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 found a couple of his sermons sitting on the night table and knows his wife put them there. One, dated June 1947, is about forgiveness. It refers to the story of the prodigal son and suggests that being forgiven is just half the gift—the other half is that we can forgive, too, by God’s grace. He still thinks this was a good sermon. He preached it when he was approaching 70, and his future wife was there.
Lila seems to be very perceptive about everything that’s on John’s mind lately, which is presumably why she’s leaving sermons on forgiveness sitting around where he can find them. If she remembers this sermon from several years ago, it obviously made an impression on her, and she hopes that John might take his own words to heart if he revisits it.
Themes
John’s future wife first attended church on Pentecost of that year, which was in May. There were festive candles burning, and John preached on the subject of light. He was 67 at the time. He wishes he could convey to his son how beautiful his mother was that day, hating to think that the memories will die with him; but “this life has its own mortal loveliness.”
Since light symbolizes God’s presence in the world, it’s fitting that light is a prominent memory from the day that Lila—whom John sees as God’s gift to himself—first visited John’s church. Lila is also an example of the kind of fleeting, fragile beauty that John loves about the world.
Themes
John remembers Glory taking him to visit Jack’s baby one day. The family lived on the other side of the West Nishnabotna River. When they arrived, they saw the baby and her mother playing in the river. After they dropped off some canned goods, the young girl ignored them, as usual. John understands—the family assumed that they were going to all this trouble to try to keep Jack out of trouble. John supposes there might have been an element of truth to that. He and Glory stood on the bridge and watched the mother and baby playing in the shallow, muddy river. John remembers the cicadas singing and the hush of the wind through the trees. Then he and Glory drove home. Glory said to John that she didn’t understand a single thing in the world.
Abruptly, thoughts of beauty put John’s thoughts on a different track: visiting Jack’s neglected little daughter. Despite poverty and neglect, the sight of the little girl playing with her young mother in a peaceful setting is strikingly beautiful. Both Glory and John seem to think that there’s something incongruous about the loveliness of the scene against such a tragic backstory—it doesn’t make sense, as Glory observes. Yet, as John notes throughout the novel, that’s true of so much of this world’s beauty—it’s all mixed up with sorrow.
Themes
John recalled this scene because “remembering and forgiving can be contrary things.” Jack Boughton didn’t hurt him directly, so it’s not his place to forgive him, anyway. Just because one man loses his child, and the next “[squanders] his fatherhood,” that doesn’t mean the second man has sinned against the first. John says he doesn’t forgive Jack—he wouldn’t even know where to start.
Given all that he knows and remembers, John struggles to let go of his anger about Jack’s youthful misdeeds. He understands that Jack didn’t actually do anything to him. But he also implies that he can’t help viewing Jack’s failed fatherhood in light of losing his own child in infancy. The fact that Jack had the chance to be a father and wasted it, while John barely got that chance at all, grieves him terribly.
Themes
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John is watching his son and Tobias playing in the yard. Eventually Jack Boughton appears with his baseball bat and glove. He watches the three of them playing in the yard for a while and eventually steps outside, knowing something must be on Jack’s mind. Jack asks John if he’ll be in his church study tomorrow and says he will stop by in the morning.
John isn’t the only one who’s been preoccupied about his relationship with Jack; it seems Jack has been thinking about it, too. At this point, it seems possible that Jack might be seeking some sort of reconciliation with John.
Themes
After this, John reflects that when he and his son are reunited in heaven someday, neither of them will be old; they’ll look like brothers. At least, he believes it will be something like that—he thinks Calvin is right to discourage speculation on this subject. John supposes that souls in heaven probably enjoy something similar to “perpetual vigorous adulthood.” He wouldn’t mind his wife being reunited with him as a young man, either. He knows the Bible says there won’t be marriage in heaven, it would certainly be nice if there were.
Whenever Jack plays with John’s son, it seems to remind John that he didn’t get to experience life as a young father himself. This thought leads him to ponder what life will be like in heaven. He can’t help wishing that in heaven, he might get another opportunity to enjoy marriage and fatherhood as they would have been if he were young and strong.
Themes
