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 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 gets ready to tell his son what’s been tormenting him regarding Jack. His preface suggests that it involves some sort of wrongdoing on Jack’s part.
Themes
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.
Boughton intended for John and Jack to share a special bond ever since Jack’s birth, hence naming Jack after John and honoring John by letting him baptize Jack (something Boughton would normally do for his child himself). But John holds that honesty is more important than bare loyalty.
Themes
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.
All along, the novel has hinted that Jack has a troubled past, and the extent of that trouble is finally revealed here. John explains that all ministers have to deal with situations where children are born out of wedlock, but this one presented some special challenges. He doesn’t say how young Jack’s lover was, but it’s implied that there was a disturbingly big gap between their ages—she was probably underage. John’s disgust with Jack’s actions is evident, and this gives more context to their recent discussion about whether people can truly change. John seems to believe that Jack is one of those people who are basically so corrupt that they can’t change.
Themes
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.
Jack was inexplicably callous toward the child he fathered; meanwhile, the rest of the Boughton family fretted over her, constrained in what they could do to make her situation better.
Themes
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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.
Jack’s daughter was stuck in a fairly hopeless situation, her family unwilling to change her impoverished environment and the Boughtons unable to alleviate it in any significant way. Given Jack’s apparent indifference to his daughter, it becomes clearer why John harbors such a grudge against his namesake.
Themes
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.”
Recall that this is the same Bible verse that appears on John’s infant daughter Rebecca’s grave, speaking of God’s love for the most vulnerable and helpless. It’s easy to see how the nameless little girl’s tragic death would remind John of his own child.
Themes
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.”
The rest of the Boughton family is left in anguish, wondering what they might have done differently that could have potentially spared the little girl’s life. For his part, John knows that even the kindest intentions don’t always work out, and that senseless tragedies still happen—like the loss of his own child.
Themes
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.”
Jack’s family seems to have put the whole tragedy, and Jack’s culpable behavior, behind them. But John hasn’t let go, and that’s apparent in his current perception of Jack—that, given his past, he’s basically good for nothing.
Themes
