Since an argument can be made that this novel is really a long character study, I'm curious what everyone thought of the narrator. He's old and wise, but also clearly flawed. What do you make of his flaws? Are they forgivable? Did he resolve them?
What of his tendency to illustrate his points with religion - did John come off as too "preachy" to you?
What about the role of religion in this book? We're not an overly religious group of people, so I'm curious to what extent this may have affected your reading of the novel. Also, I sensed a very clear line drawn here between religion and faith. (And there's a question in there somewhere. I'm just not entirely sure yet what it is...)
What about the role of racism and slavery in this book?
What about the importance of names in Gilead - both namesakes and those characters who are never (or hardly ever) named?
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To be honest, the "religion" really did put me off at first. However, in the end, I don't think this book is that religious. It's about a religious person who comes from a religious family. However, I think the book is more spiritual than religious and is more about regret and forgiveness and life and death than it is about preaching anything to its reader--my initial very big concern. I am really interesting to see everyone else's take on the religiosity of the novel though.
ReplyDeleteI'm one of those assholes that says he's not religious but he IS spiritual, and as such I found a great deal of comfort in the narrator's sense of self. He knows he's not perfect, peppering his criticisms of others with self-imposed rebukes like "I'm not complaining. Or I ought not to be" (122).
ReplyDeleteSo often religion (or religiousness) gets lumped in with piety, prosthelytizing, self-righteousness and so on (and sometimes rightfully so), so I found it refreshing to read from the perspective of a man of God who expects perfection neither from his flock or from himself.
Speaking of his character, I loved how often Robinson's Ames drew a nifty throughline between literary interpretation and sermonizing. The sermons he prepared throughout seemed well-matched to the struggles he was going through (Hagar and Ishmael, for starters), and I got the sense he enjoyed Donne not only for his fire and brimstone, but also because dude could write. He also question's one of his father's sermons on the grounds it "strain[s] interpretation" (36), which is a very English major sort of thing to do. He could have been at least as good a professor as his brother I bet.
(Sorry if this rambles and I don't contribute much over the next few days; I'm in Chicago and squeezing this in between an art museum and a 5k, and today's our "light" day. Great choice for a book--poetic and quite graceful.)