There is probably no better way to convey the themes of God's Grace than to yield the floor to the author himself. Towards the end of the novel, before the evil strikes and reduces the community to a group of snarling and murdering beasts, Cohn sets up seven Admonitions in giant letters on the face of a mountain. These quasi-Mosaic edicts enshrine all that the last surviving human sees as the guiding principles for a just and civilized chimpanzee society. Like the Christian admonitions against the seven deadly sins, they are a distillate of Malamud's diemes and a symbol of the dual nature of Cohn's effort. Clearly the very fact of posting the laws indicates both the noble design for the new civilization and the necessity of re-directing its subjects onto the path of virtue.
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