NOTE this class is now beginning one week later, on April 1st.
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Marilynne Robinson was inspired to write her Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Gilead, after learning that many colleges in the Midwest were founded by Yankees from New England and that these same reformers also led the Abolition movement.
Gilead tells the story of the elderly Rev. John Ames who is writing a long letter to his young son, Robby, who will not know him as an adult. Ames's grandfather had been a radical social reformer who journeyed to Iowa to fight slavery. Reversing stances, his son became a leading pacifist. John, the third generation, writing shortly after World War II, reflects on the tremendous cultural, political, and theological changes that have taken place and, moreover, on his own life which is coming to an end.
Ames has tried to find the beauty, often hidden, in every person but is also keenly aware of the ways he has misunderstood or failed them. There is his new, young wife from a hard-scrabble background. His name-sake godson, Jack, from whom he is alienated. The poverty-stricken girl whom Jack impregnated and then abandoned. His firebrand abolitionist grandfather, pacifist father and atheist brother. His best friend, Rev. Boughton, who has differing theological views. Boughton’s daughter Glory, who returns home having failed at living on her own. The little town of Gilead, now badly decayed.
Gilead is likely to appeal to anyone who has felt a need for soul-searching and stocktaking in their own lives.
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Instructor: Arlin Larson
The Rev. Dr. Arlin T. Larson graduated from the University of Redlands and the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. He has taught at Senior College since 2007 and served on the Board of Trustees and three terms as president. His interest in Marilynne Robinson goes back to the publication of Gilead with its rich religious themes and depiction of changes in American religious culture from Abolitionism through WWII. Arlin & Sharon now reside in Newnan, GA.
