Relationships

Often we can learn a lot about a character through his relationship with another character or characters. Discuss a relationship you see between two characters in "Gilead" and what the relationship tells you about the characters and the novel as a whole. 

Starting the "Gilead", I find the authors connection to his father to be a really interesting relationship. His father has since then passed away, all of his accounts and experiences with him being in the past tense. Even though these accounts are in the past tense, it seems as though his father is still there, which I attribute to his belief. In his fist introduction of his father he says, "my father was a man who acted from principal, as he said himself. He acted from faithfulness to the truth as he saw it. But something in the way he went about it made him disappointing from time to time, and not just to me." As he continues to develop what his relationship with his father is, it seems that he really looks up to his father and wants to follow in his footsteps although he originally described him as being a disappointment. There is one moment when he says that he wants to get his father's attention while he was in the midst of prayer, so he "took his hand and kissed it." This action took me by surprise, as in today's society you don't usually kiss other peoples hands, let alone your parents. In my eyes, it is a really intimate action and by doing so, shows how deeply connected they are spiritually. Most of the connection I see here comes from religion and their belief, his father was a preacher and himself following in his footsteps in becoming a preacher. Differences in belief however, created a stress between father and son and develop the son into who he is and ultimately the book as he is the narrator. The father had a very narrow view on how religion should be followed, being very true to the Bible and letting very few distract from it's words. The son however, had a more lax view on their religion, letting it to be more open for interpretation and inclusive. There is one story that really shows this divide, and I feel like marks the divergence from a very religious view to a more open one. The narrator tells the reader how he once was  baptizing a litter of kittens, this ceremony being open to all in his more open faith. When asking his father about what would happen to cats who were baptized, to which "he replied that the Sacraments must always be treated and regarded with the greatest respect." As the book continues on, we come to find that these differences in faith shape how the novel is written, creating a more open feel to the book, which doesn't completely exclude those who don't have a faith. The more flexible interpretation that is brought by the son/narrator makes the story more accessible to all, which in the eyes of a preacher would be what they want. They want people to know their faith and spread it around the world, so by this newly found relaxed faith of the son, it becomes more interesting and enjoyable for those who don't believe or have a weak belief. This new way of faith is showing that the son is a new generation of preacher and that the world is changing. It gives you the sense that as the story develops, the ways of faith will be altered and change into modern beliefs of today.