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
This might seem trivial, but John doesn’t believe it is. He and his childhood friends were very religious children from religious families in a religious town, which shaped their behavior quite a bit. One day, they baptized a litter of skinny barn cats. One of the girls dressed the cats in a doll’s dress, and John applied the water to the cats’ heads and pronounced the baptismal formula. Eventually, the mother cat found them all by the creek and carried the kittens off one by one. The children lost track of which cats were still unbaptized and fretted about this.
John’s thoughts continue to follow a stream-of-consciousness path, as reflecting on Lila’s baptism leads him to a formative childhood experience. He suggests that he and his friends grew up in a more religious context than is common in his son’s day, which helps explain their imaginative play. The scenario—baptizing kittens—is obviously a funny one. But the fact that the children took it seriously suggests that they believed practices like baptism conveyed something real, even on cats.
Themes
Later, John casually asked his father what would happen if you baptized a cat. His father replied that the Sacraments must always be treated with the greatest respect, which didn’t really answer John’s question, but he got the message. He stopped baptizing until he got ordained.
John’s Protestant beliefs include two sacraments: baptism (initiation into the church) and the Lord’s Supper, which will come up later. John’s father (also a minister) warns John that these are sacred practices, not something to play with.
Themes
Louisa took one of those cats home, and she still had it when she and John got married. It eventually disappeared, probably caught stealing rabbits, even though it was a Christian cat. A Baptist friend quipped that it should’ve been named Sprinkle. (He believed in baptism by full immersion, and the cats should have been grateful that John didn’t.) John still remembers what it felt like to place his hands on those cats’ heads. Blessing a creature is different from simply petting it, and it stays in one’s mind. To this day, John wonders what blessing those “baptisms” really conferred on the cats—there’s a power in acknowledging the sacredness of something. He doesn’t expect that his son will go into the ministry someday, but he’s simply pointing out that the vocation has some distinctive advantages.
Even though baptizing the cats was an irreverent thing to do, John looks back on the memory with humor, joking that a baptized cat should have been too holy to kill rabbits, and counting the cats lucky that he didn’t baptize them with a full Baptist dunking. But, more seriously, the pretend baptisms taught John something that has stayed with him since he became a minister: that there’s a unique power in blessing any creature, whether it’s a human being or a cat. He implies that all creatures, because they’re made by God, are inherently sacred, and that the act of baptism simply affirms that sacredness.
Themes
Ludwig Feuerbach had some wonderful remarks about baptism, particularly the fittingness of water—a naturally pure and spotless substance—as a vehicle of the Holy Spirit. Even though Feuerbach was an atheist, he has some of the best things to say about religion’s joyful aspects, and he loves the world, too. Of course, he makes the significant error of thinking that it’s possible to have pure joy without any religion at all.
John names Feuerbach, a 19th-century German philosopher, as an important influence on his faith. Interestingly, Feuerbach wasn’t even a Christian, but John thinks Feuerbach still had valuable insights into Christian theology, and he identifies with the philosopher’s love of this world. At the same time, John departs from Feuerbach in that he believes religion is essential to real joy—presumably because John believes that God is the source of joy.
Themes
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Boughton doesn’t care for Feuerbach because he shook many people’s faith, but John figures the fault lies as much with those people as with Feuerbach—“some people just go around looking to get their faith unsettled.” That’s been especially fashionable over the past century or so. Once, John’s brother Edward gave him a book called The Essence of Christianity in an attempt to shock him out of his naïve faith; he believed he was doing John a favor. John always looked up to Edward. Still, he ended up living out the very sort of life Edward had warned him against, and he’s pretty happy with it overall.
John thinks that if someone is grounded in their beliefs, reading dissenting viewpoints shouldn’t pose a threat. In other words, if someone is shaken by reading Feuerbach, it probably means they already had doubts about what they believe. John sees this as the real problem with fashionable skeptics: they were insecure to begin with. At one point, John’s brother Edward gave him one of Feuerbach’s most famous books to try to undermine his faith. It didn’t work, John implies, because John was secure in what he believed.
Themes
Edward, 10 years John’s senior, studied at Göttingen. John didn’t really know him as a child. There had also been two sisters and a brother who died of diphtheria within two months, and Edward had known them while John didn’t. John was always aware that he had missed out on the life his other siblings shared. After Edward returned from Europe with a mustache and a doctorate, having published a monograph on Feuerbach, everyone was in awe of him. But he also came back as an atheist, so he didn’t become a preacher as everyone had expected. Instead he became a professor of German literature and philosophy and raised a big family. Though John rarely saw him, Edward sent a check to the church each year to repay the congregation for their support for his education. John knew he was a good man.
Earlier, John referred to the fact that he was like his mother’s only child. It turns out that he came from a much larger family, but most of the siblings died, and there was a big gap between John and Edward. In fact, Edward was the Ames brother who everyone thought was destined to follow in their father’s footsteps as a minister. Even though Edward defied these expectations by rejecting Christianity, he showed integrity by paying back those who invested in his education. John admires his brother for this and doesn’t seem to hold a grudge against him for his departure from the Ames legacy.
Themes
One day, Edward and their father had a confrontation at the dinner table. Their father asked Edward to say grace, but Edward explained that he couldn’t do this in good conscience. Turning pale, their father said that Edward could show some respect for their family traditions. Edward replied that he has now “put away childish things,” prompting his father to leave the table and his mother to weep silently. Later, John walked Edward to the hotel. At the time, his parents must have thought that John would end up following in Edward’s footsteps and becoming another grief to them.
Between Edward and his father, things were different. Their father took Edward’s refusal to say grace as a personal insult instead of an act of conscience. Granted, Edward’s response does seem pointedly offensive: he quotes a Bible verse that says, “When I was a child, I spoke as a child […] but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” In other words, Edward calls his parents’ faith childish, something he’s outgrown.
Themes
John will be sure to set aside the Feuerbach among the books he’s keeping for his son. When he was young, he read it in secret because it was associated with Edward’s atheism; but he doesn’t believe there is anything harmful in it. He has made some marginal notes which his son might find useful.
John concludes this memory by making it clear that he hopes his son will read Feuerbach someday, too. This suggests that he’s not worried that exploring other points of view will hurt his son, and that in fact it will be a way for his son to feel closer to John after he’s gone.
Themes
Thinking of Feuerbach and joy reminds John of something else. He remembers walking to the church a few years ago, seeing a young couple strolling ahead of him. He remembers the young man jumping up and grabbing a branch, sending glistening raindrops showering onto him and the woman, and they laughed and ran. John found the scene beautiful. In a moment like that, it was easy to believe that water’s main purpose is for blessing. Nowadays he wishes he’d paid more attention to such things.
John’s memory of the young couple getting sprinkled with raindrops is associated with baptism in his mind. The memory—a spontaneous expression of delight in human relationship and in nature—is also an illustration of the kind of joy that John finds in his Christian faith. He implies that if one pays attention, such examples of joy can be seen almost anywhere.
Themes
