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The Violent Bear It Away
First published in 1960, The Violent Bear It Away is now a landmark in American literature. It is a dark and absorbing example of the Gothic sensibility and bracing satirical voice that are united in Flannery O'Conner's work. In it, the orphaned Francis Marion Tarwater and his cousins, the schoolteacher Rayber, defy the prophecy of their dead uncle--that Tarwater will become a prophet and will baptize Rayber's young son, Bishop. A series of struggles ensues: Tarwater fights an internal battle against his innate faith and the voices calling him to be a prophet while Rayber tries to draw Tarwater into a more "reasonable" modern world. Both wrestle with the legacy of their dead relatives and lay claim to Bishop's soul.
O'Connor observes all this with an astonishing combination of irony and compassion, humor and pathos, resulting in a novel where range and depth reveal a brilliant and innovative writers acutely alert to where the sacred lives and to where it does not.
O'Connor observes all this with an astonishing combination of irony and compassion, humor and pathos, resulting in a novel where range and depth reveal a brilliant and innovative writers acutely alert to where the sacred lives and to where it does not.
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1960
518 people are currently reading
21253 people want to read
About the author
Flannery O'Connor
220 books5,269 followersCritics note novels
Wise Blood
(1952) and
The Violent Bear It Away
(1960) and short stories, collected in such works as
A Good Man Is Hard to Find
(1955), of American writer Mary Flannery O'Connor for their explorations of religious faith and a spare literary style.
The Georgia state college for women educated O’Connor, who then studied writing at the Iowa writers' workshop and wrote much of Wise Blood at the colony of artists at Yaddo in upstate New York. She lived most of her adult life on Andalusia, ancestral farm of her family outside Milledgeville, Georgia.
O’Connor wrote Everything That Rises Must Converge (1964). When she died at the age of 39 years, America lost one of its most gifted writers at the height of her powers.
Survivors published her essays were published in Mystery and Manners (1969). Her Complete Stories , published posthumously in 1972, won the national book award for that year. Survivors published her letters in The Habit of Being (1979). In 1988, the Library of America published Collected Works of Flannery O'Connor, the first so honored postwar writer.
People in an online poll in 2009 voted her Complete Stories as the best book to win the national book award in the six-decade history of the contest.
The Georgia state college for women educated O’Connor, who then studied writing at the Iowa writers' workshop and wrote much of Wise Blood at the colony of artists at Yaddo in upstate New York. She lived most of her adult life on Andalusia, ancestral farm of her family outside Milledgeville, Georgia.
O’Connor wrote Everything That Rises Must Converge (1964). When she died at the age of 39 years, America lost one of its most gifted writers at the height of her powers.
Survivors published her essays were published in Mystery and Manners (1969). Her Complete Stories , published posthumously in 1972, won the national book award for that year. Survivors published her letters in The Habit of Being (1979). In 1988, the Library of America published Collected Works of Flannery O'Connor, the first so honored postwar writer.
People in an online poll in 2009 voted her Complete Stories as the best book to win the national book award in the six-decade history of the contest.
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May 12, 2025
Ignorance and fanaticism are blood kin…
But the old lunatic raised a boy who would continue his holy mission… So as soon as the old man is dead the boy goes to town to carry out his work of a prophet… Foolishness and madness are faithful helpers and satellites of any zealotry… There are many of a kind… Their name is legion…
Ogres need no reason, they come into the world to devour others.
He had been called in his early youth and had set out for the city to proclaim the destruction awaiting a world that had abandoned its Saviour. He proclaimed from the midst of his fury that the world would see the sun burst in blood and fire and while he raged and waited, it rose every morning, calm and contained in itself, as if not only the world, but the Lord Himself had failed to hear the prophet’s message. It rose and set, rose and set on a world that turned from green to white and green to white and green to white again. It rose and set and he despaired of the Lord’s listening. Then one morning he saw to his joy a finger of fire coming out of it and before he could turn, before he could shout, the finger had touched him and the destruction he had been waiting for had fallen in his own brain and his own body. His own blood had been burned dry and not the blood of the world.
But the old lunatic raised a boy who would continue his holy mission… So as soon as the old man is dead the boy goes to town to carry out his work of a prophet… Foolishness and madness are faithful helpers and satellites of any zealotry… There are many of a kind… Their name is legion…
“Our little girl began to preach when she was six. We saw that she had a mission, that she had been called. We saw that we could not keep her to ourselves and so we have endured many hardships to give her to the world, to bring her to you tonight. To us you are as important as the great rulers of the world!”
