Josiah Fisher Character Analysis: Faith, Silence, and the Weight of Love

Who Is Josiah Fisher?

Josiah Fisher is Hannah’s husband and Gabriel’s grandfather in Ron Rindo’s Life, and Death, and Giants. An Amish carpenter and farmer in Lakota, Wisconsin, he embodies the tension between rigid faith and the messy demands of love. Josiah is not a man of many words; his choices speak through what he builds, what he forbids, and what he quietly permits. Over the course of the novel, he wrestles with pride, church authority, the legacy of his father-in-law Absalom Yoder, and the unimaginable task of raising a grandson who grows into a literal giant.

He is defined by a paradox: a man who fears spectacle yet fathers (and grandfathers) figures of immense visibility; a husband who loves Hannah deeply yet struggles to meet her emotional and spiritual needs; a church elder who enforces discipline yet silently allows his wife’s secret riverbank visits to their shunned daughter.

Josiah’s Role in the Plot

Josiah anchors the Fisher household as a steady, sometimes stern presence. His narrative function is largely structural—he holds the domestic and moral frame while Hannah’s interior life and Gabriel’s physical enormity push against it. But his quiet acts carry profound plot weight. He builds customized doors, beds, and staircases to accommodate Gabriel’s growing body. He reluctantly agrees to monthly dinners with Dr. Kennedy, preserving the veterinarian’s bond with Gabriel despite church pressure. He makes funeral arrangements for Gabriel, commissioning a coffin from Abram Glick because the ten-foot length exceeds his own carpentry skill. And at a pivotal moment, he telephones a trusted English friend to take Gabriel in—an act that releases his grandson from an Amish life that no longer fits him.

Motivations and Traits Revealed Through Action

Josiah’s inner world emerges indirectly, through what he does and what he refuses to say. Five traits define him.

1. A quiet, stubborn love. After Rachel’s shunning, Josiah never visits her—but he joins Hannah in the field at night, places his hands on her shoulders, and silently witnesses the reunion. His refusal to speak to Rachel is painful, yet his presence beside Hannah is a form of consent.

2. Fear of pride and spectacle. Josiah worries that Gabriel’s feats of strength “make a spectacle” of the family and risk swelling the boy with vanity. He questions whether Gabriel diminishes himself by blocking every volleyball shot or lifting rams on a dare. Hannah counters that a giraffe cannot hide among pygmy goats, and that denying God’s gifts is its own error. Their arguments over this question form the central marital conflict of the middle chapters.

3. Deference to church authority, with private reluctance. When the bishop and deacon express concern about Gabriel’s veterinary calls with Dr. Kennedy, Josiah enforces the decision. Yet he permits the compromise of monthly dinners and does not sever the bond entirely. He operates within the community’s rules while carving small, humane exceptions.

4. Silent grief. Josiah weeps on the buggy ride home from Rachel’s English funeral, quoting scripture only to break down again. He does not process loss through words. His grief surfaces in his hands—painting over Rachel’s growth marks on the kitchen wall (Hannah stops him), building Gabriel’s enormous bed, and finally admitting he cannot construct his grandson’s coffin.

5. A faith tested by complicity. The novel’s darkest revelation—that Absalom Yoder abused Rachel and fathered Jasper—implicates Josiah by association. Hannah confronts him, and his “damning silence” confirms he knew or suspected and said nothing. This silence cracks their marriage open, driving Hannah temporarily into Dr. Kennedy’s home. Yet Josiah keeps visiting her weekly, bringing news of the goats and hens, never demanding her return.

Chronological Arc

Josiah’s journey traces a slow, painful opening.

Early chapters. He is a young husband, struck by mumps-induced infertility shortly after Rachel’s birth. He accepts this as God’s will and devotes himself to his daughter. He participates in the shunning of Rachel, though his nocturnal support of Hannah’s secret visits suggests deep inner conflict.

Middle chapters – raising Gabriel. After Jasper’s death, Josiah takes Gabriel into his home. These years are marked by practical adaptation—raising ceilings, sewing sheets, managing the boy’s integration into Amish life—and by escalating debates with Hannah over the boundary between humility and denial. Josiah also loses his temper with Gabriel at times, a regret the narrative notes he later carries.

Late middle – Gabriel’s departure and fame. As Gabriel chooses football, then professional wrestling, Josiah recedes into the background. His influence becomes architectural and logistical rather than emotional. When Gabriel loses his leg and returns home tattooed and prosthetic-dependent, Josiah cannot reconcile the young man’s new self with Amish norms. He makes the phone call that sends Gabriel to Dr. Kennedy’s care—a decision that prioritizes Gabriel’s well-being over rigid adherence to community expectation.

Climax and aftermath. After Absalom’s suicide and the discovery of his crimes, Josiah appears broken, visiting Billy Walton’s bar alone and barely eating. Hannah leaves him, but he persists in showing up. At Gabriel’s deathbed, he quietly arranges funeral and burial details, asking for Hannah’s approval with simple trust. He commissions the quartersawn oak coffin and chooses the English Cemetery of Peace, where plum blossoms fall on Rachel and Jasper’s graves. In the final chapter, he retrieves Hannah by buggy, and she takes his hand, recognizing forgiveness as an unearned gift.

