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Fraught with Fire:
Cisristimlity and Litemture Vol. 59, No.2 (Winter 20/0)
Race and Theology in Marilynne Robinson's Gilead
Lisa M. Siefker Bai ley
Written in the form of a spiraling letter with qualities of a
sermon, a meditation, a diary. and a journal, Marilynne Robinson's
Gilead offers a reflection of both lamentation and celebration but
ends with a hope for a restoration Robinson presents as
transcendence. Due to his terminal heart condition, the letter's
author, Congregationalist minister John Ames. knows he will not
spend much time with his son on earth. Ames laments this fact
through words he hopes will allow him to connect in deep meaningful
ways with the grown son he is destined not to know in Ihis life.
Ames writes this letter with the sa me zeal he wrote sermons in his
career, sermons which willialer be burned. As Ames faces the
mystery of death, he becomes ever closer to God, both spiritually
and literally. For Christians like Ames. there's life after death.
Here on earth, there is something good in the mystery of what he
doesn't understand. Robinson suggests a transcendent notion of
Christianity that encompasses both larger mysteries. One way
Robinson represents these mysteries is through the shifting and
contrary symbol of fi re. The novel is so rich with images of fire
that Elle book reviewer Lisa Shea calls Gilead "laJn inspired work
from a writer whose sensibility seems steeped in holy fire" (J 70).
Ames' story uses fire as a representation of the energy ofheing,
which can become destructive like the puritanical mistakes made in
Ames' grandfather's church. or transcendent. like the filling of
the Holy Spiri !. 1
We have seen Robinson use images of water, air, earth, and fi re
in HOllsekeeping. Stefan Mattessich has suggested that fire in
HOllsekeeping provides a Derridean metaphor of spirit (75).
Mattessich points out that Sylvie's bonfire which burns her
collection of magazines and newspapers becomes a kind of
"fire-writing" that helps to draw boundaries around social norms in
communication (75-76). "What goes up in flames for Ruth and
Sylvie:' writes Mattessich, "is the world of these norms" (76).
Mattessich
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266 CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE
uses Derrida to suggest that fire in Housekeeping works as a
force that allows Sylvie and Ruth to break free of the social norms
of Fingerbone and al the same time "fold them back into it" (76) as
they become drifters in and around it. Mattessich then demonstrates
that Sylvie and Ruth have ambivalence about the world. and he
eventually argues Ihal Robinson shows that "nuctuations of the
spirit are at their Illost material and the sacred is indeed
acutest at its vanishing" (83). 1his sentiment is also true in
Gilead, where Ames understands his faith, his own spirit if you
will, and the very essence of others best when he is closest to
losing his life and thus all connection with them. Unlike
HOllsekeepillg in which, as Mattcssich notes, fire docs not enter
until late in the novel, fire pops up everywhere in Gilead, from
the sermons in the attic to his grandfather's lctter that Ames
burned, from the Negro church to the fireflies in the yard.~
Maltessich reminds us that, at the end of HOllsekeeping, we never
know "whcther the house survives the fire or not" (76). The same is
true of Ames' sermons and of the letter he is writing. At the end
of the novel, we come to the end of Ames' life, and Ames suggcsts
that Robert ask Lila to have the deacons arrange to "have those old
sermons of mine burned .... There are enough to make a good fire.
I'm thinking here of hot dogs and marshmallows, something 10
celebrate the first snow. Of course shc can set by any of them she
might want to keep" (Robinson, Gilead 245). Just as we are unable
to tell whether or not the house survives the fire at the end of
Housekeeping, we are unable to Icarn whethcr or not Ames' sermons
survive the fire he requests.