Ogres need no reason, they come into the world to devour others.
![Profile Image for s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all].](https://www.goodreads.com/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.gr-assets.com%2Fimages%2FS%2Fcompressed.photo.goodreads.com%2Fusers%2F1735525095i%2F6431467._UX200_CR0%2C11%2C200%2C200_.jpg&w=128&q=75)
April 17, 2024
For those not learned in the wizened and wise philosophy of *checks notes* Kung Fu Panda, the old turtle advises ‘One often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it.’ Okay, sure, this was lifted from French fabulist Jean de la Fontaine but who doesn’t want advice from a sagacious turtle? Either way, this lesson arrives as darkly foreboding for a young man who’s reluctance to become the religious prophet for which he has been groomed sends him through a dark journey and destructive journey in Flannery O’Connor’s The Violent Bear it Away. Will Tarwater run from fate, or end up running right into fate’s grasp. The second and final novel from O’Connor, this grim tale delivers her signature Southern Gothic sensibilities as generational trauma from violence of the mind and body blend with religious fervor in a prophetic self-purification by fire. At times it feels like a “greatest hits” of sorts made up of her most vivid themes from her short stories—which I felt were sometimes better expressed in their succinctly there—though the writing here is truly fantastic and the story is as engaging as it is shocking. The Violent Bear it Away is bursting with religious symbolism, demons and domineering destiny that is as dark as damnation though it is less a lesson in christianity than it is about capturing a confrontation with it and letting the reader feel the full weight of the shock and struggles with spiritual ambiguity caught in the long shadow of prophecy.
‘You have to quit confusing a madness with a mission.’
I was thrilled when this book got selected in my bookclub as I had loved Flannery O’Connor’s short stories in college, launching into reading most of her works after I was particularly proud of a paper I wrote about The Misfit from A Good Man Is Hard to Find for a class. The familiarity of her themes here was rather pleasant despite the brutality of them, though I sometimes felt like certain key elements had been done more effectively before. O’Connor’s work are often characterized by grotesqueries and what she wrote was a very Southern writer ‘penchant for writing about freaks,’ an aspect she finds essential to her stories because these characters ‘can be sensed as a figure for our essential displacement.’ Growing up Irish Catholic in the US south, her faith predominantly shaped her stories and she preferred to term herself a ‘christian realist’ as opposed to a writer of the southern gothic, though it is precisely the overlap of these ideas with stories populated by oddballs and outcasts that make her so engaging and unforgettable. Wrestling with the divine and grace is always a central theme, as she often discusses in her essays.
Her moral messages tend to arrive from surprising angles feeling more like darkness creeping into the narrative rather than a glorious ray of light like one might expect. We see that frequently in The Violent Bear it Away, such as how drowning and baptism are symbolically interlaced. Fire and water, forces of destruction, become the avenue for what Tarwater perceives as purification and the forces that galvanize him towards his destiny. The way violence and what polite society of the time might term vulgarity are often used symbolically as expressions of grace seems to capture her idea of Southern morality and as she wrote in Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose ‘ I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted.’ This is a haunting book indeed.
‘He knew that he was the stuff of which fanatics and madmen are made and that he had turned his destiny as if with his bare will.’
Family legacy looms large over this story as Tarwater’s feared inheritance of becoming a prophet and his Uncle Raylan’s fear of inheriting the family mental illness are seen as both separate and identical issues. O’Connor plays with ideas of religious fervor that feels rather critical of those who are uncritical in their lofty beliefs of religious might while still delivering a story where violence leads towards becoming a prophet. It also addresses generational trauma, with Mason—Tarweather’s uncle who kidnapped him as a child and is a self-proclaimed prophet—having been sexually abused and perpetuating violence and abuse down the line. It uses some fairly outdated terms and rather unkind stereotypes of mental illness, but the effect is that the reader and even the character’s are never certain if what is unfolding is mental illness in the characters or a work of the divine. It also leaves the possibility that the two are one and the same.
Mason was a man of action, often ill-advised action, and found hunger and being pulled along irrationally to be a mark of divinity proving his role. For Rayber, the experience with Mason lead him to reject and resent christianity, becoming an atheist and being immobilized in life by inaction. ‘It seemed to him that this indifference was the most that human dignity could achieve… To feel nothing was peace,’ and he is indifferent even to his own son, whom Tarwater is sent to baptize. Tarwater, on the other hand ‘knew that he was called to be a prophet’ but is fearful and resentful of it, caught between fearing both Mason’s erratic sense of constant action and Rayber’s inaction. It becomes a question of action, but also agency as he fears the call of a prophet finding it to be a source of mental illness and a burden, but free will might not be so free here.
