The Dearly Beloved

Lily is one of the four main characters in the novel and Charles’s wife. She lost her parents when she was 15, and in her grief, she tried to understand the purpose of her parents’ deaths, which haunted her. One of her few passions before motherhood is books, for which she studies English literature and becomes an English professor in New York City, as well as advocacy for social change, supporting integration and protests of the Vietnam War. She even joins the feminist group James invites to the third floor of the church and finds some degree of happiness there.

She initially concludes that her parents’ deaths were senseless and that “[t]here is no God” (74), a conclusion that both relieves her and makes her struggle to find faith in anything else. She is extremely introverted and occasionally goes out of her way to keep people out of her life, such as when she tells Nan that she does not believe in God or go to church to provoke her at the restaurant. She has given up on The Search for Meaning and Purpose, believing it to be foolish because there is none. She also heavily defines herself by her grief and even finds herself disliking the idea “that life could be full of joy” (237).

Her perspective on Faith Versus Doubt starts to change, however, when one of her twins, Will, is diagnosed with autism. She believes that the twins provide her with two people to replace the parents she lost. She becomes determined to help Will be happy and holds onto the hope that he does love her and Charles. She starts to believe that her parents died to show her “that Will isn’t dead” and that “Will’s life is life—no matter how awful it appears” (261). Lily grows from disdaining and lamenting Charles’s faith to accepting and understanding it, as she has “faith in Will” and “will choose to believe, for [her] entire life, that [they] can help him, and that he loves [them], in his own way” (311). Her work with Charles and Annelise to help Will gives her a new sense of purpose and faith she never had, while also helping her make peace with her parents’ deaths.

James is one of the four main characters of the novel. At the beginning of the novel, he is a young man from Chicago who is deeply affected by his father’s war trauma and addiction to alcohol. His uncle helps him go to college to escape the draft and avoid his father’s fate, and there, he meets and falls in love with Nan. Like Charles and Lily, James finds his life path through his studies. Originally a philosophy student and then a law student, he goes into ministry both for Nan and to support his desire for social progress. Having grown up with a father who discouraged religious faith due to his trauma, James initially has a negative view on religion. However, he reveals to Nan’s father that he wants to “believe wholeheartedly, without reservation, without any nagging doubt” (94). He hopes that he can encourage change through ministry and realizes during his divinity studies in London that he wants to “fashion a world in which people like his father d[o] not need to disappear, in which people like his mother—and himself—d[o] not need to surrender to distress” (122).

Throughout the novel, James’s main challenge is to balance his desire for social progress with a people-first approach to preaching that does not alienate his congregants. He believes in faith through actions, and this helps him convince Nan to seek fertility treatment, leading them to conceive their daughter, Lola. The birth of his daughter and his creation of a school for children with autism help satisfy his need to do good in the world. James’s character arc supports Faith Versus Doubt and The Search for Meaning and Purpose, showing his faith in God and his vision for change as interconnected.