Mormon Material Culture
Krakauer orients the reader in the theological and cultural setting by invoking Mormon material culture, such as statues and garments. This imagery sometimes creates a feeling of positive familiarity; oat ther times, the descriptions create an atmosphere of foreboding.
For example, Krakauer describes the Hill Cumorah pageant in great detail. The costumes, set design, and location of the pageant inspire a sense of grandeur and awe. The summit of the Hill Cumorah, from which the pageant derives its name, is "adorned with an American flag and an imposing statue of the angel Moroni."
The ominous use of material culture is best demonstrated through Brian David Mitchell's psychological manipulation of fourteen-year-old Elizabeth Smart. Mitchell used familiar cultural and religious references to trick Elizabeth into accepting his authority. For example, the white robes he forced Elizabeth to wear "resembled the sacred robes she had donned with her family when they entered the Mormon temple." This imagery parallels how certain fundamentalists interpret the Mormon scriptures to exert control over their followers.
Death and Corpses
Death and corpses are common images throughout Under the Banner of Heaven, a story defined by violence. Krakauer uses gruesome, highly detailed descriptions of murdered and mutilated bodies to force the reader to confront the grim reality of religiously motivated violence.
This imagery is commonplace in both the Joseph Smith and the Lafferty storylines. After the grisly murders at Mountain Meadow, "wolves and other scavengers had unearthed the dead emigrants from the shallow graves and scattered their remains across the meadow."
In his interview, Dan Lafferty describes Erica and Brenda's corpses in graphic, disturbing terms.
The text also uses the image of death metaphorically to describe the places in which the FLDS settled. Krakauer quotes Wallace Stegner's Mormon Country, in which he remarks that in these settings, "the beauty is death... the world is dead and disintegrating before your eyes." This description evokes the fundamentalist's paradoxical relationship with death. The second coming of Christ, an event the FLDS optimistically look forward to, is defined by death and destruction.
Abandoned Satellite Dish
In Colorado City, the prophet Rulon Jeffs and his successors prohibited believers from watching television, as he claimed all outside media was a corrupting influence. However, many FLDS would hide contraband televisions until Rulon delivered impassioned sermons claiming he knew who was violating his rules. In response, the guilty parties would abandon the "wreckage of a television satellite dish behind some sagebrush off the side of the road." The image of the abandoned satellite dish visually embodies the tension between the insular world of the fundamentalist and the pull of modernity.
Natural Boundaries
Since the earliest times of the Mormon faith, believers have attempted to practice their beliefs freely outside the influence of the Gentile world by building their communities in areas protected by natural boundaries "that would help keep the godless at bay." Krakauer expresses the physical and ideological separation from the outside world through vivid descriptions of the physical landscape. For example, Colorado City, the infamous compound run by the Jeffs family, "materializes in the middle of nowhere: a sprawl of small businesses and unusually large homes squatting beneath a towering escarpment of vermilion sandstone called Canaan Mountain."
Short Creek is sheltered by "massive cliffs" that provide a "natural rock barrier to the north. To the east and west are the sweeping expanses of dry and almost barren plateaus before the forests begin. To the south there is the Grand Canyon." This vivid description captures the community's isolation and invites the reader to imagine the insurmountable task of escaping from the commune.
