Moon is an outsider and stranger from a strange American place who has found a home in a formerly colonized non-white area, like Denoon. The missionary family of the Quarriers and the anonymous narrator of Mating provide, by virtue of their recent entry into such societies, an outsider's view of such insider figures as Denoon and Moon.

In at Play in the Fields of the Lord, evangelical missionaries are attempting to spread their religion to the Indians, much as Denoon wished to spread the gospel of self-empowerment and chastity to the abused women of Tsau. But like Denoon's anthropological community, the missionary work and zeal of the missionaries proves be a mistaken example of artificial cultural tampering, and is destructive to both the missionaries and the Peru Indians' ways of life, just as Denoon's chaste utopia, however attractive to the narrator, is not really workable in reality.

Denoon's tampering is...
[ View Full Essay]