‘The boy sensed that this was the heart of his great-uncle’s madness, this hunger, and what he was secretly afraid of was that it might be passed down, might be hidden in the blood and might strike some day in him and then he would be torn by hunger like the old man, the bottom split out of his stomach so that nothing would heal or fill it but the bread of life.’
The novel is rife with religious symbolism and pays particular attention to the lives of prophets. Jonah is most frequently reference and bears a lot of resemblance to Tarwater with them both reluctant to take up their role and become a prophet in the city to which they are traveling. Shaking in his nightmares, he is even described as Johan: ‘He might have been Jonah clinging wildly to the whale’s tongue’ Tarwater is given orders to fulfill his role beginning with giving Mason a christian burial and then baptizing Rayber’s son, but he runs away, like Jonah, burning down the house in which he believes Mason’s body to be inside. All the while he is tempted by a voice in his head, a sort of double-self that hisses at him and is likely a personification of the Devil. Or is he a sign of mental illness, Tarwater wonders? It is his punishment for refusing to be a prophet and just as Jonah was sent into the belly of the whale, Tarwater is sent into the belly of the beast that is his atheist uncle’s home.
‘He began to feel that he was only just now meeting himself, as if as long as his uncle had lived, he had been deprived of his own acquaintance. I ain’t denying the old man was a good one, his new friend said, but like you said: you can’t be any poorer than dead. They have to take what they can get. His soul is off this mortal earth now and his body is not going to feel the pinch, of fire or anything else.’
This is a dark book, and feels akin to the works of Cormac McCarthy in many ways. Unfortunately it is not always delightfully dark and it is more twisted like the bodies of those burning in hell than twisted in a tantalizing way. Still it makes sharp points and is lush in its symbolism and sincerity. The language is incredible too, with lines like:
This passage reminds me a bit of the poem The Second Coming by W.B. Yeats. The biblical title of the novel is taken from Matthew and reads ‘ From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent bear it away.’ Yet is it a violent love of God that is grace or the spiritual violence done upon him that purifies and allows for grace? Will Tarwater take up the helm of prophet, and will the baptism occur? I won’t spoil this bleak tale for you but I am glad I went down this dark road.
3.5/5
‘GO WARN THE CHILDREN OF GOD OF THE TERRIBLE SPEED OF MERCY.’
‘You have to quit confusing a madness with a mission.’
I was thrilled when this book got selected in my bookclub as I had loved Flannery O’Connor’s short stories in college, launching into reading most of her works after I was particularly proud of a paper I wrote about The Misfit from A Good Man Is Hard to Find for a class. The familiarity of her themes here was rather pleasant despite the brutality of them, though I sometimes felt like certain key elements had been done more effectively before. O’Connor’s work are often characterized by grotesqueries and what she wrote was a very Southern writer ‘penchant for writing about freaks,’ an aspect she finds essential to her stories because these characters ‘can be sensed as a figure for our essential displacement.’ Growing up Irish Catholic in the US south, her faith predominantly shaped her stories and she preferred to term herself a ‘christian realist’ as opposed to a writer of the southern gothic, though it is precisely the overlap of these ideas with stories populated by oddballs and outcasts that make her so engaging and unforgettable. Wrestling with the divine and grace is always a central theme, as she often discusses in her essays.
‘All of my stories are about the action of grace on a character who is not very willing to support it, but most people think of these stories as hard, hopeless and brutal.’
Her moral messages tend to arrive from surprising angles feeling more like darkness creeping into the narrative rather than a glorious ray of light like one might expect. We see that frequently in The Violent Bear it Away, such as how drowning and baptism are symbolically interlaced. Fire and water, forces of destruction, become the avenue for what Tarwater perceives as purification and the forces that galvanize him towards his destiny. The way violence and what polite society of the time might term vulgarity are often used symbolically as expressions of grace seems to capture her idea of Southern morality and as she wrote in Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose ‘ I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted.’ This is a haunting book indeed.
‘He knew that he was the stuff of which fanatics and madmen are made and that he had turned his destiny as if with his bare will.’