While fire in HOllsekeepillg becomes a symbol of bot h
disenfranchisement and power that changcs social norms and main
characters, fire in Gilead represents both the destructive forces
of society and the power of the spirit, in both the Holy Spirit of
the triune God and the spirit of humanity, sent by God and sharcd
by peoplc. 111C Holy Spirit appears in Acts 2 on the day of
Pentecost as fire that rests on the apostles. That fire allows the
apostles to speak in tongues and spread the word of God. Without
this gift of the Holy Spirit, the apostles would be restricted to
witnessing to those who could understand their hlllguage. The fire
of Pentecost is a contrary symbol because it flames but does not
burn. Likewise, the word of God shifts throughout the triune God as
it is eternal in the F,lIher, becomes flesh in the son, and is
spread by the Holy Spirit. Ames is keenly aware of the contraries
embodied in images and shifts of meaning in words. He realizes
that, ifhis son received his tetter, his son may not envision or
interpret his words the way he mcant them. For that matter, Ames
seems aware thnt Jack Boughton does not interpret his words the way
Ames means, and that old Boughton
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RACE AND THEOI.OGY I N GILEAD 267
may not either. Ames, too, (mis)reads the relationship between
Lila and Jack. His age and experience. howe\'er, do give him a bit
of wisdom that he could not have had as a younger man. And more
importantly, he has belief, faith in things unseen, including a
faith that he is in a beautiful world that is good because God made
it so. Ames attempts to see and to help assuage the pain of those
around him, and he desperately looks for the good in all. Even when
he cannot see good directly, he seeks it. "I believe there are
visions that come to LIS only in memory, in retrospect. That's the
pulpit speaking, but it's telling the truth" (Gilead 91). In th is
case, Ames is confident of the success in his sermonic articulation
of this idea. The mystery of it lies in understanding the vision
through memory. Memory is a construction. and Ames hopes to const
ruct love in the memories he has as well as those he creates in th
is letter, even as he acknowledges the difficulty in doing so. Ames
remarks, "Remembering and forgiving can be contrary things" ([64).
Remembering for Ames encompasses pains, griefs, and losses. His
"endless letter" both rejoices in the transcendent possibility of
connecting with his son after his death and is reminiscent of a
jeremiad, as a long letter which laments the loss of a relationship
wit h hisson.) Ames' collection of memories in his letter, however,
ends wit h the promise of redempt ion. Ames is awa re of the
prophecy of the end times: "I suppose it's natural to think about
those old boxes of sermons upstairs. They are a record of my life,
after all, a sort of foretaste of the Last Judgment, really. so how
can I not be curious?" (Gilead 41). Using language reflective of
the sacrament of communion, in which Christians receive a
"foretaste of the feast to come," Robinson weaves in apocalyptic
language that smacks of both law and of gospel. rt is the record of
his life that would condemn it, but it is God's grace that would
save it. As George T. Montague explains when he traces images of
the Holy Spirit from its cleansing judgment in Isaiah, "When the
Lord ... purges Jerusalem's blood from her midst with the spirit of
judgment and the spirit of fire" to the New Testament images "which
Jesus explains to the disciples of John the Baptist that he has not
come to apply the heavenly blow-torch to his people but to proclaim
the healing mercy of God" (40). lhllS, the fire of the Holy Spirit
in the Old Testament judges, and the fi re of the Holy Spirit in
the New Testament transforms.
This mystery, the combination of judgment and grace, is embodied
in the contrary image offire throughout Gilead. Ames is surrounded
by images of sparks that Signal growing fire. Ames does not dwell
directly on suffering or lamentations, but his frustrations seep
into his narrative as they are
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268 CHRISTIANITY AND L ITERATURE
in herent in his memories and part of the record orhis life. He
recalls a night he and Boughton sat on the porch steps watch ing
fireflies, and Boughton remarked:
"Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward:' And really,
it was that night as if the earth were smoldering. Well it was, and
it is. An old fi re will make a dark husk for itself and settle in
on its core, as in the case of this pbnet. I believe the same
metaphor rna)' describe the human individual, as well. Perhaps
Gilead. Perhaps civilization. Prod a little and the sparks will
fly. (Gilead 72)
The burn ing of the Negro church, which he has reduced in his
mind to a small incident, the civil righ ts movement burgeoning in
the south, and a great many olher sparks glow around him. But
unless he looks for them or prods Ihem, he is unaware of such
issues. He concerns himself with his own worries, which are so
narrow Ihal he covets the friendship his younger wife has with
Jack, even though Jack is wounded and wea ry, 3 nea rly broken
soul.
