Fathers, Son, and Spiritual Doubles:

The relationship of John Ames and Jack Boughton in Marilynne Robinson's novel Gilead

As John Ames, the protagonist of Marilynne Robinson's epistolary novel Gilead, struggles to come to terms with his life, he frequently reflects upon the troubled relationship he had with his close friend and fellow clergy member Rev. Boughton. Ames' first wife died in childbirth and Ames feels a sense of jealousy and sublimated anger towards Jack, Boughton's son and Ames' namesake (Boughton's son has the full name of John Ames "Jack" Boughton). The novel's chronicle of Ames' personal history keeps returning to Boughton until it concludes with Ames finally forgiving Jack, the only man in his life he ever really detested. Robinson said of her novel's religious themes: "The first obligation of religion is to maintain the sense of the value of human beings. If you had to summarize the Old Testament, the summary would be: stop doing this to yourselves" (Fay). Ames must surrender his grudge and also his guilt for having a grudge for so long.

Ames dislikes Jack because Jack got a young woman pregnant and left her; the woman, like his second wife Lila was from a poor, impoverished background. At the time Boughton thought that his friend might not have any more children so he named Jack after Ames so that Ames might have a namesake. "That was a pretty bitter joke given how hard his parents took the embarrassments he exposed them to. And it was harder for them because of the way they had of printing the entire name. It was always John Ames Boughton" (Robinson 70). This implies that he was embarrassed as well, notes Ames, by the actions of Jack. While Boughton's other siblings distinguished the family, Jack became the black sheep, who never did anything worthwhile with his existence in Ames' view.

Of course, as well as resentment that his friend had a son and the misuse of his name, the fact that Lila, Ames' second wife, is also technically 'lower class' is yet another reason he resents Jack. Jack's escapades are too close for comfort in Ames' view. "Jack Boughton had no business involving himself with that girl. It was something no honorable man would have done" (Robinson 157). Jack is called the prodigal son, the one that "caused so much disappointment without ever giving anyone any grounds for hope ... the lost sheep, the lost coin" (Robinson 91). Jack forms a kind of second identity for Ames, doing all the things that the devout, conservative Ames would never do under most normal circumstances, such as having sex with unacceptable women. Yet Ames' own sexual history is far more checkered than his Republican, conservative self-image might suggest. The purpose of the book arises out of Ames' desire to write to the son of his much younger wife, after all, and in some ways it could be said that he has committed the same sins as Jack, his surrogate son, having a relationship with a woman of a different class and background than himself.

Ames' conservatism is also a departure from the tradition of both of his fathers so he too, much like Jack, could be said to have betrayed the older generation. His grandfather was a follower of John Brown, a radical abolitionist, and preached with a gun in his hand from the pulpit. His father was an ardent pacifist. His grandfather in particular, much like Jack, seems another second self, another unlived life and unexplored identity that Ames himself was reluctant to assume. He remembers his grandfather as a "wild-haired, one-eyed, scrawny old fellow with a crooked beard, like a paintbrush left to dry with lacquer in it" (Robinson 79). The grandfather's fanaticism, rather than providing him with any peace left him "stricken and afflicted...like a man everlastingly struck by lightning, so that there was an ashiness about his clothes and his hair never settled and his eye had a look of tragic alarm when he wasn't actually sleeping. He was the most unreposeful human being I ever knew except for certain of his friends" (Robinson 47). In contrast to his grandson, who seems to be peacefully content with his ministry and unwilling to rock the boat (Ames says that he will vote for Eisenhower if he lives), he comes from a long line of rabble-rousers.

His description of his grandfather also highlights the paradox of being a passionate man. By the standards of today, Ames' grandfather is clearly on the right side of history. Ames, however, is clearly taken aback by his grandfather's deep, emotional connection to God. His grandfather clearly believes he is doing the Lord's work but Ames' way of relating to God's divine presence is more cautious and less passionate. There is also a parallel between not only Ames and Jack but also his grandfather and Jack, since Jack ultimately becomes involved in an interracial relationship with an African-American woman and has a child with her. He is, given the prejudices of the 1950s, engaging in his own John Brown-like behavior by transgressing racial barriers. Ames, however, is repelled by such intensity rather than embraces it. His relationship with God is much quieter. While he loves his life and regrets the fact he will soon be leaving it his spirituality is not overstated. His personal philosophy is not to rock the boat of his current environment.

This conflict between fundamentally good men can even be seen in the relationship between Ames' father (also called John Ames) and Ames' grandfather. Although the elder John Ames was a liberal theologian, he was a pacifist and his worldview clashed with that of the revolutionary fervor of Ames' grandfather. Ultimately, Ames grandfather left the house and died far away from his loved ones. Political and racial tensions, just like sexual tensions, can cause divisions within families, just as they do for the Boughtons. Although John Ames is jealous of his friend, in Gilead, every family in some way experiences some sort of regret and challenges between the older and younger generations.

Despite his personal prejudices, Ames is not absent of grace in the ways that he relates to others: he is still capable of experiencing a sense of profound revelation when he perceives God in the universe and that softens some of the prejudices he feels to individuals such as Jack. He calls grace "a sort of ecstatic fire that takes things down to essential," and these essentials enable him to escape the limits of his perspective as an Eisenhower-supporting Republican in a Midwestern town (Robinson 195). This is the meaning of the novel's title: even a small, Midwestern town in Iowa can be a Biblical Gilead and show resonance with the eternal.

Only through his interactions with Jack does Ames finally understand the parable of the prodigal son. Although he initially cannot accept Jack's love and regrets what he sees as the stain Jack has brought to his name, ultimately he is able to accept and forgive the young man. In the end it is not Jack who fails Gilead but rather Gilead who fails Jack as they are unable to accept his biracial family. Although Ames seems like a reliable narrator at first, the reader gradually comes to understand the extent to which even he, a good man, is still subject to the prejudices of the town where he has grown up. Ames himself is not prejudiced but he is surprised and saddened by the lack of acceptance for Jack, including by his own family. The struggle of his abolitionist grandfather must still be waged. Just as his grandfather was frustrated at the failure to honor the promise of Reconstruction, Jack is disappointed by the lack of progress in his own town, although he ends the book on a happy note. "I'll pray and then I'll sleep," he writes, his faith still strong (Robinson 245). Eventually he comes to see the connections between his own young wife, who has suffered rejection because of her class status and Jack, who is ostracized because of the race of the woman he loves. "Then here comes Jack Boughton ... He's just about your mother's age. I remember when she lifted her dear face to me to be baptized" (Robinson 91).

Robinson's novel was praised by critics for the seriousness with which it took religious themes like the need for unconditional forgiveness and showed them enacted in a real world, historical context. "What Robinson has given to the world in Gilead is a novel that takes with the fullest seriousness the notion of unconditional love and presents that concept, in exquisite and controlled language, as a question, even as the human face is a question" wrote Lydia McGrew in the Christendom Review. Only through loving the man he once hated the most is Ames redeemed before death (1455 words).

Works Cited

Fay, Sarah. "Marilynne Robinson, The Art of Fiction No. 198." The Paris Review, 186 (2008).

Web. 29 Dec 2015.

McGrew, Lydia. "The Challenge of Forgiveness in Robinson's Gilead." Christendom Review,

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