Biblical allusions, loads of white wine, and Flannery O'Connor

"A blind man sat by the road and he cried/He cried show me the way/Show me the truth/ Show me the light... the way to go home...
Jesus sat by the road and he cried/I am the way/I am the truth/I am the Light... the way to go home." -- Traditional Christian spiritual

"A Blind Beggar Receives His Sight

As Jesus approached Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging. When he heard the crowd going by, he asked what was happening. They told him, 'Jesus of Nazareth is passing by.'

He called out, 'Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!'

Those who led the way rebuked him and told him to be quiet, but he shouted all the more, 'Son of David, have mercy on me!'

Jesus stopped and ordered the man to be brought to him. When he came near, Jesus asked him, 'What do you want me to do for you?'
'Lord, I want to see,' he replied.

Jesus said to him, 'Receive your sight; your faith has healed you.' Immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus, praising God. When all the people saw it, they also praised God." The Gospel of Luke, 18:35 New International Bible



On Sunday afternoon, August 17, Book Gang congregated in Prospect Park underneath our big tree to meet and discuss Flannery O'Connor's novel, Wise Blood. Beth, Jason, Jenna, Leslie and Sharon were joined by new Gangster Yelena (who all agreed brought the most awesome snacks; bite-sized Kit Kats, Mounds and peanut M&M's, Cheez Puffs and Capri Suns.)

Beth opened up the discussion with some biography on O'Connor, a Southern Gothic writer often pigeonholed for her "grotesque characters," but who defended herself by saying that's basically what Southern Christians really are like and if she purposefully tried to write grotesque, well, everything would come out like a Northern's reality. During her short life (died at age 39 of complications from lupus) O'Connor was often overlooked by book reviewers and criticized, but posthumously many have praised her short stories.
Several book gangsters also voiced preference for her short stories, and during the meeting it was discussed why this particular novel might have worked better in short story form, or even adapted for screen. Jason adeptly pointed out how cinematic many of her scenes are and we all had a good laugh imaging Enoch Emery perched on a rock contemplating the sunset in his gorilla suit.

I felt inspired to write in the blog because I kept thinking back to the latter part of the discussion, and people's input on what reasons Hazel Motes had for blinding and further martyrizing himself, and the role that religion plays in the novel.

Beth's biographical overview discussed that O'Connor was a devout Roman Catholic living in the Protestant Bible Belt. In some of her stories, most notably "A Good Man is Hard to Find" critics have drawn out selections that would indicate a subtle hostility towards the actions of Protestant Christians, and mild pokes at their acts of hypocracy in their day-to-day lives. Like Jason said, it is hard to think about O'Connor writing Wise Blood, a tale rife with twisted, misguided, ill-fated, and even atheist characters, where at the end no one is selfless and/or kind; no one is redeemed; no one has a spiritual awakening--essentially no one gets saved. It just doesn't seem too nice of a good Catholic girl to speak of man's evils and wrongs and jerks who spit in the face of God.

I puzzled over this a lot after our meaning because I really wanted to find O'Connor's God in the book and also because I just couldn't walk away from it not seeing some kind of moral or lesson that we should learn. It was too hard for me to accept that Hazel Motes' death didn't have some kind of meaning or message. So bear with me, Gangsters, for using the blog to wax religion-ical, but here's what I came up with.

Sharon really hit the nail on the head when she was answering my question about if the "false" preacher "blinded" himself with quicklime to prove how devout and true his faith in God was (even though we know he was unsuccessful, and most likely cowardly and corrupt), why would Hazel Motes blind himself, when he had professed that he "didn't believe in anything?" If not an act of faith, then what was it?

Sharon's point was, after the cop kicked his car over the cliff, he had nothing to live for. As she put it, he probably did not want to see the rest of the ride.

Thinking about this in the shower, I decided that this was O'Connor's critique of a life lived without a spiritual thirst for God and truth--a life devoid of spirual light--and her critique on materialism.

Simply, the car was Hazel's everything; his reason to live. He put pride into it, and even smugly walked away from the mechanic who said he couldn't do anything with it and went to a guy that he said was "honest," that is, he told him everything he wanted to hear about the car and inflated his vanity and his ego. To someone devout like O'Connor, this kind of pride would seem empty, even humorous. So when he loses the car, he has nothing to live for. Along with the car, all of his plans of leaving town and starting anew were ruined. He became like a man lost--a blind man. So, to blind himself at that point could make sense. I think this is O'Connor's Thomist parable to those who do not know Jesus--they are doomed to wander and suffer and inflict needless self-pain without comfort or release until the end of their days, like Hazel Motes with his barbed wire corset and glass-shard orthopedic soles. (Not that a good Christian lady like O'Connor would judge; that's God's job. But hey, it's fiction, she's allowed to make an example out of Haze). See the way that money became meaningless after he lost his one thing to live for? No person could comfort Haze at the end, because he no longer had any spiritual compass or meaning for his life.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on that. Hope you Gangsters don't mind me quoting scripture on our bad-assssssss blog! Please people post on this and other topics!

Who is stoked for The World Without Us? Like a good blogger, I ordered mine from Powells.com. Yay.