Gilead

Gilead

Ostensibly, Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead is a written account of the Reverend John Ames to his son, giving his young son a sense of who his father is/was. As he is writing his testament, Ames consistently notes his advanced age and heart condition that will not allow him to see his son grow into a man.

What the novel seems to be about, though, is the problem of fathers and sons. Through retelling the misadventures of his grandfather, the more straightforward life of his father, and his own life as a preacher in the small town of Gilead, Iowa, the novel points to how these individuals are unable to understand each other.

His grandfather is a man of extreme conviction who chooses to live by his principles, from going off to minister in the Civil War—causing him to lose an eye—to giving away everything to those less fortunate than his family, including the sheets drying on the lines in the backyard. 

Such behaviors, though, run counter to the sense of family that his son (Ames’ father) holds to be the most important aspect of life. He stays when his father leaves, becoming the man of the family and taking over the responsibilities of ministering to the congregation.

And when it is his time, the narrator of the novel tells us that he takes his role as the leader of a congregation in Gilead. But he does not have the pull to moral certainty of his grandfather, and he is not so enamored with his family like his father, but he finds himself indebted to the town itself. It is the identify he hearkens back to most, and it is the choice he makes when his own father attempts to force him away to be with his family. 

Furthering this motif of sons and father is the lifelong friend of Rev. Ames, the Presbyterian minister Rev. Boughton and his son John Ames Boughton (better known as Jack). Here are two men who love each other, and yet, they cannot speak to each other in honest terms. And despite the fact that Jack is a disappointment in many respects, the Rev. Boughton loves him the most. 

This novel of fathers and sons serves to instruct the young Ames (who we imagine one day will read this account) on how difficult it is to live in a world of fathers and sons, highlighting what he lost but also the freedom he gains without the overwhelming sense of disappointing his own father.