Community

Question 1

Lantern Yard

Answer 1

• Non-conformist Christian community, enclosed and cut off, putting too much trust into God’s Divine Intervention and placing God before man
• “narrow religious sect” -pejorative adjective
• “the inherited delight he had in wandering the fields began to wear from him the character of a temptation” - Biblical implications - too pious - too strict
  Silas is ostracised by drawing of lots after William Dane accuses him of theft

Question 2

Raveloe

Answer 2

• An isolated but close-knit community, with distrust of outsiders
• “nutty hedgerows” “rich central plain” - natural abundance
• “a fine old church and large churchyard at the heart of it” - traditional and central Christian faith - Anglican
• “in a rollicking fashion, and keep a jolly Whitsun, Christmas, and easter tide” - traditional festivities - nostalgia for an England beginning to vanish in Eliot’s times
• “mysterious” “from an unknown region” - outsider

Question 3

Community

Answer 3

• Raveloe community comfort Silas after loss of gold
• Mr Tookey tries to get him a sunday suiit and go to church
• Dolly brings him word of God, children’s petticoats, encourages him to christen Eppie and go to Church
• LY becomes industrialised - Silas doesn’t recognise it - “what a dark ugly place” “how it hides the sky” “grim walls of the jail” “a great manufacturing town” “a sallow begrimed face looked out from the gloomy doorway at the strangers” - because it was too strict, no community spirit