Gilead

Robinson uses the most dramatic visual break in the narrative text—a full page and a half of white space—before John reveals that Jack has a family. The long break reflects John’s own surprise and need to pause, and marks a new beginning, or new page, in his feelings about Jack. John confides in his son that he is sharing Jack’s story so that his son can “see the beauty there is” (232) in Jack that John himself is now able to see. John no longer fears that Jack will harm his own family, rather the opposite: he feels so badly about Jack’s loss that he wishes he had grounds for his old dread. John treasures his own family and empathizes with Jack’s loss. John thinks he would have “bequeathed him wife and child if I could supply the loss of his own” (233). John’s irritation, suspicion, and jealousy change to pity and love. Now John sees Jack as “looking somehow elegant and brave” as he leaves Gilead for good, his hopes destroyed.

John’s forgiveness is evident in his return to their prior fraught conversation about predestination and salvation. John dials back his former censure and assures Jack that doctrine is different from belief, and that the Greek word for “saved” can also mean “healed” and “restored” (238). John also gives Jack his treasured copy of The Essence of Christianity, which he was originally going to leave to his own son, and so symbolically honors Jack as a son. In blessing Jack—an “honor” (242) worth the sum of his career—John lifts his own burden of guilt and fear and is able to love the son of his old friend like his own. John is transfigured.

Even though John forgives Jack and looks on him now as a true son, there is still a great deal of father-son disappointment in this final section. We learn more about the anger and mutual disappointment behind John’s estrangement from his own father. When John’s father tries to get him to leave Gilead, John is bitter about his father’s seemingly low estimation of his intelligence and misplaced loyalty to dated ideas and “old, unhappy far-off things and battles long ago” (234). John gets defensive, taking umbrage with his father, commenting hotly, “I was never Edward, but I was no fool either” (235). After this encounter, John receives the letter from his father that he alludes to several times throughout his narrative. In it, John’s father chastises John for not having courage to see the “truth” (178) and quotes James 3:5: “Behold how much wood is kindled by how small a fire, and the tongue is a fire” (6). We sense that John’s last words to his father were spoken in anger. John uses the story of this letter to caution his son against speaking in anger, warning, “It could destroy more than you could ever imagine” (6), as it did his relationship with his father. John feels that his father “threw him back on himself and on the Lord,” causing his long loneliness, frustration, and disappointment (236).

Ultimately, John believes he followed the correct path, unlike his father. John self-righteously calls himself the “good son” who “never left his father’s house—even when his father did” (238). This quote also suggests that his father, who would not preach in the church when he visited John, lost his calling, leaving his church and his heavenly “Father,” while John stayed in the church and kept his loyalty to the Lord.

Jack is a source of disappointment for Boughton and for himself as a father. He knows he is hurting Boughton by not sharing his life with him and by leaving as the old man is dying. He is also unable to secure Gilead as a shelter for his family and so fails as a husband and again as a father.

Anti-miscegenation laws play a large part in Jack’s family struggles. Because of anti-miscegenation laws, Jack and Della cannot legally live together or have children in the states where they live. The term “miscegenation” refers to the mixing of races through marriage, sexual relations, cohabitation, or having children. In the United States, laws against miscegenation date back to colonial times. There was no single, national US anti-miscegenation law, rather individual states—particularly southern states—enacted their own regulations. Such laws prohibited interracial relationships, primarily those between whites and African Americans, but some also barred whites from marrying Native Americans and Asians. It was a felony to marry outside one’s race, and those caught were usually arrested for adultery or fornication. The term “miscegenation” was first used by journalists in 1863 during the Civil War, with the intent of damaging the abolitionist movement by stirring up fears about potential interracial marriages should slavery be abolished. After World War II, 38 states still had miscegenation laws. In 1956, when Gilead takes place, both Tennessee and Missouri, two states Jack and Della live in, still had anti-miscegenation laws in force. These laws were not overturned until 1967, when the US Supreme Court declared all such laws unconstitutional.