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Definition of Irony
Irony is a literary device or event in which how things seem to be is in fact very different from how they actually are. If this seems like a loose definition... read full definition
Irony is a literary device or event in which how things seem to be is in fact very different from how they actually are. If this... read full definition
Irony is a literary device or event in which how things seem to be is in fact very different from how... read full definition
Pages 3-4
Explanation and Analysis—Theological Irony:
In an ironic passage at the beginning of Gilead, John reflects on what he’s told members of his congregation about death:
I used to say it was like going home. We have no home in this world, I used to say, and then I’d walk back up the road to this old place and make myself a pot of coffee and a fried-egg sandwich and listen to the radio, when I got one, in the dark as often as not.
Even when John was a young man, the people around him would turn to him for advice about dying. John would tell them they were going home, saying that none of us have a true home on Earth. But then he would walk back to his home, entering what he describes to be a cozy, homey scene. Here, “in the dark” describes the literal scene—John is eating his sandwich and listening to the radio when the sun is down. But it could also be read as metaphorically describing his role in the situation. He is “in the dark” about death, meaning that he doesn’t actually know what it’s like to die.
Of course, no living person can know what it’s like to die. Even as John is close to dying, he cannot know what death is like. But it was even harder for him to know as a young man. This ironic scenario—telling a congregant nobody has a home before walking home—emphasizes the impossibility of discussing death. This ironic gap shows early on that Ames is honest and down to earth about his role as a preacher. He doesn’t believe he knows the secrets of the universe, and he doesn’t believe that the church always has the answers.
Related Themes:
Pages 21-28
Explanation and Analysis—Jonathan Edwards:
John Ames’s brother Edward is a major character in John’s life. Edward was named after their uncle Edwards, who was named for Jonathan Edwards. Jonathan Edwards was an American revivalist preacher in the 18th century. His most famous sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” prompted the First Great Awakening. He is often associated with religious fervor and passionate sermons.
It’s ironic, then, that John’s brother Edward rejects religion altogether. Further, when Edward was a child, the congregation raised money to send him to college because they believed he would be a great preacher. But after leaving Gilead, Edward became an atheist. Around a similar time, he changed his name from Edwards to Edward, distancing himself from Jonathan Edwards. When he returned home years later, he was an atheist intellectual. Edward refused to say grace at the dinner table and tried to shake John’s religious beliefs:
My brother Edward gave his book to me, The Essence of Christianity, thinking to shock me out of my uncritical piety, as I knew at the time.
Edward didn't succeed—John finds that Feuerbach's The Essence of Christianity offers positive ways to think about religion, even though it was written by an atheist.
Edward is the only significant atheist in Gilead, and as such, he comes to represent nonbelievers in general. Edward is so intensely and fervently atheist that he almost replicates Jonathan Edwards’s passion—especially as he proselytizes John and his family. Edward adopts the intellectual spirit of Jonathan Edwards, but in the novel he represents the absence of belief.
Related Themes:
Pages 217-232
Explanation and Analysis—Gilead Rejects Jack:
In the climax of Gilead, Jack Boughton tells John Ames that he has a wife and child. His wife is Black, and his child is mixed race. As an interracial family, they aren’t accepted by his wife’s family or by many of the places where they try to live. Jack wants to bring the family to Gilead and, in a passage rife with irony, he asks John if he believes the town would accept them. As much as John would like to say yes, he doesn't know if it would, and he can’t promise to be alive for long enough to ensure that it does.
Throughout the novel, John has scorned and disapproved of Jack for the way that he ran away from Gilead, abandoning his first child and the child’s mother. He believed this made Jack an untrustworthy sinner. But now that Jack wants to return, committing to both the town and his family, John finds himself in the ironic position of not welcoming him home.
John writes that he saw Jack’s face reflect the hope that he lost by having to again leave Gilead:
And I knew what hope it was. It was just that kind the place was meant to encourage, that a harmless life could be lived here unmolested.
Gilead was intended to be a haven for people living “harmless” lives. The town was originally tied to the abolitionist movement and stood for a brighter future that allowed peaceful coexistence. Jack was reasonable to invest his hope there. However, John isn’t sure that Gilead can be a haven for Jack’s interracial family. There isn’t a Black community in town, and the Black church wasn’t rebuilt after it burned down. After so many years of believing that Jack wronged Gilead, John now sees that Gilead is wronging him, too.
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