John Ames' Denial

"Gilead" and "The Trail of the Lonesome Pine"

Last night I finished reading The Trail of the Lonesome Pine. It gave me a sort of turn there for a while. The old man sees the girl with someone her own age and remarks how well suited they are, and then he starts getting old and shabby and broke, and she's still very beautiful, of course. But it all turns out fine. She loves him only and forever. I doubt the book would have kept my interest if that particular matter had not arisen. And then I did want to know what there was in it your mother liked so much. (Robinson 132)

In this passage, John Ames has just finished reading John Fox Jr.'s book The Trail of the Lonesome Pine and wonders why his wife likes it so much. From that one quote, the reader can see the resemblances between the two stories, though Ames fails to mention any. He fails to mention any similarities because he is in denial that it bears any resemblance to his life story. At this point in the novel, he is in denial that he is aging while his wife stays seemingly young and beautiful. He is in denial that he will someday soon pass away, leaving behind his young wife and son. John Fox Jr.'s character John Hale in The Trail of the Lonesome Pine resembles the life of John Ames in Marilynne Robinson's Gilead although Ames lives in denial and fails to acknowledge the similarities.

Before delving into the similarities between the novels, one must examine the very first reference Ames makes of The Trial of the Lonesome Pine. This takes place after his wife came back from the library with the book. Ames says:

Your mother goes to the public library, which has been down on its luck for a longtime, like most things around here. Last time she brought back a copy of The Trail of the Lonesome Pine that was worn ragged, all held together with tape. She just sank into it, though, she just melted into it... I read it years ago when everyone else did. I don't remember enjoying it particularly. (Robinson 77-78)

This first reminder of the novel he has already read, all he remembers is not enjoying reading it. From the very beginning, he has a negative view of the novel because of his past experience of reading it.

Published in 1908, The Trail of the Lonesome Pine captures the "backwoods ways" of the southern part of the United States. According to Best, the book also examines the particular backwoods ways involving the feuds of the region. The book's instant popularity and new medium of moving pictures brought about two silent films quite quickly. One was released in 1915 and another in 1922. A third was released soon after, in sound and color. The novel includes extremely vivid descriptions of the ancient culture and addresses the colorful language of the region. (Best 3)

The Trail of the Lonesome Pine tells the tale of June Tolliver, a young mountaineer girl who lives in the mountains in a town called Big Stone Gap with her family. Jack Hale (John to his friends), an engineer who comes to the mountains looking for his fortune in coal, steps into her life and introduces her to the world outside Cumberlands. While the story primarily follows the romantic relationship that evolves between John and June, Fox also weaves in the feud between the Tolliver and Falin families. The families conflict over land prices and titles, an ancient feud that their ancestors started and each generation carried on. Hale is attracted to the innocence that June carries and brings it upon himself to civilize her and expose her to the outside world. When she is old enough he sends her to the city to learn how to act socially from his sisters, so that she is "worthy" of him. She learns quickly and returns to Cumberlands as a sophisticated lady, in dress and grace but John reacts in shock. He discovers that her sweet mountain innocence is what first attracted him to her and wants that back. She relieves his fears by letting him know that she plans to remain sophisticated but not forget her innocence.

June and John decide to live in the city so they can work but they still go back to the mountains every summer in order to refresh their love and the passions they found in the mountains. Since John is experienced, he works and supports them both because June rejects sophistication in favor of her mountain innocence. She resolves herself to be a servant for her husband, chopping wood for him (413) and wearing the clothes she wore in the mountain. In the final chapters of the book, Fox shows June's happiness in the novel: "...out she ran in the last crimson gown of her young girlhood - her sleeves rolled up and her hair braided down her back as she used to wear it." (412)

Feuds like those present in Fox's book were not uncommon in the 19th and 20th century in Cumberlands. Best points out that "several famous feuds took place in the Cumberlands in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and hundreds of smaller, less noted ones" (29). While the main feud in Fox's book was fictional, the mountain region that it takes place in is all too well-known for feuds like his. Best says...

...it did not take much to create a feud among the mountaineers, and once begun such feuds were not easily put to rest. Ill feelings dating back to the Civil War of the 1860s, for example, still simmered in the Cumberlands midway through the 20th century. (29)

Stories of the feuds usually ended up romantically, with children of the protagonists marrying in hopes to resolve the issue, according to Best. Nevertheless, sometimes the marriage actually enticed more anger into the feud.

After being published in 2004, Gileadwon the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award. It set up a nationwide readership for Robinson, who waited 24 years to publish Gilead after her first novel Housekeeping, which was also an award winning novel. Both novels deal with the simplicity of American life and take place in different generations than the one they are written in. Lawrence Wood calls Robinson's novel "one of those rare novels in which all the characters are lovable, even though they have not fully come to terms with one another" (40).

