Conflict between Faith in Religious and Science in Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

Abstract

Yaa Gyasi begins Transcendent Kingdom with two quotes: “The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil,” by Gerard Manley Hopkin and “Nothing comes into the universe and nothing leaves it,” by Sharon Olds. These quotes embody the central struggle of the novel: that core dissonance between the urge to find solace in science vs. the urge to find solace in religion.

Gifty, a sixth-year PhD candidate in neuroscience at Stanford, studies reward-seeking behavior in mice and searches for the root causes of mental illnesses such as addiction and depression. She’s immersed in her career, practically existing as a phantom when she’s not floating from lab to sparsely decorated apartment back to lab.

Meanwhile, she struggles with her former faith, battling with the ghost of her childhood self-immortalized in diary entries addressed to God. Young Gifty was devout. Young Gifty was fascinated by prayer and purity. Young Gifty wanted salvation with a special kind of innocent desperation that only a child can have. However, she turned away from religion for a reason and Gyasi’s own experience and perspective comes into play when she makes a point to emphasize the effects of Gifty’s upbringing in a predominantly white Alabama church.