Ever since a friend gave me a tattered copy of Housekeeping, I’ve been a fan of Marilynne Robinson. All of her work, fiction and nonfiction, is driven by a singular intelligence and bolstered by a sober brand of faith I can only envy. Her collection of essays, The Death of Adam, is the best, which is to say the only, defense of Calvinism I have ever read. Her latest novel, Home, reflects an equally cerebral, but more restrained preoccupation with religious convention, and with faith and its limits.
In Home, Robinson rewrites the trope of the redeemed prodigal. When Jack returns home seeking forgiveness from God, from his father, and to a lesser extent from his sister Glory, redemption is not the result. Jack mourns his transgressions but has no recourse with which to atone them. He is born with a deviant disposition and is destined, first to flee the consequences of youthful transgression, and failing that, to blind himself, through drink, to the suffering he has inflicted. Really, the story has as much the feel of a Greek tragedy as a biblical allegory. We mourn Jack as we mourn Sophocles’ Oedipus, not because we admire or feel tenderly toward him, but because we fear that we, too, will ever be trapped in the choices and patterns of life that shaped our pasts.
By rewriting the trope of the prodigal in this way, Robinson refuses to limit the human experience to an easily digestible morality tale. She resists presenting religion as a palliative, and as a result reveals the greater mystery of a faith, which can neither be adopted nor discarded by will, or by logic--a mystery that fills that void between human understanding and divine grace. Robinson is not dismissive of Jack’s efforts, or his pain. His fate does not denote a wasted or a useless life. After all, he leaves behind a son with a chance of happiness. Instead, when Jack dies Robinson allows us the freedom to mourn his moral failings, and by extension, our own. Through Jack we are asked to recognize that unhappy and irredeemable men are, after all, still men and, however anguished, still deserving of love. What more, Robinson asks, can we reasonably expect of salvation?
In Home, Robinson rewrites the trope of the redeemed prodigal. When Jack returns home seeking forgiveness from God, from his father, and to a lesser extent from his sister Glory, redemption is not the result. Jack mourns his transgressions but has no recourse with which to atone them. He is born with a deviant disposition and is destined, first to flee the consequences of youthful transgression, and failing that, to blind himself, through drink, to the suffering he has inflicted. Really, the story has as much the feel of a Greek tragedy as a biblical allegory. We mourn Jack as we mourn Sophocles’ Oedipus, not because we admire or feel tenderly toward him, but because we fear that we, too, will ever be trapped in the choices and patterns of life that shaped our pasts.
By rewriting the trope of the prodigal in this way, Robinson refuses to limit the human experience to an easily digestible morality tale. She resists presenting religion as a palliative, and as a result reveals the greater mystery of a faith, which can neither be adopted nor discarded by will, or by logic--a mystery that fills that void between human understanding and divine grace. Robinson is not dismissive of Jack’s efforts, or his pain. His fate does not denote a wasted or a useless life. After all, he leaves behind a son with a chance of happiness. Instead, when Jack dies Robinson allows us the freedom to mourn his moral failings, and by extension, our own. Through Jack we are asked to recognize that unhappy and irredeemable men are, after all, still men and, however anguished, still deserving of love. What more, Robinson asks, can we reasonably expect of salvation?
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