As Ames narrates the story of his life and ponders those around
him. his vision is fraugh t with fire, fire thai often represents
annihi lat ion of sinners and the painful loss of those who feel
sin's gUilt and the loss of compassion that such destruction leaves
behind. These fire images are used in several ways. First, the
"rascally young fellows" joking after work are covered in so much
black grease and strong gasoline that Ames wonde rs "why they don't
catch fire themselves" (Gilead 5). Ames finds them a thi ng of
beauty, walking quotidian poetry. In contrast, Ames did not realize
at Ihe time how much anger there was in the fire that destroyed the
Negro church. In warning, he cautions his son, "A little too much
anger, too often or at the wrong ti me, can destroy more than you
would ever imagine" (6). When the church burned, Ames knew the fire
was a serious wrong, but no one in Gi lead could imagine the depth
of pain it caused the families. No one cou ld imagine the sins of
the fathers falling as they do on Jack Boughton and his wife and
son, a mirror of Ames' own. Ames receives his wife and son late in
life and cannot believe they are his. Jack obtains his wife and son
in the prime of his life and also cannot believe they are his.
Both, however, are disallowed time to spend wilh their wives and
sons. Jack and Ames both end up disenfranchised from their
families, Jack by society, and Ames by age.4 Ames is cognizant of
the disconnect between himself and his son and realizes the letter
he is writing may not even reach its intended recipient. Ames
hopes, in language which echoes a Puritanical sermon, that the
letter might not be "lost or burned also" (40).
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RACE AND THEOLOGY IN GlLEAD 269
Not only do Ames' words have the pOlential to be destroyed
literally because of fire. but words. even without malicious
intent, can become destructive like the church fire. Ames writes,
"Above all. mind what you say. 'Behold how much wood is kindled by
how small a fire, and the tongue is a fire'-that's the truth. When
my father was old he told me that very thing in a letter he sent
me. Which. as it happened, I burned" (Gilead 6). No wonder Ames
considers that the letter he is writing may be burned. as thai is
exactly what he did with his father's letter. Ames seems aware of
the irony here and how hard it is for people to learn their
lessons. Just before Robinson introduces the first "Negro" in Ames'
letter, Ames writes that "one lapse of judgment can qUickly create
a situation in which on ly foolish choices are possible" (60). The
fire set at the Negro church is the opposite of the fire of the
Holy Spirit. The destructive church fire is a representation not of
Christlike qualities but of the fa lse representation of God by
humans who made a bad choice. The novel is set in 1956. within two
years of the landmark case of Browl! V. Board of Education of
Topeka and four years after the publication of Ralph Ellison's
I/lvisible Mall. Ames' letter does not mention social changes in
race relations. and he does not mention any African American
authors in his library, even when he describes ordering more books
than he ever had time to read. He has "mostly theology. and some
old travel books from before the wars" (77). The effects of the
fire at the Negro church have kindled results with fa r greater and
more damaging consequences than Ames realizes until the last
section of the novel when Ames begins to understand Jack's
plight.
The tapestry in Ames' grandfather's church proclaimed, "The Lord
Our God Is a Purifying Fire" (Gilead 99). Ames writes about how
angry his father became because the congregants of that church
justified the war wit h that phrase. One woman even called it "just
a bit of scripture" (99). Here. Ames continues to explore the
nature of how things mean. The people of that church wanted to
believe the war they were fighting was sanctioned by God. and they
even went so far as to create the gloriOUS tapestry to celebrate
God's glory in their fight. This sort of bloodshed, however,
inflicts the deep psychological and phYSical wounds that need the
balm of Gilead for healing. Just because people want to just ify
things as God's will does not make them so. Sometimes God is
represented falsely by the church, and such representations come
out of man's inability to be pure.~ Ames felt he had a special
transcendent communion. a connecting experience with his father
after his grandfather's church burned. But as he describes the
spiritual way his fa ther fed him the biscuit with ash, Ames
writes, "My point here is
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270 CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE
that you never do know the actual nature even of your own
experience" (95). The church burned from a desire to control
society and to control the hegemony orthe lowll.TIle righteousness
of their puritanical errand was a self-glorification al best and a
damning crime as viewed by anyone outside their self-justified and
self-serving missioll .
Even though he did not burn down the Negro church, Ames is
guilty for it, just as he waS drawn in to the things his
grandfather did in Kansas. Ames writes:
! was in on the secret, loo- implicated without knowing what I
was implicated in. Well, that's the human condition, I suppose. I
believe I was implicated, and am, and would have been if J had
never seen that pistol. [\ has been my experience that guilt can
burst though the smallest breach and cover the landscape, and abide
in it in pools and danknesses, just as native as water. (Gilead
82)
Ames sees the sins of the fathers fall upon him. Ames felt his
father should hide the gUilt of his father and that he should hide
the guilt of h is, but he reveals the rift and the fact that he
kept the note his grandfather left. The rift between father and son
is emblematic oflarger rifts, for example, in society, the rift of
segregation and laws against miscegenation, and, in Christianity.
the rift of sin which separates man from paradise and from God. As
people are torn apart, those who cross social lines like Jack
Boughton become displaced and in a sense erased from both the white
culture in towns like Gilead and from black cultu re in cities like
MemphiS. Once again, sin causes consequences, not only in continued
separation from God, but also in separation from would-be earthly
comfort such as family. 111e displacement in both cases causes
misunderstanding and confusion, leaving all in a world where no one
can see anyone else's situations or intents clearly.
