Forgive Or Forget Essay

829 Words2 Pages

Lisa Duong
EWRT 1B z
Luis Limcolioc
May 29, 2014

Forgive or Forget

The novel “Gilead” by Marilynne Robinson is written in first person as a seventy-six year old minister, John Ames, writes a letter to his son in a epistolary format. The last days of John Ames' life is coming near and he uses the time he has left to write his son a letter that has stories of their family, personal thoughts, and advices he wants to give his seven year old son. He hopes to give his son some wisdom and also something more to remember him by. This initially shows the readers that John Ames is loving and caring. But in retrospect, there was a time in John Ames' life where he found it hard to forgive; especially to one person, his namesake, John Ames Boughton (Jack). Ames was really bitter towards Jack and he found it really hard to forgive him because he was a troubled teenager and an atheist that always challenged Ames' beliefs. One of the themes of “Gilead” is forgiveness.
John Ames gains perspective of Jack's life as an adult and has empathy for him. Ames states, “I could just feel the loneliness in him. Here I was supposed to be a second father to him. I wanted to say something to him to that effect, but it seemed complicated, and I was too tired to think through its possible implications. It might sound as if I were trying to establish some sort of equivalency between his failings and mine, when in fact I would have meant he was a better man than I ever thought he could be” (231). Jack left Gilead for several of years but decided to return home during Ames' last days. Ames and Jack have a love/hate relationship because of how Jack acted during his teenage years. John contemplated, “I don’t know how one boy could have caused so much disappoint...

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...ut aside from his perspective he has to remember to follow God's examples; God forgives all sins so he must forgive Jack also. Through the grace and mercy of God, Ames was able to come to terms with Jack being worthy of forgiveness just like any other person.
John Ames was able to forgive Jack Boughton by opening his heart to empathizing with Jack’s situations, take his wife's advice, and act by the words of God. From resentment to reconciliation of their relationship throughout the novel, it seems to be a significant and almost unimaginable change of attitude. A lot of factors contributed in the recompilation of the relationship, however, it wasn't because he had ever thought he need to. Being a good hearted person Ames is, I do not believe that Marilynne Robinson bestowed a great lesson here; even a good man can be wrong and a bad person can become good again.

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