Gilead

by

Marilynne Robinson

Fire and Light Symbol Analysis

Fire and Light Symbol Icon

Fire and light symbolize God’s power working within and through the created world. Sometimes that power manifests in fierce and seemingly destructive ways. John associates lightning with his grandfather, an unpredictable and occasionally violent abolitionist. On one occasion, he describes lightning as though it’s “Creation tipping its hat” to his grandfather, suggesting that his grandfather’s fiery convictions were a force of nature, too. Similarly, he describes his grandfather’s grave as looking like “a place where someone had tried to smother a fire,” implying that only death could quench his grandfather’s spirit—and then just barely. Above the communion table at John’s grandfather’s church, there hung a banner with the words, “Our God Is a Purifying Fire,” summing up his grandfather’s divisive view that even violence (like the Union’s effort in the American Civil War) can be a manifestation of God’s righteousness.

Light also manifests in clearly benevolent ways. John remarks that the sun’s light has been constant—it’s the Earth that moves—and that means that the light of Creation’s first day continues to shine on all that God has made. This suggests that even as people’s lives continuously change, God’s purposes for humanity have remained steadfast, and He is faithfully bringing them about by His power. In the days before John dies, he reflects that creation is so beautiful that it’s as if God breathes on the world and makes it radiant—filled with light. Anyone can see this beauty, he believes, but few people are willing to look. He tells his son that God gives people the courage to see beauty, and that this courage allows people to spend their lives generously. He implies that if his son looks for God’s power at work in the world, then he, too, will be empowered by that same light.

Fire and Light Quotes in Gilead

The Gilead quotes below all refer to the symbol of Fire and Light. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Life, Death, and Beauty Theme Icon
).
Pages 5-8 Quotes

I really can’t tell what’s beautiful anymore. I passed two young fellows on the street the other day. I know who they are, they work at the garage. They’re not churchgoing, either one of them, just decent rascally young fellows who have to be joking all the time, and there they were, propped against the garage wall in the sunshine, lighting up their cigarettes. They’re always so black with grease and so strong with gasoline I don’t know why they don’t catch fire themselves. They were passing remarks back and forth the way they do and laughing that wicked way they have. And it seemed beautiful to me.

Related Characters: Rev. John Ames (speaker)
Related Symbols: Fire and Light
Page Number: 5
Explanation and Analysis:
Pages 31-37 Quotes

He could make me feel as though he had poked me with a stick, just by looking at me. Not that he meant any harm to speak of. He was just afire with old certainties, and he couldn’t bear all the patience that was required of him by the peace and by the aging of his body and by the forgetfulness that had settled over everything. He thought we should all be living at a dead run.

Related Characters: Rev. John Ames (speaker), John’s Son (The Boy), John’s Grandfather
Related Symbols: Fire and Light
Page Number: 31-32
Explanation and Analysis:
Pages 44-46 Quotes

When people come to speak to me, whatever they say, I am struck by a kind of incandescence in them, the “I” whose predicate can be “love” or “fear” or “want,” and whose object can be “someone” or “nothing” and it won’t really matter, because the loveliness is just in that presence, shaped around “I” like a flame on a wick, emanating itself in grief and guilt and joy and whatever else. But quick, and avid, and resourceful. To see this aspect of life is a privilege of the ministry which is seldom mentioned.

Related Characters: Rev. John Ames (speaker), John’s Son (The Boy)
Related Symbols: Fire and Light
Page Number: 44
Explanation and Analysis:
Pages 50-53 Quotes

While you read this, I am imperishable, somehow more alive than I have ever been, in the strength of my youth, with dear ones beside me. You read the dreams of an anxious, fuddled old man, and I live in a light better than any dream of mine—not waiting for you, though, because I want your dear perishable self to live long and to love this poor perishable world, which I somehow cannot imagine not missing bitterly, even while I do long to see what it will mean to have wife and child restored to me, I mean Louisa and Rebecca. I have wondered about that for many years. Well, this old seed is about to drop into the ground. Then I’ll know.

Related Characters: Rev. John Ames (speaker), John’s Son (The Boy), Louisa, Rebecca (Angeline)
Related Symbols: Fire and Light
Page Number: 53
Explanation and Analysis:
Pages 86-94 Quotes

I believe that the old man did indeed have far too narrow an idea of what a vision might be. He may, so to speak, have been too dazzled by the great light of his experience to realize that an impressive sun shines on us all. Perhaps that is the one thing I wish to tell you. Sometimes the visionary aspect of any particular day comes to you in the memory of it, or it opens to you over time. For example, whenever I take a child into my arms to be baptized, I am, so to speak, comprehended in the experience more fully, having seen more of life, knowing better what it means to affirm the sacredness of the human creature. I believe there are visions that come to us only in memory, in retrospect. That’s the pulpit speaking, but it’s telling the truth.

Related Characters: Rev. John Ames (speaker), John’s Son (The Boy), John’s Father, John’s Grandfather
Related Symbols: Water, Fire and Light
Page Number: 91
Explanation and Analysis:
Pages 94-99 Quotes

My point here is that you never do know the actual nature even of your own experience. Or perhaps it has no fixed and certain nature. I remember my father down on his heels in the rain, water dripping from his hat, feeding me biscuit from his scorched hand, with that old blackened wreck of a church behind him and steam rising where the rain fell on embers, the rain falling in gusts and the women singing “The Old Rugged Cross” while they saw to things, moving so gently, as if they were dancing to the hymn, almost. […] I mention it again because it seems to me much of my life was comprehended in that moment. Grief itself has often returned me to that morning, when I took communion from my father’s hand. I remember it as communion, and I believe that’s what it was.

