Home

“The past was a very fine thing, in its place. But her returning home now, to stay, as her father said, had turned memory portentous. To have it overrun its bounds this way and become present and possibly future, too—they all knew this was a thing to be regretted.”

Glory has returned home to care for her ailing father. She can no longer escape the reminders of her past trauma and must confront her painful memories. Robinson speaks to the impact of the past on the present and the future. Newly heartbroken, Glory is unsure of what the future holds for her, but she recognizes the impact her past will have on her future.

“She said, ‘Glory, you take things too much to heart.’ That was what they always said about her. Hope was serene, Luke was generous, Teddy was brilliant, Jack was Jack, Grace was musical, and Glory took everything to heart.”

Glory recalls being told as a child that she was too emotional. Glory’s ability to empathize with others allows Glory to forge an unbreakable bond with her estranged brother Jack. She grows more emotional as the novel progresses and begins to accept her strong emotions as a part of her identity.

“Perhaps in the whole of her life she had never really distinguished the secret from the sacred, and loved tact and discretion better than she should.”

Glory reminisces on how she would mix up the words sacred and secret as a child. As the keeper of many family secrets, Glory returns home and begins to recognize the way these secrets have shaped her life. The use of the sacred connotes a religious weight to the secrets that Glory keeps. Throughout the novel, she explores what she does for others and how she can begin living for herself.

“Experience had taught them that truth had sharp edges and hard corners, and could be seriously at odds with kindness.”

Glory comments on how her parents approached the truth: through avoidance. Her parents chose to focus on kindness to maintain their views of the world. Glory adopts this practice and learns throughout the novel to confront the harsh truths of life and find connection and acceptance.

“That stab in the heart she felt when she woke, and the panicky doubt that her life was in her grasp, not fraud or failure, not entirely – that was a brief misery and one she could set aside by putting the light on and reading for a while. She used to ask herself, What more could I wish? But she always distrusted that question, because she knew there were limits to her experience than precluded her knowing what there was to be wished.”

At 38 years old, Glory struggles to find contentment for herself. She describes the anxiety she feels in her life as a teacher and her desire for more. In the aftermath of her break-up, she explores what the future holds for her. Her relationship with her brother provides her a sense of connection and companionship she longs for throughout the novel.

“What an embarrassment that was, being somewhere because there was nowhere else for you to be.”

Glory returns home to care for her father after her break-up with her fiancé and under the guise of her dismissal from teaching due to marriage. She feels embarrassed about the state of her life and the lack of choices she has for her future. She begins the novel desperate for something more, which she finds through her reconnection with her estranged brother.

“There is a saying that to understand is to forgive, but that is an error, so Papa used to say. You must forgive in order to understand. Until you forgive, you defend yourself against the possibility of understanding…If you forgive, he would say, you may indeed still not understand, but you will be ready to understand, and that is the posture of grace.”

Glory explains her father’s philosophy on forgiveness and understanding. Reverend Boughton demonstrates an unflinching reliance on forgiveness to cope with his disappointment in his son Jack. By the novel’s conclusion, this forgiveness and lack of understanding leads to an irrevocable break between Jack and his father. Glory does not follow her father’s philosophy and grows to understand her brother first. As a result, the siblings develop a deep connection.

“They were so afraid they would lose him, and then they had lost him, and that was the story of their family, no matter how warm and fruitful and robust it might have appeared to the outside world.”

Robinson highlights the disconnect between how the Boughton family presents itself and its true state of disrepair. Despite their best efforts to appear united, the family remains unable to escape its reality. Throughout the novel, Robinson explores the interior life of the Boughton family and exposes its darkest secrets to comment on religious hypocrisy.

“Her brother would never know the thousand things she had done to make life tolerable for him.”

At the beginning of the novel, Glory resents Jack for the way his choices have impacted her life. Robinson chooses to focus on a female character in this novel to expose the ways women attempt to live independently under the shadow of men’s actions. Through Glory, Robinson comments on the unrecognized service of women for the comfort of men.

“It seemed sometimes as if her father must have meant to preserve all this memory, this sheer power of sameness, so that when they came home, or when Jack came home, there would be no need to say anything. In the terms of the place, they would all always have known everything.”

Glory ponders why her father has kept the Boughton homestead the same throughout their lives. She questions whether her father does this to provide a place of stability and comfort for his children. The Boughton home symbolizes this stability and unchanging adherence to the past. Through Glory and Jack, Robinson explores the conflict between tradition and modernity.

“No need to be sorry, Jack. Young people want the world to change and old people want it to stay the same. And who is to judge between thee and me? We just have to forgive each other.”

Reverend Boughton comforts Jack after they fight over the Civil Rights Movement. Jack’s father recognizes the differences between their generations as Jack questions the status quo. A retired clergyman, Jack’s father offers forgiveness as the panacea to the world’s problems. Robinson underscores this generational conflict.

“Weary or bitter or bewildered as we may be, God is faithful. He lets us wander so we will know what it means to come home.”

