Gilead

Light represents many things to John. He observes, “I have paid a good deal of attention to light, but no one could begin to do it justice” (51). Light is an expression of the beauty of physical existence. Light has weight and presence; it interacts with the physical world, bringing peace and joy. John is attentive to light at all hours; he loves to go to his church before dawn and watch the morning light come through the windows. John also observes a divine light, an “incandescence” (53), within people. John feels that it is a privilege of being in the ministry to witness a “twinkling” in peoples’ eyes and see the incandescent loveliness in their being. John likens this inner light to the human soul: “a single light within the great general light of existence” (119).

Light also heralds everlasting existence. John believes that “[o]ur dream of life will end as dreams do end, abruptly and completely, when the sun rises, when the light comes” (104). Light represents truth that will expose all falsehoods. John’s Pentecost sermon describes light as life and transformation, a brief “radiance” breathed onto this “grey ember of Creation” by the Lord (247).

The sermon John preaches on the rainy Pentecost Sunday in 1947, the day Lila first comes to church, is about “light, or Light” (162). But on the final page of his letter, John clarifies that the sermon is also about transfiguration: If one is willing to see and has courage, the world can “shine like transfiguration” (247). Pentecost is observed 50 days after Easter Sunday and celebrates the Holy Spirit descending on the Apostles, enabling them to speak in tongues. This Pentecost is a day of transformation for John that “beggars his hopes and his deserving” (203). After this day, John’s hopes are answered, his loneliness ends, and he is given a son.

The Pentecost sermon means a great deal to Lila. She finds it in John’s boxes of sermons and wraps it with a ribbon for John’s birthday. She warns him not to revise it, saying, “It don’t need revising” (185-86), and then kisses him. The sermon also marks a transformation for Lila. Like John’s life, Lila’s life changes that day, giving her the settled home and love she seeks.

Burning is a recurring motif in Gilead. Burning is destructive, a way of wiping things out of existence, leaving no trace or legacy. John burns his father’s letter, commenting, “There was a rightness to seeing nonsense and frustration fall into the flames” (155). Yet John worries that the letter to his son might get lost or burned, suggesting he has a fear of his son destroying this legacy, burning his letter as John burned his father’s.

John contemplates burning his boxes of sermons, saying, “if I don’t burn them, someone else will sometime and that’s another humiliation” (40). Yet John doesn’t truly want to destroy them because they are his life’s work and he hopes that his son will read them. By the completion of his letter, John can let go of his attachment to the sermons. He plans to ask Lila to have the deacons help burn them, saying, “they mattered or they didn’t and that’s the end of it” (245), showing that John is more at peace with moving on.

Fire can also reflect malicious intent: The African American church is set on fire. The grandfather’s grave looks like a place where someone tried to smother a fire, reflecting his own efforts to smother the fire at the African American church and his association with fire and lightning. The grandfather’s brand of religion is fiery and exhorts people to war, albeit for a righteous cause. His church tapestry reflects his belief that war is a cleansing force: “The Lord is a Purifying Fire” (99).

Similarly, John burns the one sermon “he wouldn’t mind answering for in the next world” (43), which argues that the Spanish influenza that killed many young men “rescued” them from murdering others in World War I. Though the sermon appears pacifist, it seems to support a kind of purifying eradication through illness. John is unable to deliver the sermon, remarking that he does not want to inflict more sadness on his congregation. It also reflects his unwillingness to embrace the same kind of philosophy as his grandfather.

Things that are buried, however, are sanctified. John’s mother buries the grandfather’s bloody shirts—aware that the father’s favorite scripture, Isaiah 9:5, instructs that “garments rolled in blood shall be for burning, for fuel of fire” (80). She believes burning them would be disrespectful. John disagrees. Men bury the bibles and hymnals from the burned church in two graves, praying over them and blessing them. John views being buried in Gilead as a blessing and an act of his love for the town. Things that are buried can be brought forth again in this world or the next. Things that are burned are gone forever.

Like light, water has both physical and spiritual significance for John. He agrees with atheist philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach that the natural purity and clarity of water represents the “spotless nature of the Divine Spirit” (43) and makes it the perfect vehicle to convey a blessing. In fact, water seems made “primarily for blessing, and only secondarily for growing vegetables or doing the wash” (28). Water showering from a tree limb or enjoyed under a sprinkler is equally “miraculous” (63).

John associates water with joy, blessing, and transformation. He recalls a dream in which his grandfather throws a hatful of water over him and Boughton, leaving them transformed, standing in a river “shining like the apostles” (203). Conferring the holy sacrament of baptism to an infant is like “making an electrical connection” (63). Water is the vehicle that allows John to feel the sacredness of the individual and be blessed in turn.

Baseball represents John’s former youth and vitality, and his loneliness. As a young man, John played baseball in high school, college, and seminary. He associates the game with the strength and agility that he no longer has. Now he feels both pleasure and regret when he sees his son play ball with Jack. During his lonely time, when John survived on “books and baseball and fried egg sandwiches” (54), baseball connected him to the outside world via the staticky radio and inspired profound inner thoughts. God permeates the physical world for John, and he finds God in baseball as well, describing some conversational confessions in the context of a baseball game. John uses baseball as a simile for the transition from death to eternal life, comparing 1 Corinthians 15:52, being transformed in a “twinkling of an eye,” to “going up for a line drive when you’re young” (142). This again shows John’s profound connection to his physical life and his hopes that heaven won’t be much different.

Baseball is also a safe and shared subject to discuss with Boughton and Jack, a buffer against awkward conversation. It is something untainted and unaffected by dissent or conflict, which is why John so happily remembers playing a game of flies and grounders with Edward.