A Comparison Between the Bible and The Stone Angel Essay

In addition to the similarities between the two Hagars, John and Marvin, Hagars sons, collimate Jacob and Esau, direct descendants of Abram and Sarah. In Hagars eyes, John is her Jacob. Hagar protects and favours John the same way that Rebekah favours Jacob. In the Bible, Isaac, a blind man, plans to bestow his final blessings upon Esau, his eldest son. Rebekah, having overheard Isaacs intentions, instructs Jacob to take Esaus place and to slang his brothers blessings.As such, Jacob is blessed by Isaac and flees into the wilderness upon his mothers instruction out of apprehension of Esau. Similarly, John flees from his family and into his own wilderness, Manawaka. In Manawaka John tends to his dying father, Bram, and receives Brams blessing onward his death. Marvin never receives Brams blessing, even though they were close when Marvin was a child. John, in essence, takes Marvins place. More important, however, in this comparison is the relationship each boy shares with Hagar.Ha gar, having always been inclined to love John more, wants John to be her Jacob and to want and to receive her blessing. She says, I wish he could have looked like Jacob then, wrestling with the angel and besting it (Laurence 179), as John struggles to lift the stone angel tombstone for Hagar. John dies before Hagar receives a chance to bestow her blessings upon him. It is only in dying that Hagar realizes, through Marvins kindness, that Marvin is her Jacob. He is the son that loves and cares for her more than anything else.Hagar states, Now it seems to me he (Marvin) is truly Jacob, engrossing with all his strength, and bargaining. I will not let thee go, except thou bless me. And I see I am thus strangely cast, and perhaps have been so from the beginning and can only release myself by releasing him (Laurence 304). He will not let Hagar go gentle into that respectable night(Thomas, prologue). Marvin finally receives Hagars blessings, the blessings that John had, for so long, unde servingly taken.