Gilead: Pages 155-160 Summary & Analysis

John is having trouble sleeping and praying, so he believes it’s time to tell his son what the issue is. If he later decides he’s said something untrue, then he can just destroy the pages. He begins by saying that God’s grace is sufficient for any transgression, and that it’s wrong to judge.

John adds that he has certain bonds with John Ames Boughton, his dearest friend’s beloved child, whom Boughton essentially gave to John as a consolation for his own childlessness. John even baptized Jack himself. Because of all this, it pains him to speak against Jack. And yet there’s a sense in which it’s only right to speak truthfully about people.

The basics are easily summed up: when Jack was in college, he had a relationship with a young girl, and they had a child together. Every clergyman has had to deal with situations like this, and it always works out in one way or another. However, in this case, there were “aggravating circumstances.” For one thing, the young girl was quite young, and her family was extremely poor. John doesn’t even know how Jack became involved with her. John says it’s something that “no honorable man would have done.” From his years as a pastor, John believes that dishonorable people never really change their ways, and he cannot help such people. But he acknowledges that he might be wrong about this.

Jack didn’t acknowledge the child as his or do anything to provide for the child. He told his father about it, and to John this always seemed cruel—Jack would have known that this grandchild would weigh on Boughton’s mind. One day, Glory even drove Boughton to the child’s home, but the family were hostile toward him. Mrs. Boughton went to hold the baby, too, which John thinks was unwise. They brought money and supplies for their granddaughter for years, but nothing really seemed to help—the little girl didn’t thrive.

Once Glory took John to see the little girl, too, and John found the situation horrifying—there was trash strewn everywhere, and the baby was dirty. He couldn’t understand how Jack could have taken advantage of the young girl and then abandoned her and the baby. Jack made it clear that he had no intention of marrying her, and the family had no interest in placing the baby in a healthier environment. Glory sent Jack pictures of his child, but he never mentioned her or acknowledged the pain he’d caused his family.

The little girl lived about three years until she cut her foot and died of the infection. Her family allowed the Boughtons to bury the little girl in their family plot; the grave is simply marked Baby, since her mother hadn’t settled on a name. The grave also has a Bible verse on it: “Their angels in Heaven always see the face of My Father in Heaven.”

Everyone, including John, was filled with regret afterward. John supposes maybe it would have been right, as Glory once suggested, to kidnap the baby, even if it meant some of them wound up in jail. Glory sometimes lamented that they didn’t manage to keep the baby for just one week. John understands how she feels, but he wonders what difference that would have made ultimately. He wonders the same thing about “that other child of mine.”

John says this is all he needs to tell his son about Jack Boughton. Jack’s family loved the baby because they loved Jack so much; she looked just like her father. And now Jack is mysteriously back home, and his family is acting like everything is fine. John knows that 20 years is a long time, but he thinks that Jack “doesn’t have the look of a man who has made good use of himself.”