Gilead: Pages 232-237 Summary & Analysis

All this happened two days ago; now it is Sunday. In a minister’s life, it always seems to be Sunday, or Saturday night. No sooner do you prepare for one week than the next week begins. This morning for his sermon, John read one of his old sermons. Some of it seemed right and some of it embarrassingly wrong.

Jack Boughton was in church, and it particularly embarrassed John to stand there reading an old sermon while Jack smiled at him. Yet afterward, he wonders if Jack might have been comforted by the sermon’s very irrelevance. He no longer feels his old dread around Jack. In fact, he almost wishes he could bequeath Jack a wife and child to make up for the ones he’s lost.

This morning, John woke up thinking that Gilead might as well be “standing on the absolute floor of hell,” and it’s his fault as much as anyone’s. He thinks about everything that’s happened there over his lifetime—droughts, the Spanish Flu, the Depression, and three wars—and wonders why they never considered what God might be trying to teach them through it all. Since they didn’t, the question was taken away from them. One might ask why there’s a town left here at all. He wonders if he never left Gilead because he was afraid he wouldn’t come back.

John’s parents did leave Gilead. Edward built a cottage on the Gulf Coast, and their parents moved in partly to get away from the climate. At one point John’s father came back after Louisa died to try to persuade John to leave, too. John asked his father to preach at the church, but he said he just couldn’t do it anymore. He told John that he and Edward had always hoped John might seek a “broader experience” elsewhere and reminded him that he doesn’t have to remain loyal to this place and its old ways. John was upset by this. He’d always understood that his loyalty to God transcended his loyalties to things like local customs and memories. Did his father think he was ignorant of that?

John doesn’t recall what he actually said at the time, but all his father accomplished was to deepen John’s loyalty to Gilead. He hadn’t realized how low his father’s estimation of him was. It was a dark time. A week later he got a letter from his father that felt like a “cold wind” sweeping over his life. It caused him much sorrow, but it also forced him to throw himself on the Lord, so he can’t ultimately regret that time.

John isn’t sure why he was thinking about this to begin with. He supposes he was thinking about life’s many frustrations and disappointments. He hasn’t been totally honest with his son about how many there are.

This morning he went to the bank and cashed a check, in hopes of helping Jack out a little. But when he offered it to Jack, Jack put the money back in John’s pocket and pointed out that John doesn’t have money to spare. John tried to give away what very little he has—his wife’s and son’s money, at that—and this is how it was received.

John asked Jack if he was heading back to Memphis, but Jack said he was going “anywhere else.” He’s received the long-awaited letter from Della. John’s heart felt heavy. He tried to make small talk with the family, but Jack and Glory were clearly upset, and Boughton was just staring into space. Then John tried to do Jack a kindness and only managed to offend him. When he got home, Lila made him lie down. She lowered the shades and stroked John’s hair for a while.