Right out of the gate, author WM. Paul Young claims:

“I have known Mack for a bit more than twenty years” (xi).

He tells us that his name is Willie and tells us the role he plays in the story:

“What you are about to read is the best Mack can remember about what happened. This is his story, not mine, so the few times I show up, I’ll refer to myself in the third person—from Mack’s point of view” (xviii).

So, even though we know this story is fiction, Young claims that he actually knew Mack and decides to take the route of telling us the story through a Third Person Limited perspective. This lets us assume that at some time after these events there was supposedly a moment where Mack might have sat down with Willie at a bar or something and shared his whole story. At the same time, the story sometimes feels omniscient.

How much would you tell your closest friend when having an experience like this? Could you remember your story to the smallest detail? Could you remember every conversation? The winter weather of that day?

“He paused frequently, listening to the sound of crystalline rain tinging off his window and watching the slow but steady accumulation of frozen ice thickening on everything outside” (2).

Those little thoughts and dreams that only exist for a second?

“Flashes of visual memory and stabbing instants of blistering fury now came in waves, attended by the taste of bile and blood in his mouth.” (70).

Well, according to this novel, none of that would be too difficult.

“They nodded and Mack headed at a slow trot toward the closest showers, noticing for the first time that he was barefoot and shirtless. What a sight I must be, he thought” (35).

This is taken from when Mack found out Missy was gone and just started looking for her. With all the fear and emotion he was feeling that day how could he have remembered what he wore? I don’t know, maybe I’m being over critical. If I wrote a memoir or something, I’d have to use some white lies of dialogue or memories, just to tell a complete story. The narrator just feels very unreliable since we know that either perspective is limited.

Another complication we had is how much Young assumes of us as the readers. The book seems to be directed more towards a Christian audience, which is fine, still there has to be something for the everyday reader to grab on to. Also, a couple Mack’s children and family friends from the camping trip just seem too flat.

When defining what we believe to be the authorial audience, Rabinowitz states:

“the author of the novel designs his work rhetorically for a specific hypothetical audience. Like a philosopher, historian, or journalist, he cannot write without making certain assumptions about his readers’s beliefs, knowledge, and familiarity with conventions. His artistic choices are based upon these assumptions, conscious or unconscious, and to a certain extent, his artistic success will depend on their accuracy” (126).

Quite frankly, we can’t connect to Mack because he doesn’t seem to have much conflict in his faith in God. He doesn’t even blame God for his abusive father, though perhaps that was the thing that led him to God. The only adversity towards God we get is a hint of doubt when he’s talking to his wife on the phone. Then, we spend 43 pages, page 14-57, in a flashback of Mack’s beautiful family trip before he lost Missy. At this point, Mack is obedient to God and always looks to him for guidance. By the time we met up with Mack again he doesn’t feel like the same character. Mack’s doubt in God seems so sudden and abrupt.

Once Mack enters the shack he ends up, at first, finding nothing but a blood stain on the ground from Missy’s dress years ago.

“In a blind rage, Mack grabbed the nearest chair and flung it at the window” (75).

Next, he gets outrageously angry at God.

“ ‘You’re nowhere to be found! You’ve never been around when I’ve needed you—not when I was a little boy, not when I lost Missy. Not now! Some ‘Papa’ you are!’ ” (75).

He even almost considers suicide, handling the gun he brought to the shack just in case it was the killer who sent him there again.

“He pulled it out, not sure what he was going to do. Oh, to stop caring, to stop feeling the pain, to never feel anything again. Suicide? At the moment that option was almost attractive” (76).

We never knew this was all built up inside him. Were we just suppose to assume it was there? We never expected his breakdown, and maybe we were supposed to be surprised, though the shift seemed too inconsistent.