Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Gilead, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Life, Death, and Beauty
Christian Faith, Mystery, and Ministry
Memory, Vision, and Conviction
Estrangement and Reconciliation
Loneliness and Love
Summary
Analysis
John woke up this morning feeling refreshed. He visits a widow who’s just moved to town; she is upset because the hot and cold water are coming from the wrong faucets, and she wants things to work the way they’re supposed to. So, John gets his tools and switches the handles for her until she can get a real plumber. He thinks ruefully about the duties of the clerical life. His wife gets a good laugh out of the story, though, so he figures it’s worth it.
The visit with the widow shows that small-town ministers often find themselves carrying out duties that they didn’t train for in their seminary classes. John takes all of this with good humor and doesn’t regard such things as a waste of his time, showing he really cares about the people in his church above all.
Themes
John reads The Trail of the Lonesome Pine for himself, and it “gave [him] a sort of turn” when the old man character fears that his young beloved will choose a man her own age instead. She eventually chooses the older man. He reflects that his wife couldn’t have encouraged him in any better way than by loving this book so that John read it, too.
Recall that The Trail of the Lonesome Pine is one of Lila’s favorite books. John previously said that he didn’t care for the book, but it seems that precent events prompt him to read it again—hinting that, whether he admits it to himself or not, he’s afraid that Lila might choose a younger man (perhaps Jack Boughton) over him. That Lila loves the book’s plot encourages John that she won’t leave him after all.
Themes
Sometimes John forgets why he is writing this—to teach his son the things he believes a father should. In writing of the Ten Commandments, he comments that the Tenth is “violated constantly.” He mentions his own longing for a family and a house full of children, a pang felt in one’s bones. He has always been better at “weeping with those who weep” than “[rejoicing] with those who rejoice.”
John drags himself away from thinking about Jack and focuses on addressing his son. The Tenth Commandment is “You shall not covet,” which John thinks is an especially difficult one to obey—including for him, during his lonely years. The Bible exhorts Christians to sympathize with one another (he cites Romans 12:15 here), but John admits it’s difficult for him to share in others’ joys when he’s aware of his own lack.
Themes
John also draws special attention to the Fifth Commandment, to honor one’s father and mother. He believes this commandment belongs to the “first tablet,” or those Commandments pertaining to proper worship. This is because worshiping rightly has to do with perceiving things—including people—the right way. John says that you can only fulfill an obligation to honor people in cases where there is mutual intimacy and understanding.
Traditionally, many interpreters distinguish between the “first tablet” of the Ten Commandments, which focus on one’s duties toward God, and the “second tablet,” which focuses on people’s duties toward one another. John is making a case that the commandment to honor one’s parents actually be grouped among the duties directed toward God. This is a subtle point, but basically, he means that in order to honor someone properly (whether one’s parents or even God), one must have genuine knowledge of them. As the book goes on, it’s worth asking whether this holds up in practice (like in John’s relationships with his father and grandfather).
Themes
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John’s overall point here is that most of us have someone in our lives to honor, whether a parent or a child. It is “godlike,” he says, to delight in someone else’s being, the way he and his wife delight in their son. In a way, the Fifth Commandment is necessary because parents are more of a mystery to their children than vice versa.
John draws parallels between his delight in his son’s existence and how he believes God delights in his children. His view of God as a loving heavenly Father is foundational for his view of human relationships, too.
Themes
John thinks of his wife’s “settled, habitual sadness” and the “sacred mystery” of sorrow that has struck him ever since he first saw her. There is dignity in sorrow, simply because that’s what God wants: he is always raising up the lowly. That doesn’t mean it’s right to inflict or to seek out suffering; he thinks it’s important to be clear about that. But he wants his son to remember that God is on the side of sufferers.
John finds that his wife, too, is mysterious because of what she’d been through (which is never revealed to the reader). John returns to the subject of suffering here, noting that God seeks out those who are suffering, even though that doesn’t mean suffering is inherently a good thing. But God’s care for the vulnerable is a key part of John’s outlook.
Themes
John admits that his wife never talks about herself or admits to having suffered. He tells his son to be respectful of that pride, and also to be very gentle; if someone shows that kind of courage, it means they’ve needed it. He has seen enough of human life to understand her, but he worries that others in the church don’t, and that they think she is a hard person.
It becomes a bit clearer why John has been talking about honoring parents and respecting the dignity of suffering. Right now, his son is much too young to understand any of this, but someday, John hopes he will be able to understand and respect where his mother is coming from. This is a lesson that many people don’t understand, and that John won’t be there to teach him.
Themes
John adds that among the instructions he is leaving behind for his wife, he wants her to know that over the years, he’s donated a substantial portion of his salary to other people, making up stories about anonymous donors. Assuming that he would never have a wife or child, he never gave it much thought. He’s also paid for upkeep at the church. He’s only telling his son this so that if and when his son receives help, he can think of it not as charity but as repayment—by the grace of God, receiving something back as if from John’s own hand.
John has been very generous to people over the years, in a characteristically low-key, unassuming way. Now that he’s unexpectedly had a family, his lack of savings will put them in a difficult position after he dies. Telling his son about this isn’t being boastful or apologetic—rather, John is suggesting that years from now, his son can feel connected to him through church members’ generosity.
Themes
But back to the Fifth Commandment—John says that the right worship of God is essential because it forms a person’s mind to a right understanding of God. That is, God is not to be understood as just “a thing among things”; God is set apart. Much as the Sabbath day is set apart, so mothers and fathers are set apart. And then the remaining commandments prohibit crimes against the sacred, set-apart things.
John returns to his theological discussion. In his view, it’s important to have a basic understanding of the God one worships (even though that understanding obviously can’t be exhaustive, since God is infinite and people are finite). Key to this is understanding that God is above everything else and must be honored accordingly. John suggests that the Commandments (like those regarding the Sabbath and parents) train people in the practice of setting certain things apart for special honor, and ultimately in setting God apart above all.
Themes
Father and Mother can be understood, then, in a universal sense. And the discipline of honoring other human beings is learned by honoring one’s mother and father, even when they’re difficult to honor, by keeping in mind their sacredness. In the case of John’s wife, he tells his son that if he keeps this in mind, he will see his mother as God sees her, which will teach him, in turn, about the nature of God and of Being itself.
John suggests that the practice of honoring one’s father and mother is a kind of fundamental lesson in honoring all people as having been made in God’s image. Learning to honor people as God made them also results in people honoring God as they should, in his view, and he commends this view to his son.
Themes
