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Summary
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 Ames recalls last night, when he said that someday he might be gone. He was talking to an unnamed “you,” who seems to be his child. In response to the child’s questions (“where” and “why”), John explains that he will go to be with the Good Lord, because he is old. He adds that his child might have a very different life at that point, and that “there are many ways to live a good life.” He admires his little son’s look of “furious pride,” so like his wife’s, and thinks that he’ll miss those looks.
Right away, the novel establishes that the protagonist, John Ames, doesn’t expect to live long. Moreover, though John is “old,” he has a son who’s young enough to struggle with the concept of his father’s impending death. This detail prompts the reader’s curiosity, since it suggests that John had a child at an unusually late stage in life, and that he hasn’t gotten to enjoy very many years with his son. It also establishes tension, as the father clearly wants to use what little time he has to prepare his son for life—a life he probably won’t be there to see or guide for himself.
Themes
John reflects that it’s silly to think that the dead miss anything. If his son reads this letter after he’s grown up, as John intends, then John will already have been dead a long time. By that time, he’ll know most of what there is to know about being dead.
Throughout the novel, John reflects frankly about death. Though he doesn’t seem to fear death, he’s also honest that he doesn’t entirely know what to expect from the experience. He even has a curious and gently whimsical tone when he reflects on death, like when he muses that by the time his son reads this, John will have lots of firsthand experience with being dead. At this point, it also becomes clear that Gilead is written in epistolary form—that is, in a series of letters (or one very long letter) from John to his future adult son.
Themes
Over the years, so many people have asked John what death is like, sometimes when they’re on the cusp of death themselves. When he was a young man, even elderly people would ask him this question, seeming sure that he knew. Back then, he’d tell them that death was like going home, that we don’t have a home in this world. But then he’d walk home to his old house and make himself coffee and a sandwich while listening to the radio.
Evidently, John’s line of work involves being with people when they’re near death. Because of his role, people assume that he has clear and certain answers about death. This also suggests that most people seek answers about death and that those questions feel more pressing as people age. When John was younger, he would give people a rather unsatisfying, stock answer to their questions about death. He recognizes a tension here: that even though he told people that the world isn’t a true home, he finds comfort in his own home and familiar routine.
Themes
John asks his son if he remembers this house—he must, at least a little bit. John has lived in this house, a parsonage, for most of his life. Most family friends and relatives also lived in parsonages. He used to think this parsonage was the worst of them all—so drafty and dreary—but that was because he lived alone and didn’t feel at home in the world. Now he does.
Throughout John’s letter, he moves from one subject to another in a stream-of-consciousness way. Talking about home in general leads him to reflect on this house in particular. It’s a parsonage, or a house that a church provides for its minister and, usually, the minister’s family. This confirms what John’s earlier talk about caring for people on their deathbed implied: that he’s a Christian minister. John, however, seems to have spent many years in this parsonage living alone. Since then, something has changed—and his view of the world has changed with it.
Themes
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John knows his heart is failing. He figures this is to be expected at his age, and he’s grateful for his life. He only regrets that he has so little to leave behind for his wife and son—just some old books, and no money to speak of. If he’d known he would become a father, he would have set aside more. That’s the main thing John wants to tell his son—that he regrets the hard times he and his mother will surely go through.
John shifts the subject back to the present. His heart condition means that he can’t expect to live very long. He wouldn’t mind so much, it seems, if it weren’t for the fact that he’ll leave behind his wife and son. Again, John implies that his wife and son came into his life unexpectedly, making his final years much different than he’d planned.
Themes