Gilead tells the story of John Ames, a Presbyterian minister living in Iowa and in his seventies, whose heart is failing and realizes that all he has left to leave for his son is a over 2,000 sermons stuffed in his attic. Therefore, he decides to write an account of his life to leave his seven-year-old son and advice to live by after he passes away. Written directly from Ames' point of view, the novel frames his life, trials, and successes. He leaves out nothing, telling his son of all the negative things that have happened to him and bad choices he has made, as well as the positive aspects. He shares his fears and concerns about his best friend and namesake Jack Boughton and his focus on his religious habits that he wishes to impress upon his son so that he will stay religious after he passes away.

Both novels share similar qualities in several areas. For example, Hale and Ames both share points of loneliness. Hale feels lonely at several points in The Trail of the Lonesome Pine. After returning from a trip away from the mountains, he reminisces about the trip:

How lonely had been his trip - how lonely was the God-forsaken little town behind him! How lonely the road and hills and the little white clouds in the zenith straight above him - and how unspeakably lonely the green dome of the great Pine that shot into view from the north... (394)

Hale thinks of how lonely everything around him is and even though this is a momentary thought, it follows with Ames' thinking in several passages. On the other hand, Ames feels lonely when he is wandering the city streets late at night and every one is in their beds asleep. In one particular passage, he thinks:

Thank God for them all, of course, and for that strange interval, which was most of my life, when I read out of loneliness, and when bad company was much better than no company. (Robinson 142)

This loneliness comes after Ames has been remembering his past and reminiscing about those who have been there for him at his loneliest points. He says that he read out of loneliness and this could be a sign of why he reads The Trail of the Lonesome Pine to begin with. He could be reading it so that he can find out why his wife enjoys it so much and isn't left out of that feeling.

Another area that the two books share similarities is regionalism. Both Robinson and Fox use regionalism to establish action in their novels. Robinson uses Iowa as her regional work. Michael Kowalewski uses part of an interview with Robinson where she discusses regionalism in his article "Contemporary Regionalism". Robinson says:

The idea of a regional literature is an odd one... the product of a cultural bias that supposes books won't be written in towns you haven't heard of before. (7)

Robinson believes, however, regionalism can be a blessing as it "makes people feel that they live in a peculiar place" (7). Jill Owens held an interview with Robinson in which she questioned her genesis for writing Gilead and Robinson replied that it was because she "moved into the Middle West and [became] interested in the history of the Middle West."

Likewise, Fox used regionalism in his novel in order to set up the action. John Williams says that Fox was very accurate in his portrayals of mountain people in America, unlike many authors who attempt writing on the subject of mountain people. He says that Fox portrays:

...Appalachia's people in a new light, cataloging an inventory of behaviors and customs that set the people apart from what was then considered to be the American mainstream. (198)

Fox used regionalism in Trail of the Lonesome Pine to create the colorful characters that make up the action of the novel, such as Hale and others who create and pursue the feuds between the families. Anthony Harkins says that Fox "presented his vision of the chasm that separated civilized society and the degraded culture of violent and backward mountain moonshiners and feudists." (39)

Despite the comparisons, Robinson and Fox's books differ in several areas, such as the author's alliance with the main character in the novel. In Fox's novel, John Hale's story resembles the story of the author's own life. Dwight Billings says that the novel reveals much about Fox. Hale is an engineer who goes to the mountains to work in the family business, just like Fox did himself. (368) Billings says:

John Hale, like John Fox, Jr., and many other middle-class men, was able to preserve values of love, cooperation, and compassion-clearly liabilities in the world of business-by investing them in wife, hearth, and summer vacations. (370)

Also, according to Edward Ayers, Fox was a developer as well as a novelist. Through several scenes in the novel, the reader can see Hale's interest in nature and the effects of civilization, besides the fact that in the novel he plays the role of a mining engineer that comes to "civilize" the Cumberlands. For example, in a scene at Lonesome Dove, Hale notices the civilization that is already taking place thanks to him. Fox says "here and there the white belly of a fish lay upturned to the sun, for the cruel, deadly work of civilization had already begun." (201-2)

On the other hand, Robinson shares few similarities with her main character, minister John Ames. Martin Copenhaver says that Robinson was a deacon in her church. Although that is involvement in her congregation, it is entirely different from being a preacher or pastor or having the experience of preaching to a congregation. Despite the differences, Robinson researched a lot in order to find out about how to write him. She says in her interview with Owens that she went to periodicals that Ames would have read had he been around in the 1950s. She states "the recipe [in Gilead] for Jell-O Salad is a real recipe that is actually face-to-face with that 1948 Ladies' Home Journal article, 'God and the American People,' that Ames discusses." This scene takes place on page 143 in Gilead.

