As an orphaned child, Joe Christmas did not have a strong sense of who he was and knows nothing of his parents or background. He lives in a white orphanage, where the other children tease him and call him names. The matron decides to place him with a white family after she learns he coul

Joe Christmas’ life with his adoptive family helps to shape him into the man he would become. When Joe arrives at the McEachern house”he has never worked nor feared God. He knows less about God than about work.” (144) Mr. McEachern sets out to end Joe’s ignorance of God. Mr. McEachern’s “cold, implacable” and “not human voice” demands that Joe learn Presbyterian catechism. (149) Joe, despite his best efforts, did not learn his catechism and is beaten with a “neither new nor old” (148) harness strap. Joe begins to hate all formalized religion from this point on because he associates it with his beatings. Therefore Joe goes through life without any standard moral code that is established with some religious belief.

Joe Christmas never understands women. While living at the orphanage, Joe interrupts the dietitian and her lover. He was stealing her “sweet...sticky...pink surreptitious” toothpaste(120) and throws up while hiding in her curtains. The dieti asks Joe if he will tell on her

Some topics in this essay:
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