Ames also experiences misunderstanding and confusion and seems
blind to the nature of his own experience when Jack visits his
house. He does not ask Lila about her past, and he misreads Jack's
familiarity with Lila. Ames is so concerned that Jack may take his
place as husband and father to them that he cannot see Jack's pain.
He is aware of something amiss with Jack. Ames says Jack has always
looked to him "like a man standing too dose to a fire, tolerating
present pain, knowing he's a half step away from something worse"
(Gilead 191). Ames reads Jack's awkward and unsettled nonverbal
communication, but Ames does not interpret it correctly. Not until
the end of the novel, or even until the end of Home, does the
reader
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RACE AND THEOLOGY IN Gfl"EAD 271
have a strong idea of why Jack acts the way he does. In her
introduction to TIle Death of Adam, Robinson states:
Evidence is alway~ construed, and it is always liable to being
misconstrued no matter how much care is exercised in collecting and
evaluating it. At best, our understanding of any historical moment
is significantly wrong, and this should come as no surprise, since
we have little grasp of any given moment. The present is elusive
(or the same reasons as is the past. (4)
Robinson's characters often have little understanding of their
own moments, the moments of those they love, or of the moments of
those they know more remotely through connect ions in society. [n
effect, they stand close to each other, the way Jack stood too
close to the fire, enduring pain-Jack enduring the pain of courting
damnation, and-those close to him enduring the pain of not knowing
how to understand what is right next to them. Jack's loved ones try
very hard in their own inefficient and unsatisfying ways to reach
out to him, to save him, their beloved prodigal. Their work appears
to have no effect, however, as Jack always falls back into the same
patterns of sin and continues to look like he's standing 100 dose
to the fires of hell and damnation . Jack is an everyman here, as
all sinners are, the prodigal son unable to make spiritual progress
(to move away from fiery damnation) without God's grace.
Fire in Gilead represents both the spiritual progress of the
puritanical errand into the wilderness to save those standing too
close to the fires of damnation and a herald of the civil rights
movement. Robinson also uses fire imagery to transcend those same
painful earthly struggles and offer hope of a new vision, the sort
of loving transcendent vision Ames' grandfather wrote about in the
note he left on the kitchen table (Gilead 85). At the end of the
novel, Ames sees not only the fires of bell on earth but also the
fire of the righteous God. The ruins of courage and hope seem to
Ames but an ember, and be believes "the good Lord will surely
someday breathe it into flame again" (246). Gilead does not look
like the floor of hell, but it looks "like whatever hope becomes
after it begins to weary a little, then weary a little more. But
hope deferred is still hope" (Robinson, Gilead 246). Robinson's
language here not only references Provo 13: 12 but also calls to
mind Langston Hughes' "Harlem [21" in which Hughes asks, "What
happens to a dream deferred?" (426). The poem also inspired
Lorraine Hansberry to include it at the beginning of her play, A
Raisill ill tile SI/II.
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272 CH RISTIANITY AND LITERATURE
which takes its title from Hughes' third line of the poem and
became the first play by an African American woman to win the Drama
Desk Award. Robinson's words become yet another renecting mirror as
she reminds readers of the histories around words and persons, and
how those histories exist whether or nol they can be remembered or
understood. Robinson does no! leave Ames impotent in participating
in these histories, evell if he does not comprehend his ability to
do so. He goes on immediately to write, "I love Ihis town. [ think
sometimes of going into the ground here as a last wild gesture of
love- I too will smolder away the time until the great and general
incandescence" (247). Thus, Ames is empowered with love, the
commandment of the gospel, to love his neighbor as himself, and
Ames, in the end, is able to feel that love. And for Robinson, love
"is probably a synonym for grace" (Robinson, "Further Thoughts"
488). Gilead may not be the city on the hill, but Ames' final
vision of it offers hope that people could attain peace and grace
in a new world and perhaps reflect some of that future in the
present. Ames is able to see and express his desire to offer this
"wild gesture of love" as he moves beyond the place Ihat most needs
it. It's easy to get bitter and resentful toward God like the
Israelites Jeremiah describes when people endure unceasing pain and
incurable wounds. Jack, with his doubts and his interminable
suffering, epitomizes this waiting and hoping state of humanity.
