"Gilead" - Character Relationships

Prompt #1 - 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 that relationship tells you about the characters and the novel as a whole.

The entire plot of "Gilead," this latest summer reading book, centers around the relationship between the narrator, John Ames, and his son, born late in his life. The narrator has been told that because of his failing heart, he doesn't have much longer to live, and therefore will not be present for the majority of his son's life. Because of this, he compiles everything he will never be able to tell his son into the novel, apparently as a letter, so that when he is no longer there he will be able to continue their father and son relationship.

There is another key father-son relationship in the novel, however. As John Ames recalls his childhood and early adulthood to his son, he focuses on the relationships between him and his father, and his father and his father's father. Not only do these relationships help us learn about John Ames, but also about his predecessors, and about the historical context to the novel. I think that also in sharing these stories with his son, who will never have the same kind of relationship with his father, whether that is good or bad, he is reminding him of the countless father-son relationships that came before them. Theirs is just another addition to the large compilation of stories in the world.

This book contrasts these father-son relationships, both good and bad, caring and not-so-caring. But even though all these relationships are different, there is still always the presence of love. Ames' grandfather was a man of war, who was said to have fired off his pistol on his way into the church to preach, while his father blatantly disagreed with his beliefs. Yet, still, Ames' father trekked across Kansas to find his father's grave, bringing his own son with him on a trip that is almost a death sentence. As Ames mentions, he learned most of what he knew about his father and grandfather's relationship through that trip, which in turn informed his own relationship with his father. Ames recounts the memory of his father scrounging for their food, of him sitting in the middle of the plains due to exhaustion and having to run and keep up. Whenever it was "supper time" his father would tell Ames a story - like the one with the soldiar who visited the church, with the grandfather returning with a pistol and two bloody shirts - in order to either accompany dinner or distract his son from the lack of it.

John Ames' experience with his father, and hearing his father's relationship with his own father, informs his character. Because of the rivalry between his father and his grandfather, it is fully probable that he made his own life decisions based on the lack of confrontation they would cause. His brother Edward decided to become atheist, upsetting their parents, and later Ames decided to join the church like his father before him. He becomes a different father because of his experiences and relationships, becoming more kind and considerate of his own son - he wrote him an entire book of stories and experiences, just so his son would have something to remember him by - through what he has gone through.

"Charming Billy" - Character and the Meaning of the Novel

Prompt #2 - Though Billy Lynch is the title character of the novel, "Charming Billy" presents several other well-rounded characters. Choose a character other than Billy and discuss the methods the author uses to create him/her. How does your character contribute to the meaning of the novel?

One character who I personally find interesting, intriguing, and connected to the meaning of Alice McDermott's novel "Charming Billy" is Matt West, the lover, fiance, and husband of the narrator. I find both the narrator - Dennis and Claire's daughter - and Matt to be incredibly interesting characters because we know so little about them, yet they are a part of what propels the story. McDermott only provides us with their characterization in bits and pieces. Our first glimpse of Matt is only a leather bracelet on a thin wrist, and most of what we know about the narrator is pieced together from her stories, her father's life, the questions people ask her when she's at Maeve's house after the funeral.

The way Matt is told to us is only really through other's stories, the same way Billy is. These two characters are connected in that way, even though their plots barely intertwine. The only scene they share is when Mr. West comes to pick things up from the shed behind the summer house, and Matt extends a hand out the car window, Billy sitting on the front step. This is their only interaction, yet they still manage to be undoubtedly linked. Not only does Matt marry Billy's cousin's daughter, making him a part of the far-branching family, but both of these characters revolve around the beach house. A quote near the end of the book reflects this, what part Matt plays in the main theme, and in Billy's story. It says, "It was, in those days, the way we all spoke about love: world-wise, open-eyed, without illusion. Lying, of course. Because what we truly believed in that moment - would believe on and off again for the rest of our lives - was that the whole history of Holtzman's little house - from its bankrupt builder to my grandmother's greed to your parents' bitter marriage - was, on this night, with our own meeting, redeemed." This idea that all the love - or the variations and avoidance of love - has been channeled into this house is what I believe to be a driving force in "Charming Billy." This house is where Billy met Eva, where Dennis and Mary's affair went awry. Even its resurrection was based off of the business-like marriage between Sheila and Holtzman. It makes sense that at the end of the book, with this end of an era and the final piece in the narrators puzzle.