Although she has little in common with her main character, Copenhaver argues that she clearly understands the meaning of being a preacher. He says:

She depicts the pastoral life, in all of its vagaries and quiet drama, with a keen eye and such depth of understanding that it is not surprising to learn she is a deacon in her Congregational church in Iowa. Without lapsing into sentimentality, she conveys a pastor's peculiar way of construing the world, revealing throughout the novel some of the reasons those who are called to this vocation can feel strangely blessed by it. (30)

Copenhaver says this is why so many pastors are drawn to her novel, because she understands them. J.A. Gray agrees with Copenhaver's point, saying that "Robinson skillfully impersonates this sober, righteous, progressive parson with a hint of poesy in his voice as she interweaves the three themes--his family history, the abolition of slavery, and his practice of the Christian faith--that dominate his seemingly discursive jottings." (37) One of the only things similar between Robinson and her main character is that both are from Iowa.

Ames' second reference to the novel points out his denial that the books share any similarities. After starting his re-read of the novel, Ames says:

I've started The Trail of the Lonesome Pine. I went over to the library and got a copy for myself, since your mother can't part with hers. I believe she's reading through it again. I'd forgotten it entirely, if I ever read it at all. There's a young girl who falls in love with an older man. She tells him "I'll go with ye anywhar." That made me laugh. I guess it's a pretty good book. He isn't old like I am, but then your mother isn't young like the girl in the is, either. (Robinson 118)

Here he flat out denies that he is old like the character in the novel and his wife is young like the girl in Fox's book. Also, he is contradicting himself because in his first reference he says he has read it but here he says he has forgotten it, and wonders if he ever read it at all.

Another point that proves Ames' denial is his acknowledgement that he thinks he overuses the word "old". His definition of "old", however, is what brings about his denial. He says:

I am also inclined to overuse the word "old," which actually has less to do with age, as it seems to me, than it does with familiarity. It sets a thing apart as something regarded with a modest, habitual affection. Sometimes it suggests haplessness or vulnerability. (Robinson 28)

Nevertheless, his use of old does not mean age and that is where his denial comes into part. The fact that by using the word "old" he does not mean someone is old in age shows his denial for the true meaning of old.

Despite his denial of the similarities that exist between the two novels, Ames is, when he finishes reading Fox's book, glad that he read the novel and happy that his wife enjoyed it so much that he noticed and read it as well. He says:

It strikes me that your mother could not have said a more heartening word to me by any other means than she did by loving that unremarkable book so much that I noticed and read it, too. That was providence telling me what she could not have told me. (Robinson 135)

He finds at the end of book that he enjoyed reading Fox's book and credits his wife for bringing it to his attention. He feels that it was fate telling him he needed to read it so that he could feel same feeling as his wife.

Though Ames is in denial that his life mirrors John Hale's in The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, the similarities cannot be ignored. Both Ames and Hale are older men in love with younger women, both share times of loneliness, and the authors of both novels use regionalism to establish action in their novels. Ames lives in denial throughout most of the novel that he is old and that he is going to pass away and leave his family. Marilynne Robinson used John Fox Jr.'s novel The Trail of the Lonesome Pine to establish a linking between John Ames and his wife, having Ames read the novel after seeing his wife enjoy reading it.

Works Cited

Best, Gary Dean. "Witch Hunt in Wise County: The Persecution of Edith Maxwell". Westport, Ct.: Praeger Publishers, 1994.

Billings, Dwight, et al. Appalachia in the Making: The Mountain South in the Nineteenth Century. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina, 1995.

Copenhaver, Martin B. "Portrait of a Pastor". The Christian Century 122.10 (May 2005): 30-31.

Fox Jr., John. The Trail of the Lonesome Pine. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1908.

Gray, J.A. "Christ and Casserole". First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life 151 (March 2005): 37-38.

Harkins, Arthur. Hillbilly: A Cultural History of an American Icon. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Kowalewski, Michael. "Contemporary Regionalism". A Companion to the Regional Literatures of America. Ed. Charles Crow. Bowling Green: Bowling Green State University, 1999.

Owens, Jill. Interview.

Robinson, Marilynne. Gilead. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004.

Williams, John Alexander. Appalachia: A History. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2002.

Wood, Lawrence. "Strife in Gilead". The Christian Century 122.3 (Feb. 2005): 40-41.

Works Consulted

Clinton, Kate and Ruth Conniff. "Our Favorite Books of 2005". The Progressive 69.12 (Dec. 2005): 41-44.

Schaub, Thomas. "Lingering Hopes, Faltering Dreams: Marilynne Robinson and the Politics of Contemporary American Fiction". Traditions, Voices, and Dreams: The American Novel since the 1960s. Ed. Melvin J. Friedman and Ben Siegel. .Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1995. 298-321.

Simpson, Mona. "The Minister's Tale: Marilynne Robinson's Long-Awaited Second Novel is an Almost Otherworldly Book-And Reveals Robinson as a Somewhat Otherworldly Figure Herself". The Atlantic Monthly 294.5 (Dec. 2004): 135-39.

Vorda, Allan, ed. "A Life of Perished Things". Face to Face: Interviews with Contemporary Novelists. Houston: Rice University Press, 1993. 155-183.