Despairing and Hopeful Loneliness: The Monastic Journey in Marilynne Robinson’s Jack

Abstract

The eponymous character of Marilynne Robinson’s Jack is intimately acquainted with loneliness. Having withdrawn from his family in Gilead to the city of St. Louis, Jack has committed himself to “harmlessness.” For Jack, this entails eschewing any form of relationship so that his desires to exploit others’ vulnerability will no longer have an outlet. Regardless of these continued attempts to self-isolate, Jack meets an African American woman, Della, and falls in love. Despite the hope that love introduces into his life, Jack’s existence continues to be characterized by loneliness both in his unorthodox marriage to Della and in her family’s inability to accept their relationship. At the conclusion of the novel, Jack and Della are effectively exiled from her family’s home and set out to seek a community where their interracial family can be accepted. Throughout the novel, Jack’s experience with loneliness is largely negative, yet he is transformed in positive ways through his isolation. The monastic tradition of Saint Antony contextualizes Marilynne Robinson’s positive and negative presentation of loneliness in Jack and provides a vision for the transformative role of loneliness in the Christian life.