Customer Reviews

The Call

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"...Yes, there on the embankment outside the compound I had a small boy feeling. Chores were over. Only now, aged 65, do I realize how sweet the chores had always been. Inside the barn, inside the compound wall, I had been free -- busy, orderly, useful. Released, I felt at loose ends. A great deal had happened to me in Yin Xin camp, and now all I could feel was a paradox: the loss of the freedom of confinement." p.698

When I first picked up The Call, I fully expected a well-crafted, rich historiography of China; a novel concentrating on the time period at the turn of the 19th century, through five decades of foreign influence & interaction that finally shaped the terms on which the Communist Revolution was founded. What I did not expect, and was pleasantly surprised to find, was the philosophical depth of Hersey's characters; they were vehicles of an evolution of human thought. Hersey explores both the spiritual and the applied philanthropy of Christianity. Spiritually, the main character David Treadup was a General of the Lord whose application was saving souls: an idyllic gift between humans. Hersey questioned the application, and uncovered its shallow areas. The dilemma of belief without evidence. In response, the character of Treadup tried to justify Christianity with evidence; he used science lectures as his conveyance. There was terrific interest on behalf of the Chinese. Treadup felt that by awakening the Chinese to the laws of science, he was awakening them the laws of the Lord. His fantastic success with the lectures brought on self-doubt. He questioned purpose. Was he a science professor or a missionary? Science ceased to be an acceptable role for him to wear if that wasn't what he was about... there was no connection between his lectures and spiritual redemption. He questioned what he was actually bringing the Chinese, science or religion,... but most importantly he questioned what he wanted to bring.

As the novel develops, Treadup gains experience and insight, he shifts his focus from science lectures to a literary campaign. With fantastic energy and zeal, he rolls up sleeves and takes on the task of teaching the peasantry to read and write. All over the countryside he sets up local schools. After the literary campaign Treadup introduces agricultural reform. He continues to answer the noble call, but by serving functional needs he is moving further, and further away from addressing spiritual ones. As he was with the science lectures, Treadup is again plagued with doubt. He is not saving souls, and in fact is questioning the legitimacy of his religious calling when so many greater needs stand out.

It is not until Treadup is a Japanese POW that he begins to answer the questions that have plagued him for years. In the prison camp he belongs to a group. The camp depends on him like it depends on all the individuals that make up the whole, the goal is survival. Treadup doesn't have to identify need, need has identified him. From his fellow prisoners he hears the Call, and realizes his original draw to Christianity was not religion, or saving souls, but being needed and employing his extraordinary ability to successfully meet that need.

I love this novel. It's a panorama of life in China as seen by an American missionary from 1906 until the 1950s. The author was the son of a China missionary and most of the events in the book are historical -- althought the main character, Treadup, is fictional -- a composite of sorts for all the missionaries in China. "The Call" achieves a feeling of absolute authenticity.

This is a long exhaustive book. The first hundred pages or so are devoted in Treadup's early life in upstate New York and the reader may be forgiven if he is impatient with the plodding pace. The story picks up when Treadup gets to China as it details his adventures, doubts, and misteps, all worked into the political and social framework of the time. Treadup's journeys -- both physical and spiritual -- are long and arduous and ultimately this is a sad book.

Missionaries are out of fashion these days, but their cause -- the spread of Western civilization -- is still alive. If he lived today, Treadup would not be a missionary, but rather an activist for Tibetan independence, a friend of Bono, a board member of Amnesty International, and a tireless crusader against gender inequality. Will today's secular "missionaries" succeed where Treadup failed?

I don't know of any other novel that probes more deeply and seriously into the life, times, and mind of a China missionary. We live intimately with Treadup and when his life is over, we wonder, as he did, whether it was all worth it.

This long novel (700 pages) is a fictional biography of a missionary in China. David Treadup is a composite fictional character based on six actual missionaries to China (one of them being Hersey's own father). Told like a real biography and including mainly diary entries, but also comprising excerpts from letters, newspapers, staff minutes, and other biographical tools, Hersey traces the life of his main character from troubled days at Syracuse University (he almost flunks out until given a second chance after which he changes his major to science, which becomes very useful to him in China), to his Call to the ministry after a revival meeting, to his experiences in China. The book is not only an excellent account of Treadup's life in a strange land whose people he comes to love, but also a history of China itself during the first half of the twentieth century. It's easy to get so wrapped up in Treadup's life and experiences that you forget you're reading a novel (it's one of the few novels I've read that has a "Notes" section appended to it). Hersey's use of diary entries makes for an excellent approach: we experience Treadup's personal responses to things more directly and honestly that way. The book is both powerful and inspiring, and is definitely worth checking out.