Ames, on the other hand, knows he is 011 the verge of exiling this
world and is able to have a glimpse of the perspective of leavi ng
it behind.
Before that last moment, however, Ames has suffered with his
ailing heart and has already mourned the lossofhis wife and son
when he imagines Jack came home to take over his family. The
suflering human, blinded by pain, often misperceives God's
intentions. In Jeremiah, God promises to deliver the Israelites out
of the hands of their enemies and to restore them to him. If
sinners return and repent, God will restore them and save them and
deliver them from what ails them. A righteous end would be payment
for sins, but God does not hold sin against the sinner who believes
in Christ and repents, who receives the "free grace of forgiveness"
Boughton has struggled with comprehending (Gilead 190). Believers,
in turn, are filled with a burning desire from the Holy Spirit to
go Ollt and tell olhers so they, too, can experience the same love
and righteollsness. One day. and that day comes soon for John Ames,
believers will see and know God fully. no more lenses, but
face-to-face. Ames describes the phenomenon:
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RACE AND THEOLOGY IN GILEAD
If the Lord chooses to make nothing of our transgressions, then
they are nothing. Or whatever reality they have is trivial and
conditional beside the exquisite primary fact of existence. Of
course the Lord would wipe them away, just as [ wipe dirt from your
face, or lears. After all, why should the Lord bother much over
these smirches that are no part of His Creation? ([90)
273
So, in Robinson's vision, being becomes more significant than
how one is being. Existence itselfis a miracle and part of tile
celebration of the mystery of God's grace.
Just as fire destroys in order to create energy, each bit of
knowledge and grace subverts the old to make the new. God's grace
both crucifies and creates a new self. As Vera J. Camden explains,
"The anguish of men like Luther and Bunyan-and many believers-is
that the lived experience of this paradox enforces a terrifying
abjection, as the old self must be both rejected and retained, the
new self both embraced and anticipated."6 Perhaps subverting his
old self to make way for a transformed self who can connect with
his son is part of what Ames hopes to do in writing this letter.
Certain ly, Ames comes close 10 transforming the sparks of fire.
the often misguided energies toward God's will: "The idea of grace
had been so much on my mind, grace as a sort of ecstatic fire that
takes things down to essentials" (Gilead 197). As Betty Mensch
notes in her revie\'/ of Gilead and JOllathall Edwards: A Life,
Ames is a man who "once wrote a fiery Edwards-like sermon" and then
"felt ridiculous:' which moved him toward "(I losing his habits of
judgment" (237). 1hat sermon is missing from the box in the attic.
Ames explains th,lI it is one he "actually burned the night before
(hel meant to preach it" (Gilead 41). He now regrets that it is
lost: "I wish [had kept it, because J meant every word. It might
have been the only sermon I wouldn't mind answering for in the next
world. And I burned it" (43.) Perhaps burning the sermon and haVing
it only in his memory helps Ames to imagine that it may have been a
sermon to be proud of, one that may have accomplished something
worthy of God's attention. The fiery sermon ends up in a fire, and
only the fire which destroyed the sermon can make the idea of the
sermon one that might be somehow godly. The sermon itself, however,
focused only on humanity's damned nature, which is why Ames burned
it-to keep from hurting his congregation with more guih and shame.
Again, Robinson layers meanings offire to illustrate the human cond
ition and its inability to come to God on its own. Mensch reminds
us of the [ayers of contraries that are built into the entire town
of Gilead and
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274 CHRISTIAN ITY AND L ITERATURE
that "in scripture, Gilead is origin of prophecy, source of
refuge, but also object of prophetic condemnation" (237). Robinson
embraces purifying destruction and its promise of restoration and
salvation in the city on the hill, and she also encompasses a
transcendent humanity. Such transcendent hope comes not only from
the sentiment of Ames' narrative, but also from voices displaced
into the margins of the text. While Ames looks forward with hope to
imminent transformations, Jack waits in the desert of time before
the civil rights movement. Even further oul in the margins are the
histories of the African -Americans who were enslaved.