Glory recites the religious lessons she has learned as a Christian. Through this, Robinson presents the Christian reasoning for why Jack abandons his family. She calls this reasoning into question throughout the novel as Jack offers a different perspective. Through her exploration of Jack as a character, Robinson offers a more nuanced explanation of why people leave.

“It is possible to know the great truths without feeling the truth of them. That’s where the problem lies. In my case.”

Jack shares with Glory that he knows the great truths offered through Christianity but that he does not believe in them. This religious conflict leads Jack to question everything and hinders him from finding full reconciliation with his father. Jack represents a dedication to his own belief system in the face of personal conflict.

“I’d have been afraid of the word ‘vulnerable,’ but it didn’t kill me to hear you say it. So now I know that.”

Glory reassures Jack after he calls her a vulnerable, pious woman who was taken advantage of by her deceitful fiancé. Glory no longer hides the reality of her situation but, instead, recognizes the truth of her failed relationship. Through her relationship with Jack, she grows to understand herself more deeply and learns she can survive the harsh realities of life.

“In the gray light he looked saddened and spent and oddly young, a man whose father was still his father, and impossible, and frail.”

Glory describes her brother Jack and the toll his strained relationship with his family has had on him. Although Jack is a grown man in his forties, Glory recognizes within Jack the childlike desire for approval from their father. Robinson portrays the central conflict between fathers and sons as they navigate the harms inflicted by each generation on each other.

“He’d smile at them across that distance, and the smile was sad and hard, and it meant estrangement, even when he was with them.”

Even as a child, Jack struggled to find acceptance in his own family. His sense of isolation characterizes him throughout his life and impacts all his relationships. By making Jack an outsider, Robinson explores the effects of isolation across generations.

“He was the measure of the failure of his father’s body, and also perhaps a portending of the failure of his own.”

Jack puts on his father’s suit for Sunday dinner. He is too thin for his father’s suit, which demonstrates his lack of care for himself and the toll his choices have taken on him. Robinson places Jack in his father’s suit to highlight the contrast between Jack and his father. The suit serves as a symbol of the father’s health and success, which are now fading. Jack’s inability to fit the suit illustrates his struggle to measure up to his father’s expectations.

“Sympathy would corrupt something wonderful, which secrecy and a kind of shame kept safe for her.”

Glory does not confide in anyone about her failed relationship. She keeps the relationship secret to allow herself the opportunity to revel in the dream of a future that she knows will never come to be. As a result of years of practice, Glory relies on secrecy and shame to protect her from confronting her unhappiness. This is what Jack and Glory understand in one another.

“I’ve wondered from time to time if I might not be an instance of predestination. A sort of proof. If I may not experience predestination in my own person. That would be interesting, if the consequences were not so painful. For other people. If it did not seem as though I spread a contagion of some kind. Of misfortune. Is that possible?”

Jack questions his father and Reverend Ames about the concept of predestination. The understanding that God predestines humans to sin or faith, predestination troubles Jack as he questions his beliefs. Jack wonders if he is predestined to sin. This belief in his intrinsic sinfulness overshadows any efforts he makes to stay sober and hinders him from finding true happiness and self-acceptance.

“Was this what they had always been afraid of, that he would really leave, that he would truly and finally put himself beyond the reach of help and harm, beyond self-consciousness and all its humiliations, beyond all that loneliness and unspent anger and all that unsalved shame, and their endless, relentless loyalty to him?”

Glory tries to process Jack’s suicide attempt. She wonders if this is what her family feared for Jack all along. Robinson phrases Glory’s thoughts into a rhetorical question. Glory poses this question openly and to no one in particular as a greater question regarding suicide and its impact on the loved ones of those suffering from depression.

“How to announce the return of comfort and well-being except by cooking something fragrant. That is what her mother always did. After every calamity of any significance she would fill the atmosphere of the house with the smell of cinnamon rolls or brownies, or with chicken and dumplings, and it would mean, This house has a soul that loves us all, no matter what.”

Glory decides to cook chicken and dumplings the next day after Jack’s attempted suicide. She returns to her mother’s tradition to instill a sense of peace and calm over her family. Glory soon realizes that this act comforts her family only temporarily and that Jack’s actions have a greater impact that may be irreversible.

“Jack said, ‘I think hope is the worst thing in the world. I really do. It makes a fool of you while it lasts. And then when it’s gone, it’s like there’s nothing left of you at all. Except’—he shrugged and laughed—‘except what you can’t be rid of.’”

Jack responds to his father in their final argument after his father proclaims that his patience and hope for Jack has run out. Jack believes that hope damages those who hold on to it. Robinson questions the power of hope to promote change. By the novel’s end, Jack leaves without reconciliation with his father or a reunion with Della. There is no hope that Jack will ever return to Gilead or be able to find true happiness with Della.

“Home. What kinder place could there be on earth, and why did it seem to them all like exile?”

Glory reflects on Gilead and how she feels estranged from her hometown and childhood home. She conveys the ambivalence associated with home as the source of great comfort and distress. Her use of the word exile connects to the isolation she and Jack experience in Gilead. Robinson captures the complex relationship with home and questions whether happiness can be found there.