Editing Cloudsplitter (section)

==Major themes==
{{Unreferenced section|date=September 2021}}
Banks raises a number of thematic questions during the lengthy portrayal of his subject matter. Notable among them are:
*How emotional attachment and hermetic exile provide for an [[unreliable narrator|unreliable narration]].
*The moral consequences of [[Radicalization|radicalism]]: violent vs. [[Satyagraha|non-violent protest]].
*The fine line between [[sanity]] and [[religion|religious]] [[fanaticism]]: "the Lord speaks to me."
*How strong familial attachment is itself a form of [[slavery]].
*Loss of innocence.
*Your actions affect those around you (John Brown with his family and friends).

The narrative style employed by Banks is [[introspection|introspective]] and [[apologetics|apologetic]] where each character's moral compass is seen as through the microscope of Owen Brown's telling; detailed and larger than life. Bank's prose uses language that registers on the [[Psyche (psychology)|psyche]]: evoking the conviction that redemption can be gained by an [[Augustine of Hippo|Augustinian]] [[Confession (religion)|confession]].{{Citation needed|date=March 2020}}  And yet the reader is goaded into sympathy with these characters by their sheer persistence in the face of seemingly insurmountable daily travails - evoking the innocence of a new-born country.