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 remembers a story, likely embellished, that his grandfather and friends used to tell. Once, in an abolitionist settlement near Gilead, the people established a dry-goods store on one side of the road and a livery stable on the other. Then they built a tunnel between the two buildings. The people were so serious about this tunnel that they made it much too large, and it wasn’t stable.
John records this story just to pass it down to his son, because it’s humorous and also because it gives a glimpse of life during his grandfather’s generation in Iowa. Implicitly, the tunnel is part of the Underground Railroad, a secret network of tunnels and passageways that gave enslaved people a pathway of escape to free Northern states or Canada.
Themes
One day, a stranger rode into town on a big horse, paused at just the wrong spot, and suddenly sank into the tunnel up to the horse’s shoulder. When the townspeople came out and saw the man walking around in bewilderment, they decided to act bewildered, too. They soaked some oats in whiskey and fed them to the horse until it fell asleep. The man (a teetotaler himself) became even more upset.
People living in an abolitionist settlement like this would have had a lot of practice in keeping secrets, though this scenario is more comical than most. In this case, pretending they didn’t know what was going on (and getting the horse drunk) was the townspeople’s best hope of hiding the truth about the secret tunnel.
Themes
Knowing any Bushwhacker or slave-hunter would quickly figure out the situation, one of the townspeople finally offered the stranger his own smaller horse, which he finally accepted. After he left, they tried to figure out what to do about the stuck horse, which was beginning to sober up. Trying to dig around the horse would be a big effort. In the meantime, since by this time “only foolish choices [were] possible,” they placed a shed over the horse.
Even though the situation was funny, there wasn’t time to lose, since in the years leading up to the Civil War, pro-Confederate guerilla forces called Bushwhackers could pass through town at any time. So, the townspeople got rid of the stranger as best they could, leaving them to contend with the horse. The “foolish” nature of the situation also highlights its desperation.
Themes
Eventually they dug a trench to free the horse, but ultimately the only way to deal with the collapsing tunnel was to fill it in by leveling a nearby hill. But for all their hard work, the section where the tunnel had been invariably sagged whenever there was rain. At last, the people ended up having to move the whole town half a mile down the road. Nowadays the former tunnel has become a creek bed, and people often picnic beside it. Without knowing it, they sit above the town’s few, forgotten graves, but John says this is “on balance, a pleasant thing.”
The abolitionists ended up undermining their own town with the massive tunnel. There’s almost no memory of it today, as in fact most people probably don’t remember the hardships of those days. But John regards it as fitting that people would picnic over the town’s remains—another example of how he sees life, death, and beauty existing side by side.
Themes
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