Flannery O'Connor: The Violent Bear It Away

I must admit, the books I enjoy the most are those that cause me to ponder their meaning long after the final page as been turned, leaving me with angst about the human condition: writings that make me dig deep and examine my own soul. For these reasons I have always been drawn to Flannery O’Connor and Joyce Carol Oates. 

 I consider O’Connor and Oates to be writers of Southern and Northern, if there is such a category, Gothic. Their plumbing of the human condition touches me to the very core and often leaves me with more questions than answers, the condition of human existence itself.

Having just read O’Connor’s second and final novel, The Violent Bear It Away, I find myself examining my own personal struggles with those who have touched my life, particularly those whom I did not choose to do so, but have left their mark all the same. The Violent Bear It Away is considered a landmark in American literature. 

Born in Savannah, Georgia in 1925, Flannery O’Connor died in Milledgeville, Georgia in 1964.  In that short span she wrote two novels, thirty-one short stories, and a number of reviews and essays. As with her previous novel the main character struggles with an internal battle against the faith that was instilled in him, the life he was told by others he was born to lead.

The title is taken from a translation of Matthew 11:12, which provides the book’s epigraph: “From the days of John the Baptist until now, the Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence, and the violent bear it away.” These are Jesus’ words to the multitude, and the themes of baptism, violence and the Bread of Life permeate the novel.

The main action of The Violent Bear It Away occurs over seven days, but much of the novel consists of flashbacks that recall incidents in the lives of the main characters. Events are illustrated through the memories of different individuals providing insight into their psychological and spiritual natures, revealing the motivations behind their actions, and offering a family history clouded by personal feelings, religious and intellectual beliefs, and emotional confusion. The novel is divided into three sections, each covering a period in Francis Marion Tarwater's journey of self-discovery.

O’Connor’s last major work to be published in her lifetime, the novel offers no easy truths; Tarwater is an unlikable boy who learns that doing God's work entails violence, unreason, even madness. It is a psychological study of the mysterious and frightening nature of the religious calling. Stark religious symbolism and Biblical allusions unite to explore themes of spiritual hunger, faith versus reason, and the battle for the soul. O'Connor wrote the novel over eight years while suffering from lupus, publishing the first chapter as a story, You Can't Be Poorer Than Dead, in 1955. 

While living at Andalusia, Flannery O’Connor completed Wise Blood, which was published in 1952. Then her highly acclaimed collection of short stories, A Good Man Is Hard To Find, was published in 1955. By the end of the 1950s, largely on the strength of her short stories, O'Connor was viewed as a major American writer; a committed Catholic, O'Connor traveled to Rome for an audience with the Pope in 1958.  In 1960, The Violent Bear It Away was published, but like its predecessor, Wise Blood, was poorly received.

For the last few years of her life, as her lupus progressed, O'Connor concentrated on writing nonfiction. She died on August 3, 1964 at her mother's home in Milledgeville. In 1972, she was posthumously awarded the National Book Award for The Complete Short Stories.She also wrote The Violent Bear It Away, published in 1960, here. Her second collection of short stories, Everything That Rises Must Converge, was published posthumously in 1965. A collection of nonfiction prose titled Mystery and Manners edited by Robert and Sally Fitzgerald was published in 1969. The Complete Stories, edited by Robert Giroux, won the 1971 National Book Award for Fiction. Sally Fitzgerald edited a large collection of O’Connor’s letters, The Habit of Being, published in 1979, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award. O’Connor, a committed Catholic,  traveled to Rome for an audience with the Pope in 1958.  Collected Works was published in 1988 as part of the Library of America series, the definitive collection of America’s greatest writers.

Further Reference-

The Flannery O'Connor–Andalusia Foundation, Inc. maintains a Web site at http://www.andalusiafarm.org/ with information about the activities taking place at the Andalusia property where O'Connor lived and worked. 

Comforts of Home, a Web site dedicated to Flannery O'Connor, can be found at http://www.mediaspecialist.org/index.html. This site has links to biographical information about the author and critical analyses of her work. 

