Obama Finds a Balm in Gilead

I’ve been meaning to write for a while on Marilynne Robinson’s mesmerizing 2006 novel Gilead. I learned recently that it is one of Barack Obama’s favorite novels, which gives me an opportunity to explore how a work of literature impacts someone that we all have a stake in.

This isn’t meant to be a review so I’ll just say briefly mention the book’s plot and texture before saying why I’m very glad to hear that a president of the United States appreciates this book.

Gilead comes to us in the form of a letter that a 76-year-old Congregationalist minister in small-town Iowa is writing to his young son to read when he grows up. John Ames has a heart condition and knows that he doesn’t have much time left, so he wants to pass on both family history and fatherly advice. The letter also becomes a chance for him to reflect upon his own life, especially his troubled relationship with John Ames Boughton, his godson and son of his best friend, the town’s Presbyterian minister.

What I like about the book is its depth and humanity. Ames is constantly wrestling with issues of doubt and faith, human fallibility and forgiveness, heartache and grace. He turns to thinkers of the past to try to make sense of life in ways that I can relate to. (Of course, I turn mostly to poets.) The thinkers include St. Paul, Augustine, and the atheist philosopher Feuerbach. Here’s a sample passage that touches on the “vale of tears” that has been Ames’s life, which includes losing a young wife and daughter in childbirth 50 years before:

Augustine says the Lord loves each of us as an only child, and that has to be true: “He will wipe the tears from all faces.” It takes nothing from the loveliness of the verse to say that is exactly what will be required.

Obama surely took note of the mixed race relationship in the book. Ames has never forgiven Boughton, his godson, for knocking up a woman and then abandoning her years ago. When Boughton returns years later and seeks him out, he avoids him. As it turns out, however, Boughton has fallen in love with and had a child by an African American woman. Neither her family nor 1950’s white America will accept the couple, and Boughton wants Ames’ support in the matter. Ames’s reconciliation with Boughton, which frees up his own heart, is one of the emotional centers of the book.

I suspect Obama is also drawn to Ames’ introspection, his awareness of his own fallibility, his appreciation for the complexity of issues, and his reluctance to judge others harshly. Like the Congregationalist minister, Obama sees all humans as flawed individuals in need of forgiveness. The president has been lambasted by some on the left for making a “fetish” of partisanship—they think he got played for a sucker in trying to reach out across the aisle—and even some of his admirers think that he doesn’t have enough of a taste for the blood sport that is American politics. (Republicans, of course, have their own set of problems with him.) Obama’s style works for me, I have to say, so I am heartened that he would be drawn to a novel that capture’s life resonance.

Whether such a sensitivity will make him a great politician or a great leader is a topic for fascinating ethical and political discussions. What one can say is that it provides a good foundation for being a pretty good man.