Related Characters: Rev. John Ames (speaker), John’s Son (The Boy), John’s Father
Related Symbols: Water, Fire and Light
Page Number: 95-96
Explanation and Analysis:
Pages 245-247 Quotes

It has seemed to me sometimes as though the Lord breathes on this poor gray ember of Creation and it turns to radiance—for a moment or a year or the span of a life. And then it sinks back into itself again, and to look at it no one would know it had anything to do with fire, or light. That is what I said in the Pentecost sermon. I have reflected on that sermon, and there is some truth in it. But the Lord is more constant and far more extravagant than it seems to imply. Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don’t have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see. Only, who could have the courage to see it?

Related Characters: Rev. John Ames (speaker), John’s Son (The Boy)
Related Symbols: Fire and Light
Page Number: 245
Explanation and Analysis:
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Fire and Light Symbol Timeline in Gilead

The timeline below shows where the symbol Fire and Light appears in Gilead. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Pages 9-17
Life, Death, and Beauty Theme Icon
Christian Faith, Mystery, and Ministry Theme Icon
Estrangement and Reconciliation Theme Icon
...his eyes and looked around, noting the full moon rising in the east as the sun set in the west. Not wanting to startle his praying father, John kissed his hand... (full context)
Pages 46-50
Memory, Vision, and Conviction Theme Icon
...grandfather, it was yet one more frustration. He remembers thinking that the storm’s thunder and lightning were like “Creation tipping its hat” to his grandfather—as his mother always said, he did... (full context)
Christian Faith, Mystery, and Ministry Theme Icon
Memory, Vision, and Conviction Theme Icon
Estrangement and Reconciliation Theme Icon
...him about a vision he had when he was 16, after falling asleep by the fire. He saw the Lord extending chained arms to him. He woke knowing he had to... (full context)
Christian Faith, Mystery, and Ministry Theme Icon
Memory, Vision, and Conviction Theme Icon
John remarks that his grandfather always seemed as if he’d just been struck by lightning and was “the most unreposeful human being” he ever knew. He and his friends seemed... (full context)
Pages 50-53
Life, Death, and Beauty Theme Icon
Loneliness and Love Theme Icon
That afternoon John was struck by the way the light felt, like a weight resting familiarly on everything. His wife brought the camera out and... (full context)
Pages 69-71
Life, Death, and Beauty Theme Icon
Christian Faith, Mystery, and Ministry Theme Icon
Loneliness and Love Theme Icon
The light in the church was beautiful that morning. In the old days, John would sometimes wake... (full context)
Pages 94-99
Life, Death, and Beauty Theme Icon
Christian Faith, Mystery, and Ministry Theme Icon
Memory, Vision, and Conviction Theme Icon
...child, his father helped tear down a Baptist church building that had been struck by lightning and burned. He remembers playing with other small boys while watching the men search through... (full context)
Pages 99-104
Christian Faith, Mystery, and Ministry Theme Icon
Memory, Vision, and Conviction Theme Icon
Estrangement and Reconciliation Theme Icon
...the communion table. The words on it read, “The Lord Our God Is a Purifying Fire.” His father left for the Quaker meeting after seeing this banner. The use of the... (full context)
Pages 104-110
Christian Faith, Mystery, and Ministry Theme Icon
Memory, Vision, and Conviction Theme Icon
Estrangement and Reconciliation Theme Icon
...Not yet 10 years old, he went up and sat in the dark church. As light rose in the church, he noticed blood on one of the benches. He dragged the... (full context)
Pages 160-166
Life, Death, and Beauty Theme Icon
Christian Faith, Mystery, and Ministry Theme Icon
Loneliness and Love Theme Icon
...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... (full context)
Pages 191-200
Life, Death, and Beauty Theme Icon
Christian Faith, Mystery, and Ministry Theme Icon
Memory, Vision, and Conviction Theme Icon
...porch with them that night. He’s been thinking about grace lately, as if it’s a fire that burns things down to essentials, and he could feel something of that in the... (full context)
Pages 209-215
Life, Death, and Beauty Theme Icon
This morning there was a glorious dawn. John thinks about how light is constant; Earth just turns over in it. But it’s all one day, “that first... (full context)
Pages 245-247
Life, Death, and Beauty Theme Icon
Christian Faith, Mystery, and Ministry Theme Icon
Memory, Vision, and Conviction Theme Icon
...is more extravagant than those words suggest. No matter where you look, the world “can shine like transfiguration.” You just have to be willing to see it—but who has that kind... (full context)
Life, Death, and Beauty Theme Icon
Christian Faith, Mystery, and Ministry Theme Icon
Memory, Vision, and Conviction Theme Icon
...have the church deacons burn his old sermons. There are enough to make a good fire. She can keep some of them if she likes, but he doesn’t want her to... (full context)
Life, Death, and Beauty Theme Icon
Christian Faith, Mystery, and Ministry Theme Icon
Memory, Vision, and Conviction Theme Icon
...but “the ruins of old courage.” He trusts that someday God will fan it into flame again. (full context)
Life, Death, and Beauty Theme Icon
Christian Faith, Mystery, and Ministry Theme Icon
Memory, Vision, and Conviction Theme Icon
...he loves the prairie. Many times he has watched dawn break, flooding the land with light, and nothing on the horizon to interrupt the view. (full context)
Life, Death, and Beauty Theme Icon
Christian Faith, Mystery, and Ministry Theme Icon
...love for it. Here he will “smolder away the time until the great and general incandescence.” (full context)