I believe this novel, in fact, represents a sort of culmination of Robinson’s fictional explorations, or at least those that have been present in the Gilead series. Thus he becomes an ideal vehicle for Robinson to explore her own theological and existential concerns. Given this, who can blame Jack for feeling like the universe is at best indifferent to his existence? Contrary to the universe, though, Jack is totally incapable of assuming sublime indifference toward himself. This means that the one pure blessing Jack has been given in life – the one thing that might finally confirm God’s love for him – is endlessly entangled in almost unendurable complications.
Louis, offering a love that wasn’t just taboo during that era, but was actually punishable by jail time.
I only say it that way because it underscores the somewhat absurd irony contained in this novel – that when a form a redemption finally crosses Jack Boughton’s path, it comes to him in the form of a young black woman in mid-twentieth century St. I apologize if that last sentence sounds like I took it from the back cover of a hackneyed romance novel. Jack honestly identifies himself as a scoundrel and inveterate thief, a man for whom kindness and good manners represent the highest virtues he is capable of yet because he can’t believe in a gracious God who might save him from himself, he sees no possible remedy for his existential crisis.Įxcept perhaps in the arms of a forbidden love. Like a modern Augustine, he has a talent for honest self-examination and confession unlike Augustine, he is unable (sometimes irritatingly so) to find any measure of rest for his heart in the love of God – so tightly wound is he within his own web of self-recrimination. Moreover, many of Robinson’s readers might be hesitant about delving even further into Jack Boughton’s troubled life and mind. In the latter, Jack’s strained yet affectionate relationships with his father Robert and his sister Glory are so meticulously wrought, one might think that another novel focusing on his character would be incapable of telling us anything new. In the former novel we see him through the wary and circumspect eyes of John Ames, Gilead’s Congregational pastor for whom he was named, and for whom he is a source of personal, even theological, anxiety. Readers of Marilynne Robinson’s novels Gilead and Home will undoubtedly have well-formed images in their heads of the character John Ames “Jack” Boughton.
0 kommentar(er)
