The Ultimate Gift

The final two chapters make a bookend of sorts with the first two chapters. Where Chapters 1 and 2 introduce Red’s estate problems and his challenge to Jason, Chapters 14 and 15 complete the challenge and resolve Red’s quest to find someone in his extended family whom he can trust with management of his charitable activities.

The “ultimate gift,” Jason realizes, is the feeling of love for others and for life. Jason’s year-long journey is Red’s clever means of training Jason to become the man he’s meant to be as well as the best person for the job of directing Red’s charities. Jason’s transformation is part of the book’s theme on Love as the Greatest Gift. At journey’s end, Jason, transformed, is eager to get on with his new life of love and service. Twice, thinking his meeting with Hamilton and Hastings is over, Jason rises to leave. Each time, the two older adults steer him back to the table. These moments are meant to demonstrate that Jason truly has become a giving, outgoing person who no longer cares about receiving prizes but instead simply wants to create ways of helping others. He has fully learned to love others, and he has received love, from Red and those he has helped, in return. His loving actions explicitly obtained this love for him, as the novel argues that one of the features that makes love the greatest gift is that it is always cyclical and returns on its investment. Jason believes he received Red’s gift and did receive the ultimate gift; he has learned to love others and therefore has learned Red loves him by providing him with this journey.

Jason’s appointment as controller of Red’s charitable fund gives the young man the keys to a kingdom—not a realm for his own pleasure but a vast resource that Jason can harness for good and loving purposes. Jason is determined to make a positive impact on the world, and Red’s decision gives Jason the financial wherewithal to do just that on a grand scale. Red has rejected every other of his relatives as capable even of managing their own inheritances. Jason is Red’s only chance to hand to a descendant control over any of his wealth. Most wealthy individuals naturally wish to pass along their hard-won riches to their families, but Red believes his wealth already has ruined his own heirs. It’s especially important to Red that his charitable projects be handled in a wise and loving spirit; Jason has, under Red’s tutelage, become exactly that person. This speaks to the theme of Giving Wealth Versus Receiving Wealth, as Jason has, by the novel’s end, learned to no longer expect wealth but to constantly give it to others. At the beginning of the novel, Jason is passive in life and views himself as an inheritor, someone who will simply receive as part of his own existence. By the end, however, he is himself the dispenser of wealth, as he helps others and plans to help others for his entire life. This persuades Red to truly give him wealth as controller of the charitable fund; now that he has become a giver, a dispenser, in mind, he can become a giver more materially with the fund. Red’s Home for Boys, Library program, and other outreach projects dear to the oilman’s heart will be in good family hands.

As do all hero’s journeys, Jason’s concludes when he returns to his regular life brimming with gifts of knowledge and wisdom—gifts that he will offer, in turn, to others. Jason faced dark times of doubt and frustration, but, in the novel’s portrayal, he rose up to overcome those obstacles, acquire the power his world needed, and brought it back with him to benefit his world. The Ultimate Gift, which he obtained for himself and received from Red, is simply love—not infatuations but a feeling of warm, outgoing regard and affection for other people and for life itself. This feeling inspires people to do good things for others, and it causes a virtuous cycle of reciprocal goodness among people and friends. This again speaks to the theme of Love as the Greatest Gift.

Through Red, the author explicitly states that “the gift of love is the goodness that comes only from God” (103). This derives from a fundamental Christian principle—Christianity heavily influencing this work—whereby Jesus, as God incarnate, came to earth to announce His love for all humans. The love one feels, the novel explains, is sourced in God’s spirit, and it’s free for everyone, regardless of faith: “real love comes from Him—whether or not we know it” (103). The novel thus drops strong hints about the author’s faith, and the story is in line with Christian belief and practice. This explains its popularity among Christian audiences. The book thus acts as an invitation, if a subtle one, for people to explore Christianity.

Readers aren’t required, though, to join a church simply to appreciate the book’s lesson, in the author’s view; this concept appears in many religions around the world. All readers, regardless of their beliefs, are thus invited primarily to nurture love in their lives. Anyone can do it; a specific faith isn’t required, the work argues. All that’s needed is to be open to others and a willingness to contribute to them in a spirit of love. This thus echoes The Joy of Service to Others. The central focus of the book is that one should be open to helping others and contributing to the world in that way. Helping others is its own joy, and it further helps and encourages those who are helped to serve others in turn. The novel argues that one should aspire to serve others and that there is inherent joy in it; helping others is the way to help oneself.