Ames does not address it, but Robinson's title rings of the
African-American spiritual, "There Is a Balm in Gi lead";
There is a balm in Gilead To make the wounded whole There is a
balm in Gilead To heal the sin -sick soul
Sometimes [ feel discouraged And think my work's in vain But
then the Holy Spirit Revives my soul again
Don't e\'cr feel discouraged For Jesus is your friend And if you
lack of knowledge He'll ne'er refuse to lend
If you cannot preach like Peter If you cannot pray like Paul You
can tell the love of Jesus And say, "He died for all."
(negrospirituals.com)
Gilead is mentioned twice in Jeremiah, both times in reference
to its healing balm. The spiritual lyrics end with a c
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RACE AND THEOLOGY IN GILEAD 275
The healing balm of Gilead is close to the novel's foundation,
one built on recognizing the histories of strife and suffering in
individuals and communities, and one that transcends those
struggles to celebrate the loving connection in the f\llfillment of
God's promise. Ames reaches thai promise, or Promised Land, at his
death, but he also offers hope for the dream of harmony to become
part of Gilead for his son and the generations to come. In "Facing
Reality~ Robinson suggests that to a large extent in our present
culture "the sense of sickness has replaced the sense of sin, to
which it was always near allied" (Death of Adam 83). She notes that
some antebellum doctors identified "an illness typical of enslaved
people sold away from their families which anyone can recognize as
rage and grief" (83). Surely this sin-sickness is the same type she
describes in the plots of Gilead and Home, each burdened with the
disconnectedness of humanity, most overtly in Jack's painful
inability to find a place where he can live happily together with
his wife and chi ld. At the end of "Facing Reality:' Robinson asks
what would happen "if we understood our vulnerabilities to mean we
are human, and so are our friends and our enemies, and so are our
cities and books and gardens, our inspirations, our errors. We weep
human tears, like Hamlet. like Hecuba" (Adam 86). Read in this
light. sin is no less painful, sins such as slavery and racism are
no less evil, and misjudging is no less wrong; however. all sins
are forgivable. even those that hurt most. Gilead asks readers to
understand and to forgive themselves, their loved ones, and their
enemies, and to rejoice in the beautiful humanity that can be found
in all people and all places, just as Ames so beautifully records
himself doing at the end of his letter.
I experienced a practical example of the novel's message when I
used Gilead in a composition class at a college that was
experiencing a hostile racial environment. During the class in
which I introduced the lyrics and music of "There Is a Balm in
Gilead," my students, both black and while. actually broke out into
song, waved their arms above their heads, and leaned their bodies
back and forth as they sang the spiritual together. They repeated
the song until every student~including Christ ians. Buddhists,
agnost ics, atheists, and others without religious labels- was
singing as one, moving with the rhythm of the music and
participating in the sea of hands and weaving. Like Ames, I may
have misread that classroom moment, wanting so much to believe in
the good and the healing. But, in that moment, unity and love did
exist. Olhers may not const ruct their memory of that class
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276 CHRISTIANITY AND L ITERATURE
the same way I do, but my memory of it is one of a mysterious
uplifting happiness. Robinson's novel asks readers to seek that
kind of transcendent joy, to look through a tens of love and
acceptance and communion to strive to see the good, the beauty. and
the love, with whatever it takes to see that, be it forgiveness.
camaraderie, sol idarity, anything that allows a harmonious
community to transcend enmity between people, the iniquities thaI
cause rifts and morc sins against one another. Through Ames'
celebration of being, Gilead offers readers a hope of balm for
issues that cut as deeply as racial prejudice, a hope that all of
us might understand ourselves and our neighbors better, as we move
toward communities of harmony.
Perhaps my students and I experienced a literary work's power 10
move readers beyond its text, as Ann Hu lbert found herself moved
at the end of the novel. In her Slate review, Hulbert commenls on
Robinson's final sentiment: "What elicits tears at the book's
close, I think, is a highly unusual literary experience: Robinson
(in her role as author of this creat ion) allows even a faithless
reader to feel the possibility of a transcendent order. thanks to
which mercy can reign among people on Earth" (Hulbert).' Robinson
offers in Ames a hope of finding a way to unite all people and of
valu ing the collective in his time of loss and mourning. The
mystery and the beauty of the collective is part of Ames' vision.
