WARNING: CONTAINS SPOLIERS
Early on in Gilead we discover that Jack Boughton was named John Ames Boughton in honour of John Ames, Boughton’s best friend. Ames didn’t know this until the moment he was about to baptise the boy (he’d be told a different name) and so the shock distracted him from feeling the blessing he normally does feel when baptising and which is one of the most important parts of the ministry to him. Boughton seems to be offering his son as son to Ames, a kind of surrogate son, since Ames has no wife (or rather, did, and had a daughter, but they both died shortly after childbirth). Ames does not really want this gesture, and Jack is more of the prodigal son, always in mischief, often alone, and especially playing tricks on Ames, often with a streak of meanness. It is that meanness that renders him a mystery to Ames, who realises he cannot understand Jack, and so tries not to judge him, but finds this difficult, knowing all the bad he’s gotten up to.
Chief among these bad deeds is fathering a child with a poor and uneducated young woman and then abandoning them both to a terrible home. He leaves his car (how can he afford it? His father can’t afford one) with his father and tells him about the child. Ames even wonders if that’s because he knew his family would take care of the child somewhat and thereby prevent him from some of the trouble he might have encountered from the family of the aggrieved young woman.
Yet Jack is his families most beloved, especially his father’s. If Boughton consistently acts as the father figure in the prodigal son – prodigious in love and forgiveness – Jack is Ames’ occasion to struggles at the limits of his ability to love, to refrain from judgement. He does not take the figure of the elder brother, or at least, most of the time. There are feelings of resentment and condemnation, but never given free reign.
Imagine then Ames’ fear as he witnesses the way in which his normally taciturn wife speaks freely with Jack and the way they seem at ease with each other when they seldom are with others. This is part of their shared background in vice about which we are never directly told. She has changed, he, it seems, has not. Only very gradually does Ames realise that he fears Jack will take his place as husband and father when he dies. And at this point Boughton comes over to his house (to underline the point since he can barely walk to his porch) to indirectly warn him that he thinks Jack may have precisely that in mind.
What follows as Ames wrestles with himself is the most phenomenal, almost immoral, act of grace and renunciation. Later in the novel Ames recalls that ‘salvation’ includes the notions of health and healing and restoration, so it is with echoes of Paul’s and Moses’ willingness to renounce their salvation for the sake of the people of God that Ames decides that if his wife comes to love Jack in the way Ames loves his wife then he is happy for them both, for who knows what good may come from such an experience of grace. This is rendered all the more powerful because to explain it Ames recounts how he fell in love with his wife, the way it nearly undid him, the way in which he now sees an ineffable beauty in his wife and child though this is hidden from peoples’ ordinary eyes. In expressing just how much his wife and child mean to him, we see just how much he is renouncing in being willing to hand them over to a disreputable man if his wife is falling in love with Jack.
After this resolution Jack tells Ames he has a wife and child, but she is ‘coloured’, and this has caused them great difficulty in St. Louis where they live because marriage or co-habitation of mixed colours are prohibited and socially scorned. So Jack was not after all preying on Ames’ wife, but simply at ease with her as with so few other people, and perhaps she with him. And Jack is back in Gilead because he thinks perhaps he can get work and bring his family there. Here we see the relevance of the story of Ames’ grandfather, who fought against slavery in the civil war, and of Gilead’s history as being created as a way-station precisely for anti-slavery fighters. Jack wants to know if Boughton could know about his wife and child without dying. Ames can, but he’s not sure if Boughton could, though he suspects so. This ties in with two other themes. First, Ames is more progressive due to his knowledge of the town’s history. His brother and father leave and urge him to leave the town as being parochial and unworthy of effort, but by knowing why the town was created and what happened (for instance, that there used to be a coloured church there though no longer, though before leaving they gave their (peace?) lilies to Ames), Ames can see the value of the town and its people, as well as being less racist. Only with knowledge of the past can the future be hopefully constructed.
The second theme is Ames’ claim that his wild, and wildly holy, grandfather’s holiness has rubbed off on him. Again history is powerfully present, the more so for being acknowledged. And though earlier in the narrative Ames seems uncomfortable with his grandfather, near the end he begins to realise that his grandfather’s message was true. The town is perishing because it hasn’t recognised its purpose (of racial reconciliation). Or, in the theological language of his grandfather, the town is being punished for not seeing and obeying the purposes of the Lord.
The father of Jack’s wife, Della, also a minister, mistakenly thinks Jack descended from Ames’ grandfather because of the name sharing. Jack doesn’t disabuse him of this idea, thinking it will redound to his credit. So Jack in fact claims sonship to Ames, confirming his real father’s original desire and intention. Jack recounts this to Ames, as part of his ‘confession’ of his story to the old minister. In understanding Jack’s plight, Ames finally comes to love and forgive and understand Jack, and to accept him as a son. Then, shortly after, just before Jack leaves, Ames expresses his wish to bless Jack. And so Ames finally blesses him in the way he so loves, in the way that is near the core of his conception of the ministerial vocation, feeling the grace of God in the one he is touching. This has echoes of Irenaeus’ doctrine of recapitulation, as Ames utters not only the standard benediction from Numbers (standard does not mean inappropriate or unfeeling) but also adds his own personal prayer, summing up Jack’s life as ‘beloved son and brother and husband and father.’ It is as if Ames wants to heal his life so far, restore him from his weariness, strengthen him for the journey ahead. Jack leaves on the bus and we have no idea whether the blessing makes any difference to his life, as we cannot know whether his baptism did.
So at the end of the novel there is no easy resolution, no cheap grace. Jack has left his father just as he is dying and the family converging on the house. Only Ames knows that he has finally heard from his wife after waiting for months, only Ames knows how difficult it would be to be in the house full of families but not be able to share his own. So Jack, for good reasons, is committing what seems his worst act so far. Yet perhaps in doing so he can finally live with his wife and child. Gilead has forgotten its roots and cannot be the home Jack hoped for; it costs Jack a great deal to relinquish that hope. Ames has the knowledge to resolve him but not the permission to tell. Ames finally loves Jack as Boughton meant him to, but Boughton is no longer conscious and so will never know the kinship finally established between his most beloved friend and son. Such resolution as is found is a small and fragmentary grace.
‘Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don’t have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see. Only, who could have the courage to see it?’
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