The last days is a painful exposure to america at its worst and a gentle exposure to the movement of hope. Charles Marsh’s The Last Days is a coming-of-age story placed in the backdrop of the trials of Ku Klux Klan leader Sam Bowers in the late 1960’s.
In 1967, when Charles is eight, his family moves from Alabama to Laurel, Mississippi, where his father, Robert Marsh, takes the job as head pastor at the First Baptist Church. Optimistic yet content in his first months on the job, Robert Marsh eventually has to confront not only the racism in his congregation and the community around him, but within himself. He felt bad and knew “there was no justification for what we did to the Negro” (Marsh 44). In this moment lies the book’s greatest strength. Most of the history Marsh includes has been told at great length elsewhere. What makes this book special is that it does what traditional history cannot: it conveys a sense of what it must have been like to live through that confusing and terrifying moment.…show more content… The violence is centered around the Klan and they are the ones who deal it out. The dangers for Marsh are very real, not only from firebombs and cross-burnings, but from church elders, who sacked anti-segregation pastors in great numbers. these bombings from the Klan “a few years ago would scare us but now they just made us inspired to stop them. Marsh’s recurring conflict with himself is sin. Sin surrounds Marsh everyday whether it be sex alcohol or drugs, he always steered clear. Even though Marsh was not sexualy active, it was still on his mind: “ A jockstrap might even be donned as a protection against erections. They felt so good, they had to be sinful.” (Marsh