Out of Africa Religion Quotes

The narrator compares the African heavens to a cathedral, as though they were one of those great works of art that take many, many generations to complete. When she says that they're "companionable" in comparison to the Protestant churches, she means that often cathedrals are open all the time for anyone to come wandering in to look, not just for scheduled services ("business").

For the narrator, the ability to create legends, or dogmas, is something that has been lost along with industrial and technological advances. Europeans depend on the "supplies" of their past, by which she means old religions. Instead of creating new myths or belief systems, they stick with the old ones. The Africans, though, according to Baroness Blixen, are constantly creating myths, even today.

It seems kind of strange that the Baroness would quote the Koran to explain her decision to treat the poor parents of Wamai as though they were anybody else. After all, she's Catholic and the Kikuyu are not Muslim. But it seems that religion is interesting to her, and she is willing to apply belief systems from all over the world as she tries to make wise choices.

The "white-robed figures" are first compared in a metaphor to a "swarm", which is usually a fairly sinister thing—bees and wasps and sharks come in swarms. Well, maybe not sharks, but you get the picture. Swarms are nightmare food. Then a simile to compare them to birds and angels, which gets a little bit closer to the heavenly realm. This "It will have been" is kind of a way of making a supposition, tongue in cheek, about the purpose of the large group of priests.

The Somalis who live on the farm are Muslims, and the Baroness gets a lesson on their beliefs about marriage, which she kindly passes along to us. Apparently women are supposed to marry up (onward and upwards!) and the more closely related a woman is to the Prophet (that's Muhammad, the founder of Islam) the fewer choices she has for moving up in society, because everybody's beneath her.

When the Baroness sends Emmanuelson (who already has a pretty biblical name: Emmanuel is a symbolic name meaning "God is with us" and symbolizing the Lord's protection) out into the desert, she uses a religious metaphor to compare herself to a priest, and Emmanuelson to a goat that is being sacrificed. That tells us that she's pretty sure he's going to die. He survives, so maybe the Lord is protecting him.

Denys is a studied man, and one of his academic feats is memorizing huge chunks of the Bible. It's kind of interesting that, if he already has it memorized, he also has to carry it around. Maybe the sacred text works as a sort of good luck charm. Charming the Muslims, for example, by showing off his religiosity, might have been one of its powers.

The articles of faith in the Christian church is also called the Apostle's Creed, and refers to the agreed-upon beliefs of church members. This second one, which lists all the trials of Jesus Christ (that's who "He" is) helps the Baroness when she's in dark times because, at the end, when she is wondering what the point of it all is, she believes that there is a story behind it all.

The death of the Chief of the Kikuyus leaves a power vacuum, which forces the churches to show their hands. They're interested in souls, but also power, so they each start backing a representative among the Chief's sons as his successor. Of course, the Kikuyus, too, are conscious of religion and prefer a non-Christian successor.

The site where Denys is buried, which he himself chose, has special meaning for the Baroness, because it is on her farm and is a place where she spent lots of time with her dear friend. Of course, it isn't a specially-designated cemetery, so the Bishop can't perform a proper funeral there according to Church rules. There's tension between what is personally sacred and officially sacred.