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 paid Boughton a visit and found him distraught, as tomorrow would’ve been his 54th anniversary. Boughton told John he’s tired of being alone, and that when they were young, marriage and family really meant something. Glory rolled her eyes at this and explained that they haven’t heard from Jack for a while. But when Glory and Boughton started quarreling, John walked back home. He reflects that though Boughton is good-hearted, he says things he shouldn’t when he’s uncomfortable.
An irony in John’s close friendship with Boughton is that Boughton was married for decades and now finds himself a lonely widower, while John spent decades alone and now enjoys a happy family life for the first time. In his loneliness, Boughton waxes nostalgic about the past. Glory suggests that her father’s nostalgia has to do with his estranged son, Jack, whose story will unfold later in the novel.
Themes
John is sorry that his son is alone. He’s serious and shy and mostly watches other children from a distance. He’s like his mother that way. John knows that Lila makes an unlikely minister’s wife and that it’s hard for her. Yet he thinks she is the kind of person whom Jesus would have spent time with during His earthly life. She has “an earned innocence […] stripped of all the accretions of smugness and pretense[.]” Maybe he should preach on that in Advent.
John’s visit with Boughton prompts thoughts about his own family situation. Neither his wife nor his son fit into their social environment easily, and given John’s own lonely past, he worries about what this will mean for his loved ones’ future. Yet he finds comfort in the fact that, in the Bible, Jesus was often drawn to misfits and outcasts. Lila, in particular, has an “innocence” that comes from her hard experience in life; anything inauthentic has been stripped away from her. John implies that this kind of personality is especially receptive to God.
Themes
John thinks that his wife knows the world more intimately than he does. He wishes he could spare her and his son from poverty, but when he said this out loud, his wife pointed out that she’s been poor all her life and knows how. Yet he can’t help praying that they’ll be spared the kind of life that Jesus Himself blessed by example.
Despite the fact that he’s much older than Lila, John feels that in some ways, his wife has a more realistic, less sheltered understanding of the world. Again, Lila’s background isn’t revealed, but it’s clear that she has experienced poverty. Even though John believes there’s no dishonor in this—Jesus was poor, after all—he grieves that Lila and their son might face poverty again after he dies.
Themes
