In the film version, little survives of this part of the characterization past a murmured proverb or two and the fact that Krause keeps an image of Christ in his cabin, framed by the reminder that Jesus remains the same, “yesterday, today, and forever.” And that image serves primarily to remind Hanks’ officer of the woman he wants to marry… who in the novel finds Krause’s prayers a source of amusement and leaves him for a lawyer. I stopped counting after a dozen such references, not even half the way into the book. ![]() Writing signals to other ships, he takes advice from both Ecclesiastes 5 (“Let thy words be few”) and Psalm 55 (“The words of his mouth were smoother than butter, but war was in his heart”). So the unseen U-boats are a “pestilence that walketh in darkness” (Ps 91:6) and watching a distant ship in the convoy reminds him to “Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Pet 5:8). Virtually every experience conjures some memorized scripture from Krause’s memory. While not as exciting as that author’s Horatio Hornblower tales or as immersive as Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series, The Good Shepherd is the first naval history novel I’ve read that seems interested in what it means for a follower of the Prince of Peace to risk and cause death in a righteous cause, to live always amid the ending of life - having to decide which lives are worth more than others.įorester’s Commander Krause (George, not Ernie, in command of the Keeling, not the Greyhound ) not only prays to “the gentle Christ child” he first learned about from his long-dead mother, but is a Lutheran pastor’s son who knows the Bible so well that its “texts bobbed up in his mind as he tried to think. A middle-aged officer finally commanding a ship at war for the first time, Commander Ernest Krause not only prays shortened versions of Martin Luther’s morning and evening prayers at the start and end of the film, but murmurs a table grace before every invariably interrupted meal.Īnd those few religious allusions are nothing compared to the source material for Greyhound : a 1955 novel by C. (More on that before we’re done…) But Hanks does add a few intriguing brushstrokes to the portrait of his protagonist. ![]() Starring and written by Tom Hanks, Greyhound is so economical that it tells its straightforward story in just over 80 minutes, which leaves little time for character development.
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