Key Relationships

Hannah. The marriage is the novel’s emotional bedrock and its most contested terrain. Josiah loves Hannah with a steadiness she compares to “air I breathe,” yet he often frustrates her—by enforcing church discipline, by suppressing his own emotions, by his silence about Absalom. Their reconciliation is tentative and incomplete, a hand held in a buggy rather than a grand resolution.

Gabriel. Josiah is the grandfather who builds the bed, raises the ceiling, and worries about pride. He never matches Hannah’s effusive affection or Dr. Kennedy’s easy companionship, but his love is material and durable. His admission that he cannot build Gabriel’s coffin is one of the novel’s most vulnerable moments.

Dr. Kennedy. Josiah’s relationship with Thomas Kennedy is cautious but respectful. He calls the doctor “as honest and caring as a man without God in his heart could be.” The two men share guardianship of Gabriel across a theological divide neither crosses.

Absalom Yoder. Josiah’s father-in-law is a shadow figure whose monstrous acts retroactively poison everything. Josiah’s likely knowledge of the abuse—and his failure to act—represents his greatest moral failing.

Key Decisions and Their Consequences

Enforcing Rachel’s shunning — isolates Rachel, contributes to her suffering, and wounds Hannah, though Josiah privately bends by allowing the riverbank meetings.
Allowing Gabriel’s veterinary work to end under church pressure — preserves standing in the district but removes a source of joy and mentorship for Gabriel.
Permitting monthly dinners with Dr. Kennedy — a compromise that honors both church authority and the grandfatherly bond Gabriel needs.
Sending Gabriel to live with Dr. Kennedy after the amputation — a difficult act of love that acknowledges Gabriel no longer fits Amish life.
Arranging burial in the English cemetery beside Rachel and Jasper, not in an Amish plot — a quiet final concession to the broken, blended family reality.

Themes and Symbolic Connections

Anonymity versus spectacle. Josiah embodies the Amish ideal of communal invisibility, yet he is perpetually drawn into visibility through Gabriel’s body. His struggle mirrors the novel’s epigraph: even “Giants” are “Minor—Apparatus—Hopper of the Mill—.” Josiah would agree with Dickinson’s diminishment of fame, but the world insists on staring.

Faith, doubt, and forgiveness. Josiah’s faith holds, but it shows cracks—most visibly in his silence about Absalom. His failure to forgive himself, and Hannah’s struggle to forgive him, form a parallel to her inability to forgive her father after reading his confessional letter.

The body as miracle and commodity. Josiah’s response to Gabriel’s body is practical: he builds, measures, sews. He treats the body as a fact to be accommodated, not a spectacle to be marketed. When an alderman later offers to buy Gabriel’s shoes for a tourist display, the family refuses.

Grief and caregiving. Josiah’s grief is manual. He paints walls, raises doorways, and, unable to build the coffin, hires Abram Glick. His caregiving is silent, logistical, and essential.

Mortality and legacy. Josiah’s legacy is ambiguous. He fails Rachel and Jasper in significant ways, yet his steady care sustains Gabriel through childhood and into his final days. The plum blossoms falling on gravestones suggest a continuity beyond moral accounting.

Five Questions About Josiah Fisher with Direct Answers

1. Why does Josiah refuse to speak to Rachel at the riverbank, even when she calls out "Daddy"? The text shows Josiah placing his hands on Hannah’s shoulders and leading her away. His silence is not indifference but a painful adherence to streng meidung, the strict shunning imposed by the church. The “catch in Josiah’s breath” and “the pain in it” reveal internal warring, but as head of the household, he cannot publicly break the community’s sentence.

2. Does Josiah know about Absalom’s abuse before the suicide letter? Hannah’s confrontation strongly implies prior knowledge. When she confronts him, Josiah’s silence “confirmed her fear of his complicity.” The text does not specify exactly what he knew or when, but his failure to act—or speak—is presented as a moral failure that contributes to the “bedrock of lies” under their marriage.

3. Why does Josiah allow Gabriel to leave for the English world rather than urging baptism and Amish commitment? Josiah sees that Gabriel’s post-amputation life—marked by tattoos, computer-controlled prostheses, and worldly ambition—cannot be reconciled with Amish standards. His decision is pragmatic and loving: rather than force a fit that would breed misery, he telephones an English friend to take Gabriel in. This reverses his earlier rigidity and acknowledges the limits of community discipline.

4. What does Josiah’s inability to build Gabriel’s coffin signify? Josiah has built everything Gabriel needed—the bed, the doors, the chair—but confesses he cannot undertake the coffin. The ten-foot length demands expertise beyond his skill, but the admission also carries emotional weight: a grandfather should not have to build his grandson’s coffin, and the enormity of the task exceeds even his carpenter’s hands. Abram Glick completes the work in quartersawn oak.

5. How does Josiah’s marriage to Hannah survive Absalom’s revelations and Hannah’s departure? It survives through persistence rather than resolution. Josiah visits weekly, reports on the farm, and accepts Hannah’s new English clothes without comment. When Hannah returns, she takes his hand in the buggy, recognizing “forgiveness as an unearned gift.” The novel does not suggest the marriage is healed, only that it continues—a quiet, ongoing choice.