"Steam Rising: Fire & Water in Marilynne Robinson's Gilead"
Submitted on November 9, 2010, to Amy Laura Hall in partial fulfillment of Christian Ethics: Love in the Christian Tradition (CE144).
The most powerful imagery in my reading of Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead has been the communion experience in the midst of the ruins of a church struck by lightning. Needless to say, Robinson has a gift for illustrative writing. Given the importance Robinson gives the elements of fire and water throughout the book, I felt the passage describing the ruined church was of particular importance. The narrator, John Ames III, repeats this story several times throughout his letters, but the most poignant, and the passage I have chosen to focus on, is found on pages 94 to 96. Ames’ grandfather and father, who represent two worldviews, embody the two elements of fire and water.
Water and fire are central to Robinson’s imagery throughout Gilead. One theory advanced in class was that fire represented the advancement of society, or maybe the Holy Spirit somehow. I wouldn’t disagree with these proposals, but I think they are not as nuanced as they could be. For example, confusion arises when the old ladies from the church are said to associate purity with fire. Before the church has been struck and burned, we read about the quilt or banner set above the altar that speaks of God as “a purifying fire.” This gives rise to the notion, spoken of in class, that fire might also represent annihilation of sinners, like the fires of hell. If this is true, then it is a reckless and unforgiving fire, not unlike Ames’ grandfather.
This intersection of purity and fire foreshadows his grandfather’s own moral dyslexia. In the passage in question, Robinson seemingly pits fire against water. Fire has destroyed a Baptist church (as Ames nonchalantly recalls), and we can assume the unexpected rain was the main reason the fire did not spread. No mention is made of controlling the fire, but the word “rain” is mentioned 11 times in the passage. If you count words derivative from rain, such as “damp,” “water,” and “spray,” the number rises to 14. Just after the passage, Ames even remembers the moment as “that day in the rain.” In the days before fire engine companies in rural communities, the extinguishing rain, keeping the fire from spreading, is nothing short of a miracle.
What does that say about fire, then? Robinson uses terms synonymic of fire ten times in the same span. The word is not once used in the entire discourse of the church that lightning destroys. The grounds surrounding the church are “burned” and “blackened” with “soot” and “ashes.” The pews are made to “kindling” by the fallen steeple. In fact, the salvage effort might later produce a “bonfire” from the remains, but fire is never explicitly or immediately used to describe the scene itself. Instead, in the broader narrative, water triumphs over fire, purity over passion.
The Johns Ames, the three namesakes (the grandfather, father, and narrator), each has much at stake in this passage. It is our narrator’s memory, after all, and it is one he returns to frequently, especially in times of grief. It has incredible nostalgic influence over him, and he describes the moment as a communion experience. His father, the celebrant, is obviously also a major character in this “vision.” The water drips from him as he kneels to share the “bread of affliction” with his young son. In this moment, fire and water become one as “the ashes turned liquid in the rain.” Purity and passion kiss in this, the narrator’s first perceived communion. In fact, the bottom of page 95, a concise summary of the event, contains a notable concentration of the synonymic terms; “scorched,” “blackened,” and “embers.”
But where is John Ames senior? This question screams from the sidelines after we read, pages later, that the church is in fact his own. Lightning has struck the very church in which the passionate fire of abolitionism raged. The “purifying fire” has smote the very house in which those words rested above the communion table. Does Robinson intend for this to be seen as irony, or indictment?
As Ames junior bends to share the biscuit with his son, a derivative of fire succumbs to water; “the ashes turned liquid in the rain.” John Ames junior, who espouses a more purist view of radical Christian nonviolence and whose hat drips with rainwater, overcomes the reckless and violent passion embodied by Ames senior. The non-mention of fire, of the passion that burned so bright in his grandfather, implies perhaps that our narrator lives a life more or less devoid of passion. Class discussion supports this hypothesis.
If this is true, it is interesting that it is his father that says that there is nothing cleaner than ash, and by extension, his grandfather. Clean is not the same as pure, but it is a start. Read through my thesis, this might indicate that his father, purist pacifist that he was, he was not totally estranged from the grandfather. His wet hands are still black with the ash left in fire’s wake. While our narrator associates the ash with filth just a few lines prior, his father defends it as clean.
John Ames junior is still passionate. He still cares deeply for his own father, but they adhere to very different worldviews. Their beliefs about how to combat slavery are as different as fire and water; hot and fast, or slow and cool. They each use theological overtures to defend their chosen means, either pacifism or righteous violence. Each is radical in their approach to the problem of slavery. One is left to wonder if the burning hell that is slavery is better fought with more fire (a la Ames senior) or a good dose of water (Ames junior).
It occurred to me that there is room to consider that in this sense, perhaps John Ames senior is wrong about his son. Earlier in the book, he laments that “the seraphim never touched a coal to [his son’s] lips.” But in our narrators vision, it is water that triumphs over the fire that has consumed his grandfather’s church. The church, as it lay there smoldering, evokes images of his grandfather’s grave, which looked “like a place where someone had tried to put out a fire.” After all, the man who preached there was “like a man struck everlastingly by lightning, so that there was an ashiness about his clothes.” The seraphic coal has indeed touched Ames junior, the protagonist in my eyes, for what emits from wet cinders, but steam, as “where the rain fell on embers”? Fire and water have met in this man, whose passionate purity has turned the ashes liquid.