The Meaning Of Logos In Yaa Gyasi's Transcendent Kingdom

Yaa Gyasi’s novel Transcendent Kingdom explores the complexities of identity, faith, and mental health through the lens of the concept of “logos.” The Greek term logos can have two separate meanings — logic and reasoning or the word of God. These different meanings tie into the novel, revealing insights into the characters’ lives and their complex relationships with the world around them. Through the multifaceted meanings of “logos,” Transcendent Kingdom illustrates how religion and science can coexist as both raise more questions than they can answer. The concept of logos, in the religious sense, changes Gifty’s approach to understanding the world. As Gifty begins to adopt science over religion, the words in the Bible represent her journey

Logos challenges the idea that science and faith are incompatible, allowing Gifty to explore the possibility of integrating her scientific knowledge with her religious upbringing. Both the religious and scientific communities attempt to answer big questions, but both fail to answer all the questions they raise. As a child, Gifty approached religion the same way she approached her studies. She wanted to be good, and she “wanted the path to that goodness to be clear… which is why [she] excelled at math and science, where the rules are laid out” (Gyasi 46). As a child, she approached religion in a scientific manner; as an adult, she approaches science with a religious lens. In both cases, Gifty seeks certainty which either cannot give. As she matures, she realizes that certainty is not possible, and she must accept that her questions will remain unanswered. The novel illustrates that religion and science are alike in that they do not provide definitive answers but explore the complexities and ambiguities that arise when navigating the realms of reason and

Gift’s story demonstrates that people have little control over their behavior, and sometimes it takes an outside force rather than self-restraint to change one’s behavior. As she experiments on the mice, she asks herself “what’s the point of all this? … [W]hat if the answer is… ‘Nothing?’” (Gyasi 96). Her answer of “nothing” indicates a loss of faith, but her continuing research suggests that she still has hope that she will find answers. Since science and religion cannot fully answer this question and other questions about Nana, Gifty realizes that it is important for her to seek out these answers for herself. Through this belief in herself, she discovers that she can stop someone from addiction by modifying the neural pathways that expect reward. Although the mice, or moreover logos, will never be able to answer all the questions she has or change the past, her optogenetics research is a sort of rebirth for Nana which is sufficient for