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Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Plague of Doves, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Ancestry, History, and Interconnection
Punishment vs. Justice
Land, Ownership, and Dispossession
Passion vs. Love
Faith, Music, and Meaning
Summary
Analysis
Over the next three years, Marn has two children—Judah and Lilith—with Billy. At first, Marn is content to wander around with Billy, preaching of a coming apocalypse. But Marn feels that she is losing her ability to get “pictures,” and without being able to escape into these mental images, she grows homesick. Marn begs Billy to return to her parents’ farm, suggesting that Billy can start a new ministry there. Eventually, Billy agrees—though Marn knows he is more persuaded by the size of her family’s farm than by anything else.
The hazy way that Marn skips over time, so different from other moments in the novel, formally echoes the confusion and uncertainty of her life with Billy. Marn’s sense of hazy isolation is further bolstered by the fact that Billy’s apocalyptic ideas seem to be eclipsing Marn’s own visionary tendencies. It is also important to note Billy’s focus on land. Once again, then, the artificial boundaries of property deeds and land surveys act as one of the narrative’s driving emotional forces.
Themes
Uneasily, Marn soon realizes that Billy plans to bring all his existing congregants (eight in total) with him to the Wolde farm. When they arrive, Billy gets right to work convincing Marn’s dad to let him take over the property. Only Marn’s uncle Warren seems upset by this plan. That night, as she falls asleep, Marn feels as if a is bird flying inside of her. She keeps this experience secret from Billy—something about it reminds Marn of Warren, and she wonders “if his rage is catching.”
Marn’s mention of the bird fluttering inside her perhaps recalls the doves from the novel’s titular “plague,” gentle and threatening all at once. The uneasy link Marn feels with her uncle Warren, tied together by a secret, quiet “rage,” will be important to track as Marn’s story progresses—and as Warren’s centrality to the plot becomes clearer.
Themes
In the early days at the farm, Marn is happy to see how much her parents needed her and Billy to help out. Marn helps her mother garden, while Billy helps Marn’s father with the bills. “This was reservation,” Billy repeats, “and should be again. This was my family’s land, Indian land.” Marn senses something different and disturbing in Billy’s demeanor, especially as Billy begins to eat constantly, shoveling giant plates of food into his mouth. But Marn’s parents love Billy, and whenever Warren protests, Marn’s mother just shushes him.
Even in the strange, intimate relationship Marn shares with Billy, the region’s history of settler-colonial dispossession rears its head. Indeed, in telling Marn that her family’s farm “was my family’s land,” Billy implies theft, suggesting that by taking over the farm now, he is achieving some kind of historical justice. Though Billy’s demeanor is unsettling and increasingly unhinged (as signaled by his outsized appetite), his musings on “Indian land” are also deeply poignant and insightful, especially given that his ancestor Cuthbert Peace was hanged on the Wolde farm.
Themes
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Billy incorporates the farm as a church, so the family no longer needs to worry about taxes. Every day, Marn’s mother bakes a cake, and Billy eats it. Billy and Marn have sex each night, but Marn feels embarrassed by Billy’s passion, which seems almost “supernatural.” Billy’s disciples are always on the farm now, praying or furiously cleaning. Billy still talks about Armageddon, but now he believes that his followers—whom he calls “the Daniels”—are the only ones who will survive it. Marn can no longer access her pictures at all, and she begins to feel afraid.
Now, it is impossible to ignore just how much Billy has begun to resemble a cult leader. He uses his outsized charisma to seize land and other assets, he controls his followers with a mix of spiritual doctrine and fear, and he accords himself special privileges (namely sex and food). Marn’s loss of self to Billy’s cult shows up in the fact that Marn has lost her ability to make “pictures,” as her own visions are subsumed into her husband’s.
Themes
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Towards the end of the summer, Billy is preaching on the family’s iron bench when Marn notices thunderclouds overhead. Warren sees the clouds too, and his eyes sharpen. Suddenly, lightning strikes Billy, and for a moment it seems he is dead. But instead, Billy gets back on his feet, “swollen with unearthly power.” Marn vows to her mother to “stop” Billy, but her mother just sighs: “no one’s ever going to stop him.”
Billy’s ability to survive such a dead-on lightning strike is almost impossible, scientifically speaking. Readers must then question whether Billy really does derive powers from his belief in “spirit” (as Marn’s mother seems to suggest), or whether Marn herself is an unreliable narrator, unwittingly distorting her anecdotes as she becomes more enamored and more afraid of her husband.
Themes
