The Plague Of Doves

Throughout the novel, the author weaves a tapestry of the physical environment through the interconnectivity of its characters. All of the events that occur within the physical location are connected through the familial and sexual relationships between the characters. Antone reflects upon this interconnectivity when he speaks of Corwin Peace’s father, Wildstrand, whose own grandfather was Junesse’s father. “Nothing that happens, nothing, is not connected by blood” (115). Through the semi-divine character of Antone Coutts, the author connects all events that occur within this physical location as being inherently linked to blood, implying that the town itself exists within a kind of vacuum. Few external relationships within the location, nor any outsiders, seem to exist, or if they do, they are fairly short-lived. Rather, the people within this geographic location are stuck, both mired in the location itself and stuck to one another, unable to escape their futures as they are bound to the pain of the past.

The character of Corwin Peace most clearly demonstrates this inability to extricate oneself from the past. Corwin’s bad behavior as a youth is repeatedly attributed to the traumatic past of his bloodline: both his mother’s alcoholism and his father’s criminal activity. After Corwin steals Shamengwa’s guitar, Antone reflects on this tendency to link current bad deeds to a person’s troubled past.