61 pages • 2 hours read
The Testament
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Themes
Reciprocity in Social and Family Networks
Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses alcoholism, sexual harassment, suicide, and racism against Indigenous people.
A central preoccupation of The Testament is the concept of reciprocity in social and family networks. In particular, the novel portrays the dynamics of social relationships: Care shown to others creates a positive cycle of reciprocal care, as harm to others reverberates back on the harmer.
The novel launches with a father’s act of cruelty. The cruel act is not that he does not leave his entire fortune to his children. His cruelty is seeking to deceive his children and lure them into deeper trouble. The holographic will that he prepares promises to pay the debts that his children have incurred up to that moment, revokes the gift if they contest his will, and compels his lawyer to keep the will’s contents secret for one month from the date of his death. All this is done after he has ensured that his children believe that they will be inheriting his fortune. His intention with these maneuvers is to inflict suffering. They in turn contest his will, going to whatever lengths are necessary because they have nothing positive to associate with their father. Being so preoccupied with accessing their father’s money prevents them from being able to care for and look after each other. They fail to see themselves as part of a larger familial whole. From the outset, harm is reciprocated by more harm.
Nate’s addictions have likewise ruptured his family bonds: His relationships with his children and ex-wives are nonexistent. Part of his arc across the novel is learning how to become part of a social and familial network. As a litigator, he belonged to a community of lawyers, but the job burned him out, driving him toward drug and alcohol addiction. Josh looks after him to a degree: He helps him with his troubles with the IRS, arranges for him to take a trip away from the job, and gives him a place to stay when he returns to the US.
The most transformative experience that Nate undergoes is his journey to find Rachel because he learns the importance of social reciprocity. Through this trip, the novel depicts the communities of the Corumbá and Pantanal taking care of and protecting their own. For the time that Nate is within these communities, he too becomes the beneficiary of their care. When Jevy notices that Nate has an addiction to alcohol, he steers him away from it. When Nate drinks, Jevy helps him to sober up. Nate’s experience with Rachel eventually has the biggest impact on him, because of both her commitment to the Ipicas and her attention to his needs. Her care for him inspires him to care for both her and others. He develops a friendship with Father Phil, assisting him with his renovation project. He strives to repair his relationship with his children, and he ends the novel as the trustee of Rachel’s trust.
Can Tradition and Change Be Reconciled?
A central theme in the novel is the degree to which tradition and change can be reconciled. At the one extreme are the Indigenous people of Brazil, portrayed through the Guató and fictional Ipicas, who maintain traditions that are thousands of years old. At the other extreme are the corporations and governmental powers for whom “progress” has become reflexive and unreflective, resulting in indiscriminate destruction of cultures and the environment. While the novel highlights the destructive effects of this so-called “progress,” it also suggests that the complete absence of change can also lead to harmful outcomes.
The novel’s depictions of various communities show the value of upholding traditions: They forge bonds between people across time, fostering cultural cohesion. This in turn teaches people to think not only of what benefits them but also of participating in something larger than themselves. The novel exemplifies this through the bonds portrayed among people living in and around the Pantanal. Ruiz returned to Corumbá to care for his parents. Jevy follows in his father’s footsteps, benefiting from the knowledge that his father acquired. Marco provides support to Jevy, Nate, and Milton after their plane crash. Fernando provides crucial information about Rachel and Welly, at different times. In contrast, Phelan’s children are untethered from cultural traditions. Unable to think beyond the moment, they become prey to dangers both internal (obsession with material things) and external (the lawyers who prey on them for their own gain) even as they themselves are the predators pursuing their father’s estate.
At the same time, the novel acknowledges that change can bring benefits. Refusing to make any concessions to change can leave people vulnerable. Ayesh dies from a snake bite that need not have been fatal if the necessary antivenin had been available. Rachel and Lako die from malaria that could be treated with access to antibiotics. Both of these medicines must be imported, which can only be done when Rachel’s mission is able to provide them.
Further complicating the tension between tradition and change is the way cultures claiming to be progressive exploit and destroy Brazil’s land and Indigenous people. As explained in Chapter 22, cooperating with colonizers, or any outsiders, rendered Indigenous people vulnerable to fatal diseases. Not cooperating with them subjected them to slaughter, but attempting to defend themselves branded them as “savages” (210). To protect themselves, the people in the novel suggest that their only option is complete isolation from the outside world, which can prevent beneficial change.
The novel does not attempt to resolve this tension but suggests that there are no easy answers, only questions that are continually revisited.
Interconnection of Existential and Physical Dangers
In its meditation on the question of what makes life worth living, The Testament explores the interconnection of existential and physical dangers. The three characters who drive the plot—Phelan, Nate, and Rachel—experience both kinds of danger to varying degrees.
Phelan’s obsession with his fortune has isolated him from everyone around him. He has pursued financial success, which enabled him to indulge his every material and physical desire, but none of his relationships have substance. They are transactional or exploitative. Snead might have been loyal to him, but Phelan mistrusts his intentions, believing him to only want money. Phelan’s lawyers are loyal to him because they are paid to be. The narrator implies that the women in his life are either paid or taken advantage of: Rachel’s mother is described as young and naive when she becomes pregnant with Phelan’s child, and the narrative also alludes to sexual-harassment allegations against Phelan. Attempts that Phelan seems to have made for spiritual meaning, suggested by his study of Zoroaster, have not succeeded in providing him with an existential purpose, reinforced by his death.
As his foil, Nate begins the novel like Phelan, but at an earlier stage, when it is still possible to change direction. Nate has achieved success at his career and can afford the luxury of a $1,000-a-day rehabilitation center. However, once he is out of that environment, it becomes clear that there have been no substantive changes in his life. The quest to find Rachel provides an existential purpose that keeps Nate focused. By bringing him to the Pantanal, that existential quest puts him in physical danger of another sort: the plane crash and the dangers of navigating the Pantanal, with unpredictable storms and encounters with potentially deadly predators. After he finds her, he worries about returning to his former detached and destructive behaviors, but their encounter transforms him, putting him on a path toward meaning. Rachel has made her Christian mission the center of her life, to the point that she embraces whatever physical danger this puts her in. She seeks neither to minimize nor to increase the risks but simply accepts them as they are. Nate is not drawn to live as she lives, but he takes an example from her more broadly. He understands that he needs to have an existential purpose that is larger than material desires and that this can help him recover and sustain meaningful relationships.
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