Gilead Characters

Old and frail, pious and learned, John Ames hasn't much time left in his life—but he has a lot to live for: he truly loves his young wife and son and worries about what will happen to them once h...

Jack is the bad-boy son of Robert Boughton, who named him after his friend John Ames.Now in his forties, Jack has returned to Gilead for reasons unknown—at first. He has a common-law wife and son...

Lila comes to Gilead unexpectedly one day. She starts attending services at Ames's church, and she asks him to baptize her there. We don't know the details of her previous life, but we know from Am...

Ames's father, also named John Ames and also a preacher, had a powerful effect on our protagonist's upbringing. Whereas Ames's grandfather preached the sanctity of violence in certain kinds of war,...

Ames's grandfather was a man of great generosity and fiery passion: My grandfather never kept anything that was worth giving away, or let us keep it, either, so my mother said. He would take l...

We don't get to know Ames's son very well, but he's only six, and he does what most six-year-olds do: he plays, he watches TV—you know the drill. He's the intended audience of the long letter tha...

Edward is Ames's older brother by ten years. Dead by the time Ames is writing his letter, the memory of Edward still remains close to Ames. He's kind of a mentor figure to Ames, despite the fact th...

Once tall and impressive, Robert Boughton has become frail in his old age—frailer than Ames, even, who's older than he is. "Reduced to a heap of joints," he says of himself (1.2.81). He and Ames...

Glory is the youngest child of Robert Boughton, recently returned home after being abandoned by her fiancé. She's 38. Glory helps run the household with her father as he nears death. She's excited...