A Library of America interview with author Brad Gooch, who has written the only biography on  Flannery O’Connor, can be found at: "http://www.loa.org/images/pdf/Gooch_on_O'Connor.pdf

I just finished reading “Wise Blood”, a novel written by Flannery O’Connor. I found it disturbing and fascinating. This was the first time I’ve read any of O’Connor’s work and so I chose to read her first novel. I found its form to be stark, direct, simplistic, its content dark and disturbing. I am entirely intrigued by her style and content and look forward to reading her short stories.


Flannery O'Connor was the only child of Edward F. O'Connor and Regina Cline O’Connor. Born in Savannah, GA in 1925 she attended Peabody High School and Georgia State College for Women (now Georgia College and State University). She majored in English and Sociology. In 1949 O'Connor met and eventually accepted an invitation to stay with Robert Fitzgerald, a translator of Greek plays and epic poems and a respected poet in his own right, and his wife, Sally, in Redding, Connecticut. In 1951 she was diagnosed with lupus, and subsequently returned to her ancestral farm, known as Andalusia, in Milledgeville, GA where she died at the age of 39 years on August 3, 1964.


“Wise Blood” is written in the Southern Gothic genre. Southern Gothic is a subgenre of the Gothic writing style, unique to American literature. Like its parent genre, it relies on supernatural, ironic, or unusual events to guide the plot. Unlike the Gothic writing style, Southern Gothic uses these tools not for the sake of suspense, but to explore social issues and reveal the cultural character of the American South. This genre of writing is seen in the work of many celebrated Southern writers such as: William Faulkner, Erskine Caldwell, Eudora Welty, Tennessee Williams, Cormac McCarthy and Katherine Ann Porter among many others.


I am particularly interested in the short story which has become less popular in our times. “Wise Blood” began with four chapters published in Mademoiselle, Sewanee Review, and Partisan Review in 1948 and 1949. O'Connor then published it as a complete novel in 1952, and the publisher, Signet, advertised it as "A Searching Novel of Sin and Redemption."

According to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, “Flannery O'Connor was a Roman Catholic living in the American South, and her fictions consistently illustrate not merely religious, but theological points of view. By the time of “Wise Blood”, O'Connor was herself diagnosed with lupus and was receiving treatment with hydrocortisone therapy at Emory University hospitals in Atlanta.”


After her first major attack of lupus in 1950, she had been forced to return home to live with her mother on the family farm. O'Connor's father had died of lupus, leaving her with no illusions about the outcome. Having previously lived in Iowa and in and around New York City, she found her mother's company and the general area of Milledgeville to be difficult. The smart-aleck child coming home, and resentment of mother figures and parents in general, permeates all of O'Connor's fiction, and “Wise Blood” is true to this context.


In this novel, O'Connor explores her recurring concept of an alienated young person returning home coupled with the theme of the struggle of the individual to understand Christianity. O'Connor's hero, a young man named Hazel Motes, sneers at communal and social experiences of Christianity. Having returned from serving in the Army Hazel is travelling by train to the fictional city of Taulkinham having just discovered that his family home has been abandoned. His grandfather was a tent revival preacher, and Hazel is told repeatedly that he "looks like a preacher," though he despises preachers.


An interesting cast of characters follows including Miss Leora Watts, Enoch Emery, and a blind preacher, Asa Hawks, and his young daughter, Sabbath Lily Hawks. Leora Watts is a prostitute, Enoch Emery is attracted to Hazel's new "Church Without Christ" and believes himself to have wise blood, Asa Hawks is a blind preacher who is not blind, and Sabbath Lily has a wild side and has fixated on having Hazel for her own.


Hazel Motes tries desperately to find freedom from his conscience by choosing to ignore his belief in God. He believes that if he eliminates morality from his life, he can avoid Jesus. The cast of characters in Wise Blood are frequently deceptive, chronically unkind, and brutally violent. “Wise Blood” is a spiritually empty, morally blind, cold, hostile place. Over the years, critics have often referred to Flannery 0' Connor's first novel as dark and grotesque.


In 1979 “Wise Blood” was made into a movie. According to Rotten Tomatoes “from the "The Maltese Falcon" to the "The Dead," filmmaker John Huston created provocative adaptations of stories and novels -- and "Wise Blood" is considered to be among his most daring.”