![]() ![]() A character who feels real never comes from a textbook. I also feel that their usefulness when applied to human beings can be grossly overstated. ![]() I would never impose such constraints on characters. Marilynne Robinson: I never think in terms of diagnoses. Hutchins, the Black preacher, tells him that if God shows us a little grace, he won’t mind if we enjoy it. ![]() His wife Della puts him in his place: You’re not the Prince of Darkness you’re just a talkative man with holes in his socks. Reuben Zimmerman: It’s hard to encounter Jack Boughton’s neurotic manner without eventually wondering about a diagnosis: He gets tangled up in his thoughts, he doesn’t often give himself space to simply live, much less breathe. ![]() Jack’s common-law wife, Della, is a school teacher in Memphis, and appears to be both his guiding star and his nemesis: he loves her and yet cannot live with her, because she is Black. His best friend, another aging minister named Boughton, has also been widowed, and the two men meet often to argue theology – especially salvation, politics, and the plight of Boughton’s wayward and estranged son, Jack. John Ames, a widower, has baptized and then married Lila, a woman much younger (and of much meaner background) than he. Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead books, set in a fictional (and eponymous) town in 1950s Iowa, center on the lives of two aging preachers whose families are caught in the clashing currents of race and history. ![]()
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