Comic aspects

The Trials of Brother Jero is a light satiric comedy that takes aim at religious hypocrisy in the form of a charlatan, or fraud,: his name is Brother Jero. In the first chapter, the satirical humor can be seen. Jero laments that prophethood is no longer as respectable as it had been in the past; he explains that a struggle among competitors for land on the beach degraded the profession until the Town Council stepped in to "settle the prophets' territorial warfare once and for all." We learn that Jero helped his master, the prophet who educated him, win land through a campaign of "six dancing girls from the French territory, all dressed as Jehovah's Witnesses."