Ames writes:
In every important way we are such secrets from each other, and
I do believe that there is a separate language in each of us, also
a separate aesthetics and a separate jurisprudence. Every Single
one of us is a little civilization built on the ruins of any number
of preceding civil izations ... all that reaUy just aUows us to
coexist with the inviolable, untraversable, and utterly vast spaces
between us. (Gilead 197)
The space between our sepa rate bodies of laws, separate
understandings of truth and beauty, and our separate guilt and
pains and sufferings all come together in a t ranscendent
understanding of the mystery of being and how people exist at all,
each person wi th his or her own "endless letter" of memories,
experiences, histories, desires, hopes, and dreams.
The separation itself becomes part of the solution instead of
only the problem; the inability to understand becomes part of the
impetus to work toward understanding. Ames remarks, " I don't know
why solitude would be a balm for loneliness, but Ihat is how it
always was for me in those days" (Gilead 18-19). Ames' description
of this paradox leads the reader to Robinson's vision of
transcendence. When human beings come together,
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RACE AND THEOLOGY IN GILEAD 277
as Ames is with Lila and their son, as Ames is with Boughton, as
Ames is with Jack, the distance between them is pronounced. The
inability of human beings to understand one another is painfully
obvious. When alone, as Ames is when he writes his letter, people
can feel less lonely, because they are not phYSically confronted
with the terrible chasms of misunderstanding and confusion between
them, like the chasm between Ames' grandfather and his father, like
the chasm between Jack and his family. Ames' grandfather's grave
even holds the image of a chasm, as Ames says: "It was that most
natural thing in the world that my grandfather's grave would look
like a place where someone had tried to smother a fire" (SO). The
presence of physical bodies makes the space between them stand out
in sharp relief. When alone, individuals can imagine through the
constructs of memory that they touched someone, the way Ames
believes his father touched him with the ashy communion biscuit,
the way Ames hopes to connect with his son over the years, and the
way Ames purports to connect with "his !lock."
As he explains to the reader, "This habit of writing is so deep
in me, as you will know well enough if this endless letter is in
your hands" (Gilead 40). Although he cannot phYSically or literally
span lime. Ames hopes his record of thoughts and memories and love
can reach his son through this letter, full of both mourning over
the fact that his life only eclipses his son's, and full of hope
that he can express what he intends to his son. Ames tells his
reader, "For me, writing has always felt like praying, even when I
wasn't writing prayers, as I was often enough. You feel like you
are with someone" (J 9). Perhaps one reason Ames writes as if he
were praying is because he faces such a great challenge in
attempting to communicate with his son and because he wants so
badly for his communication to be Significant and profound, a way
to share thoughts about his life, his loves, and his values. In
Robinson's Christian vision, it seems one does not have to
articulate one's beliefs clearly, or even at all, in order to be
saved. Just as fire can both destroy and create anew, words can
both damage people and help move them toward understanding. Ames
repeatedly comments on ways Lila is not very articulate, and he
recognizes that she is embarrassed by her poor grammar and usage.
On the other hand, he often also exclaims how well she can
articulate some of the deepest most complex ideas, especially those
about her salvation. In Home, Gilead's companion text about the
same characters from a different perspective set in the Boughton
hOllse, Robinson develops further the parable of the prodigal son
which she begins in Gilead to illustrate that, unlike the Puritan
belief in the elect and one's assurance of that position through
one's articulation of one's beliefs, all are invited to come 10 the
river, not only those who attempt to articulate clearly the
path
-
278 CHRISTI ANITY AND L ITERATURE
10 get there. In Gilead, Robi nson uses Ames' voice to express
with erudi te fervor and from wise experience the ways a Christian
lives in a world filled with both menace and hope and is
paradoxically saved not by his or her own actions but passively by
the very nature of God's grace.
When fire imagery interplays with racial conflicts in the civil
rights era in this novel, it reveals disconnects between characters
and ideas, especially between characters who long to be toget her,
such as Ames and Robert, as well as Jack and both his families.
