"Of Sons and Fathers" Gilead - Marilynne Robinson

One of the most endearing things about novels that span generations is the opportunity to visualize the era gone by – ambitions, ideologies, confrontations, ambiguity and (or within) religion. Marilynne Robinson’s Pulitzer prize winning novel Gilead (2004) is one such novel that effortlessly retains a sense of timelessness, through a style of narration that comes across as deeply contemplative.

Gilead is an epislatory, epistlery, epistolary (phew) novel, narrated in the form of a letter. The year is 1956. John Ames, an ailing third generation pastor, writes to his seven year old son - a son who, he acknowledges, will grow up not knowing him. In a tone that's confessional, affectionate but never overbearing, Ames recounts the lives of his passive father and his radical grandfather, his  sedentary life in the laid back fictional town of Gilead, his sensitivity to the Christian faith, his eventual marriage with a much younger woman and his tryst with his namesake and adversary John Ames (Jack) Boughton.

Of all the father-son relationships explored, the novel’s chief concern is the son who isn’t, Jack Boughton. Early on in the letter, Ames sounds very cautious in his introduction of the middle aged Boughton, the son of Ames’ neighbor and long time friend Old Boughton. We can sense a subtle suspense building up, the episode where he first refers to him as the prodigal son of the Boughton progeny, mentioning he’d narrate at a later point the story of the boy who was always up to no good.

“I have said at least once a week my whole adult life that there is an absolute disjunction between our Father's love and our deserving. Still, when I see this same disjunction between human parents and children, it always irritates me a little.”

There are tense moments in almost every father-son relationship mentioned in the novel, between Ames’ father and grandfather, Ames’ father and Ames’ atheist brother Edward, Old Boughton and Jack and ultimately Ames and Jack.  Ames recalls,

"Have I offended you in some way, Reverend?" my father would ask.

And his father would say, "No, Reverend, you have not offended me in any way at all. Not at all." And my mother would say, "Now, don't you two get started."

Ames finds himself in a similar state with Jack, when the two attempt to strike a conversation without heated arguments or any visible signs of rage. Ames takes polite, indirect jabs at Jack (in the form of a sermon), while the latter doesn’t hesitate to make a remark he sees no harm in (calling Ames’ wife uneducated at one point). The strife would end with Jack covering his face with his hands almost immediately in regret, a gesture that doesn’t go unnoticed.

John Ames Boughton was so named by his parents in an attempt to fill the void of the then childless John Ames, indirectly chaining the duo into a “disjunctive” relationship. It is this chain that tugs at Ames’ heart making it difficult for him to forgive Jack as he tries to see past his seduction of an unfortunate girl and the subsequent disavowal of their child, resulting in their untimely death decades ago. Ames wants to wean his wife away from the trouble maker, but his Christian mind thinks the better of it. He finally comes around and reconciles with Jack at the end of the novel, having learnt of his union with a coloured woman and his yearning to build a home for his wife and child.

John Ames Boughton is my son. If there is any truth at all in anything I believe, that is true also. By "my son" I mean another self, a more cherished self.

It is rather unfortunate when meditative novels (if I can take the liberty of calling them as such) are called out for the lack of “plot” and the accompanying trail of twists, blood and tears.  Gilead’s plot or the lack thereof allows the author to give an intimate portrayal of the finite characters in a limited setting. 

Ames never regrets having spent his entire life in Gilead. “There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, every one of them sufficient” he writes to his son.  

“…as I was walking up to the church. There was a young couple strolling along half a block ahead of me. The sun had come up brilliantly after a heavy rain, and the trees were glistening and very wet. On some impulse, plain exuberance, I suppose, the fellow jumped up and caught hold of a branch, and a storm of luminous water came pouring down on the two of them, and they laughed and took off running, the girl sweeping water off her hair and her dress as if she were a little bit disgusted, but she wasn't. It was a beautiful thing to see, like something from a myth.”

These lines might count as one of the “thousand thousand” savoured moments in the life of Reverend John Ames who, the day he was prompted to seek another dwelling, "felt homesick for a place he had never left".