Gilead Prompt #1

In literature, there are many ways to develop a character and an equal number of methods to convey the defining characteristics to the reader. There is direct characterization, with physical descriptions and conversations and actions implemented with the purpose to flesh out a character. There is also indirect characterization, what other characters say or think about them, how they treat other characters, etc. Sometimes, a tool authors use to describe a character, is through their relationship with another character. This method not only sheds light on the characters but can also reveal key thematic and plot elements – something that is very true in Marilynne Robinson’s “Gilead”. The main character and narrator, Congregationalist minister John Ames’s relationship with his son, the person he is writing the letter to which is how the book is written, explains much about John and also what is to come later on in the story. This method of characterization is implemented from the beginning with John Ames announcing up front, “You reached up and put your fingers on my lips and gave me that look I never saw on any other face besides your mother’s. It’s a kind of furious pride, very passionate and stern. I’m always a little surprised to find my eyebrows unsinged after I’ve suffered one of those looks. I will miss them,” (3). Within these lines the author has revealed much about the characters and the course of the story. We learn that this is a letter, a retrospective, a dying man’s letter to his son. We learn that John Ames is an introspective man, thoughtful, caring and emotional. With this passage following the recounting of his son firing questions at him, we learn that he is a teacher and mentor to his son as all parents are, and that this extended letter is a continuation of that advice, an ideal that will occur again and again.

              Further on in the novel, more and more of the characters are exposed through description of the father and son’s relationship. On page 19, John Ames writes, “There was more to it, of course. For me writing has always felt like praying, even when I wasn’t writing prayers, as I was often enough. You feel that you are with someone. I feel that I am with you now, whatever that can mean, considering that you’re only a little fellow and when you’re a man you might find these letters of no interest,” (19). His uncertainty of the future, or what his child will grow to be and think, hints at somewhat of a distance between the two characters a slight disconnect. This is enhanced by Ames’s reference to his feeling of closeness to his son while writing, noting that it does not make logical sense. It reflects on the observer position that Ames takes throughout the book, a closeness but never fully there, a constant partial-detachment. Like an outsider looking in trying to derive meaning from what he sees. Similar description comes on page 29, “I’m sorry you are alone. You are a serious child, with not much occasion to giggle, or to connive. You are shy of other children. I see you standing up on your swing, watching some boys about your age out in the road,” (29-30). Again we are introduced to Ames as an observer, watching the actions of his son and discovering what he can from them; and within his dying account, releasing all these observations, thoughts and discoveries back to his son. Along the lines of this form of characterization is when John is lamenting over his inability to leave his wife and child with anything of value or substance, noting, “And still it shames me to think that I will leave you and your mother so naked to the world – dear Lord, I think, spare them that blessing,” (31). Once again, indirectly through subtle inferences we learn more of Ames’s stance and where he is coming from and also where the letter is going to go. He doesn’t have anything to leave behind for his wife and child and so he is leaving them this, this letter, these words; and thus the rest of the book with include the things he wants to leave behind with them, the things he wants them to retain after he is gone.

              Throughout the first half of the book, countless passages begin with the words “I wish”, they are then followed by some hope he has for his family or wish for the world or thought to be heard. It seems as though Ames is laying out his hopes and his dreams to his son, leaving them and this world with a final prayer in the form of a letter. Along with his dreams, Ames hopes to leave his knowledge, his fatherly wisdom with his son. As on page 39 he writes, “You can love a bad book for its haplessness or pomposity or gall, if you have that starveling appetite for things human, which I devoutly hope you will never have. “The full south loatheth an honeycomb; but to the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet.” There are pleasures to be found where you would never look for them. That’s a bit of fatherly wisdom, but it’s also the Lord’s truth, and a thing I know from my own long experience,” (39). John Ames is sentimental, and wishes to leave behind some part of his with his son. This, as occurs many times throughout the beginning of the novel, is the passing of knowledge and experience from father and son. Its continued reoccurrence also hints that it might be the heart and soul of the letter, all things we wants to say and pass on to his son, and having gotten to know John Ames much more thoughts as such will be shared as the novel progresses. The characterization continues in this way, and many others – painting an expansive and all-encompassing depiction of the characters involved and where the story is headed.

Charming Billy Prompt #2

Although the novel “Charming Billy”, by Alice McDermott, is named after the enigmatic, indeed charming, Billy Lynch; and, while the novel, beginning at the funeral services for the beloved Billy, the story goes on to chronicle the life events of Billy and those around him. While the next, most prominent character would most likely be Billy’s best friend Dennis, there is one character whose impact on the story itself and its meaning I feel, is far more reaching and substantial: Eva. The simple, beautiful Irish girl who Billy met the summer he had returned from the war out on Long Island, who was nannying with her sister Mary for a wealthy family. As the summer days slipped away, Eva solidified her place in Billy’s heart and in her departure, took it with her.