Robi nson reflects in a varietyo( characters the desire to be
understood. Just as Ames repeatedly wishes his son Robert can
understand and can see what he means, so his namesake, Jack, also
wishes he could be seen and understood. Ultimately, Ames offers
hope for understanding as a spiritual fire that is present in all:
"When people come to speak to me, whatever they say. I am struck by
a kind of incandescence in them, the 'J' like a flame on a wick,
emanating itself in grief and guilt and joy and whatever else"
(Gilead 44-45). Here, fire re-presents the Christlike qualities
Ames seeks to model in his behavior. It seems simplistic to
sllggest that Ames is witnessing, but just like the spiritua l,
"There Is a Balm in Gilead:' Ames dips into his own civilizatio n
and unites with all the other fiery wicks to glow together in a
spiritual incandescence of jeremiad ic drama~a perpetual
destruction and reconstruction, with all the mystery ofils inex pl
icable separation and restoration. Robinson's use offire imagery to
illustrate the conflicti ng mysteries of both a doomed and
suffering world as well as the fervent gospel of divine grace helps
build her Christian vision, which, in Gilead, glories in the
lamentations of human existence and the hope of fulfilling the
meani ng of that existence with the promise of a new covenant, one
which becomes miraculous in the very fact that it exists.
Indiana UniverSity-Purdue University Columbus
NOTES
'For an overview of research on the Holy Spirit, see Hinze and
Dabney's Ad\'ellls oflhe Spirit. George T Montague's ch3pter, ~The
Fire in the Word: The Holy Spirit in Scriptu re" offers a summary
of ways the Holy Spirit is represented in biblic3l images. He lists
the Holy Spirit's appear3nces 3S fire, which culminate in Pentecost
(40).
lAs Robinson uses 1956 conventions for referring to this
congregation, so J preserve the use of "Negro" when referring to
this congregation and her characters.
)While J do not have space to build the argument here, I see
Gilead as ajeremiad
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RACE AND THEOl.OGY IN GILEAD 279
in the double sense, both a long letter of complaint and
mourning which culminates in transcendence, and as a novel that
participates in the tradition of the American Jeremiad, defined and
developed by Perry Miller in TIle Nell' ElIglami Milld; from
CololIY to Provillce and Sacvan Bercovitch's TI,e Americall
Jeremiad. For a general survey of Puritan writings, see Emory
Elliot's "/Ie Cambridge Introduction to Ear/y American Literature,
and note page 16 of his introduction where he concisely defines the
jeremiad within the larger traditions. See also Betty Mensch's
review of Gilead and George M. Marsden's biography of Jonathan
Edwards in which she traces ways Gilead is about Edwards and
relates to his "objective reality:' I am not trying to engage fully
the sermon genre of the jeremiad in this essay, but I do wish to
use it to help me suggest a connection between the fire imagery and
the spiritual meanings of the novel.
' For an analysis of the myth of the jeremiad for African
Americans, see David Howard-Pitney, TI,e Afro-AmericclIJ Jeremiad;
Appell/sfor Juslice ill America.
sSacvan Bercovitch \."rites, "Replica or mirror-reflection ,
representation or re-presentation: the "or~ makes all the
difference in the world. More precisely, it marks the difference
between this world and the next. And yet the two kinds of speech
are as close as "like" and "alike." They are complementary pieces
in the same game, like rook and bishop. They work together on the
premise that their functions are distinct. [n order to make this as
clear as possible, Church authorities from Augustine through Aqu
inas made that distinction (representation or re presentation) a
central tenet of Christian hermeneutics. By that rule Luther denied
the Pope's right to stand in for Christ. The Holy Roman Empire, he
charged, was a replica of the true church, not a re-presentation of
it. The fact that it claimed to re-present the true church made it
a fa lse replica, hence the Antichrist incarnate. By that rule,
too, Milton justified regicide by appealing directly to Christ, the
true mirror-reflection of God as king as Charles [ (in his view)
was emphatically not. The fact that Charles claimed divine right
disqualified him as representative of heaven's king. It is not too
much to say that the hermeneutics of like-versus alike became a
vehicle of theological and social transformation. Understandably,
the Reformers were charged with blasphemy -- appropriately they
called themselves Protest ants, Dissenters -- but so far as they
were concerned, they had come to fulfill the exegetical law, not to
break it" CA Mode[ ofCu[tura! Transva[uation~).
6Camden points to Julia Kristeva's revisions of Jaques Lacan to
support the paradox.
' Not all reviewers find Gilead inspirational or transcendent.
In his review for the Seallle TImes, Robert Allen Papinchak calls
Ames one-dimensional and his narrative bland and unengaging.
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Fraught with Fire: Race and Theology in Marilynne Robinson's
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