FICTION
Across chasms
MAITREYEE SAHA GANAPATHY
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Written with humour, intelligent self-reflection and with love, Gilead, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for 2005, is the story of an ethical man who found fulfilment in his calling.
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Gilead, Marilynne Robinson, Virago, p.256, $23.
EXCEPT for two years of college and seminary, Gilead, has been, for three quarters of a century, home to preacher John Ames. Ames is dying (he has a failing heart) and the prairie and this shabby little town in Iowa, which no one could persuade him to leave, will now probably see the last of the three generations of Ames.
John Ames is leaving behind his wife who is almost half his age and a son who is not quite seven summers old. One of his main regrets is his failing to set aside any financial wealth which could sustain the family after he is gone. The blessing and happiness came "so late in life" that "there was no way to make any changes".
Explaining oneself
"A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still be nothing between them but loyalty and love and mutual incomprehension". Devoted as they are to each other now, the circumstances in the case of the protagonist will hardly allow this chasm of "incomprehension" to be bridged. However, there is a letter meant for the young boy to read when he grows up. By then he is likely to have only a vague remembrance of his father and the times would have changed greatly. The letter then would help focus on the person his father was and the times he lived in.
The epistolary form in which the novel is written is many things rolled into one. Written with humour, intelligent self-reflection and with love, it is the story of three generations of men living in a critical time in the history of America as also about the preacher's own faith, vocation and his experience. Linked to this is the unfolding drama involving his best friend's son and namesake John Ames Boughton.
Complex testament
Christian theology and Church are central to the theme. That is hardly surprising given Robinson's own interest in theology and the mid-western American ministries that had promoted women's rights and integrated churches and communities. Although through his letter, the preacher wants only to give a "reasonably candid testament" to his better self, the contemplative nature of Ames makes it a more complex matter than that. Ingrained in it is his longing for the life he will be missing, his struggle with truth, insecurities and failings.
Ames remembers his grandfather as a radical minister and a fiery abolitionist, not unlike a number of them in his time. He is educated and passionate but in the changed times, he is better remembered for his eccentricities. He was chaplain for the Union army and lost one eye in the battle but for him "blessed meant to be bloodied". There are humorous incidents of his generosity. He would give away anything to the needy even if it meant pilfering from his own house. Ames recalls how his mother would make him wear his church clothes all the time so he (the grandfather) couldn't get at them.
Unlike his grandfather, his father and Ames turned pacifists after the Civil War. Ames' father is reserved and Ames himself more inward and contemplative. The voice is unaffectedly simple, warm and kind although sometimes a little sad. It is also the voice of a good, honest ethical man who chose to stay in a non-descript town and found fulfilment in his calling. But his goodness too is put to test when John Boughton comes to Gilead, bearing with him a secret which he is not able to tell his own father. The plot is brilliantly executed, the way it confronts us with the preacher's own fears and fragility.
Matters of faith
Often enough in the book Ames discusses matters of religion and faith, predicting many doubts and questions his son will have. Ames' brother, Edward, had turned into an atheist and Ames is extremely well read and aware of debates on belief and religion. "... They want me to defend religion, and they want me to give them `proofs'," he says at one point. "I just won't do it. It only confirms them in their scepticism. Because nothing true can be said about God from a posture of defense... ."
This is Robinson's second novel; the first written a good 25 years ago. For those who were captivated by Housekeeping, it has been a wait worth its while. In the interim, Robinson published Mother Country, a book-length investigative essay about the British government's gross mismanagement of a large nuclear reprocessing plant. This was in 1989. Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought was published nine years later. Gilead has won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It is also the winner of the 2005 National Book Critics Circle Award.
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