 

            We are first introduced to Eva as Billy’s loved ones are recounting stories of his life and recalling memories, both the good and the bad. We come to know her as the girl who stole Billy’s heart and died too young from pneumonia after returning home to Ireland. All seemingly innocent enough, until we learn that she never did die. She used the $500, that Billy had worked tirelessly for in order to bring her back to the States, to open a gas station with her husband and never replying to Billy’s letters to her family – continuing to spend her years with her husband and four children.

 

            Although most character development occurred indirectly through her effect on Billy and his life and second-hand stories and details uncovered by the narrator – Dennis’s daughter – we are introduced to Eva in the flesh in one chapter out on the Long Island Shore and only once more in her home town of Clonmel. We get some physical description when the boys, picking up the girls for their date, not, “Eva sat at the near end of the table, her back to them, and as she turned at their entrance they saw she had Sally, the 5 year old, on her lap. Eva, too, wore a dress. It had capped sleeves and a rounded neck and there was nothing more beautiful than the way she turned in her chair and smiled up at them over the little girls head,” (79). Besides the obvious physical appeal that attracted Billy, there is a line that offers a more complete description of the character that is the beautiful Eva, and Billy’s unwavering draw to her. After meeting Mary and Eva the previous day on the beach the narrator recounts of Billy, “when did he fall in love with her? Probably it was the day before, before she had even come clearly into his view. But that afternoon he fell in love with the rest of his life, and that was better still,” (76). And so, it becomes increasingly clear that although Eva does not have an actual presence in the story line, her influence is far reaching and can be found throughout the novel.   

 

            Once this level of understanding is established, traces of Eva’s influence can be found everywhere. For instance, the heartbreak, which Eva caused Billy, fostered his connection to Maeve’s dad and then to Maeve herself. On one of Maeve’s visits to Holtzman’s shoe store it is said, “looking on, Maeve saw her father’s future with this kind and attentive young man before she had the courage to imagine her own…she saw that only through her father’s life, which was all the life she had planned to know, would he gain any part in hers,” (132). Billy’s loss of Eva and resulting love of drink linked him to Maeve’s father who suffered from the same afflictions, subsequently linked him to Maeve and established what would come; none of which happening without Eva. Similar to this is all the pain he caused Maeve. She notes, that near the end she had a thousand and one memories, ones she would never share of the terrible things that had happened between her and Billy, things he had done and said. Things, which, “she couldn’t begin to tell, because even just putting it into words would kill her,” (157). A pain, which started with Eva, that consumed Billy, brought so much pain to the woman who had loved Billy unconditionally. At the same token it was often mentioned that if her father wasn’t so troubled, if Maeve hadn’t spent her life taking care of him, and Billy suffering from the same burdens, that she would never have loved Billy the way that she did. Thus, little choices, inconsequential events that shape the future, shape everything that is to come.

 

            As the story continues, everything returns to Eva, her influence felt everywhere. For instance, when talking about how lucky Billy was to find Maeve who was so willing to love and accept him it was said, “so ready to give him her heart and that surely it was a compensation of some sort for what he had lost, for the Irish girl,” (161) Even discussing a relationship to which she is not a part, Eva is still present – that she, from her supposed grave, was the reason that Billy found Maeve. Similarly on page 181 it is mentioned, “what could he have thought of Maeve? After the Irish girl, after that other future, the brightest of them, had shattered in his hand,” (180). And so Eva is created, “the one” for Billy, but not only that, she carried a whole future with her, a whole other world that was taken from Billy when she left. That bright future stripped from his hands, that is what pained Billy so much and that pain set forth all that was to come, Maeve’s pain, late night phone calls to Dennis, etc. The epitome of this ideal comes as Dennis is talking to Billy about how life goes on, “ ‘Life goes on, Billy.’ He said. Billy whispered, ‘I won’t let it.’” (206). He refused to go on, that split decision, that steel resolve to not let go of what could have been, also decided the future, the life he would have, the life that Maeve would have, and on and on.

 

            Ultimately, with Eva only encountered physically once or twice, being fleshed out by Billy’s enduring love and the effects of her early departure and their evaporated future, Eva rests at the core of the story, all events occurring with some tie to her effect on Billy and his subsequent effect on everyone else. She forms, what to me is the center theme of the novel: influence. That things you are effected by and decisions that you make end up affecting those around you in ways you would never expect. It can be described as somewhat of a web, a chain of interconnected causes and effects. Eva to Billy. Billy to Maeve ad therefore Maeve’s father, Billy to Dennis and this his daughter and Irish Mary, and his sisters and the girls that pined for his heart – one event, one decision, inevitably forms what is to come, it shapes time, it shapes everything after.