Family legacy looms large over this story as Tarwater’s feared inheritance of becoming a prophet and his Uncle Raylan’s fear of inheriting the family mental illness are seen as both separate and identical issues. O’Connor plays with ideas of religious fervor that feels rather critical of those who are uncritical in their lofty beliefs of religious might while still delivering a story where violence leads towards becoming a prophet. It also addresses generational trauma, with Mason—Tarweather’s uncle who kidnapped him as a child and is a self-proclaimed prophet—having been sexually abused and perpetuating violence and abuse down the line. It uses some fairly outdated terms and rather unkind stereotypes of mental illness, but the effect is that the reader and even the character’s are never certain if what is unfolding is mental illness in the characters or a work of the divine. It also leaves the possibility that the two are one and the same.
‘The affliction was in the family. It lay hidden in the line of blood that touched them, flowing from some ancient source, some desert prophet or pole-sitter… Those it touched were condemned to fight it constantly or be ruled by it.’
Mason was a man of action, often ill-advised action, and found hunger and being pulled along irrationally to be a mark of divinity proving his role. For Rayber, the experience with Mason lead him to reject and resent christianity, becoming an atheist and being immobilized in life by inaction. ‘It seemed to him that this indifference was the most that human dignity could achieve… To feel nothing was peace,’ and he is indifferent even to his own son, whom Tarwater is sent to baptize. Tarwater, on the other hand ‘knew that he was called to be a prophet’ but is fearful and resentful of it, caught between fearing both Mason’s erratic sense of constant action and Rayber’s inaction. It becomes a question of action, but also agency as he fears the call of a prophet finding it to be a source of mental illness and a burden, but free will might not be so free here.
‘The boy sensed that this was the heart of his great-uncle’s madness, this hunger, and what he was secretly afraid of was that it might be passed down, might be hidden in the blood and might strike some day in him and then he would be torn by hunger like the old man, the bottom split out of his stomach so that nothing would heal or fill it but the bread of life.’
The novel is rife with religious symbolism and pays particular attention to the lives of prophets. Jonah is most frequently reference and bears a lot of resemblance to Tarwater with them both reluctant to take up their role and become a prophet in the city to which they are traveling. Shaking in his nightmares, he is even described as Johan: ‘He might have been Jonah clinging wildly to the whale’s tongue’ Tarwater is given orders to fulfill his role beginning with giving Mason a christian burial and then baptizing Rayber’s son, but he runs away, like Jonah, burning down the house in which he believes Mason’s body to be inside. All the while he is tempted by a voice in his head, a sort of double-self that hisses at him and is likely a personification of the Devil. Or is he a sign of mental illness, Tarwater wonders? It is his punishment for refusing to be a prophet and just as Jonah was sent into the belly of the whale, Tarwater is sent into the belly of the beast that is his atheist uncle’s home.
‘He began to feel that he was only just now meeting himself, as if as long as his uncle had lived, he had been deprived of his own acquaintance. I ain’t denying the old man was a good one, his new friend said, but like you said: you can’t be any poorer than dead. They have to take what they can get. His soul is off this mortal earth now and his body is not going to feel the pinch, of fire or anything else.’
This is a dark book, and feels akin to the works of Cormac McCarthy in many ways. Unfortunately it is not always delightfully dark and it is more twisted like the bodies of those burning in hell than twisted in a tantalizing way. Still it makes sharp points and is lush in its symbolism and sincerity. The language is incredible too, with lines like:
‘His singed eyes, black in their deep sockets, seemed already to envision the fate that awaited him but he moved steadily on, his face set toward the dark city, where the children of God lay sleeping.’
This passage reminds me a bit of the poem The Second Coming by W.B. Yeats. The biblical title of the novel is taken from Matthew and reads ‘ From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent bear it away.’ Yet is it a violent love of God that is grace or the spiritual violence done upon him that purifies and allows for grace? Will Tarwater take up the helm of prophet, and will the baptism occur? I won’t spoil this bleak tale for you but I am glad I went down this dark road.
3.5/5
‘GO WARN THE CHILDREN OF GOD OF THE TERRIBLE SPEED OF MERCY.’
September 2, 2020
“He knew that he was called to be a prophet and that the ways of his prophecy would not be remarkable. His black pupils, glassy and still, reflected depth on depth his own stricken image of himself, trudging into the distance in the bleeding stinking mad shadow of Jesus, until at last he received his reward, a broken fish, a multiplied loaf.”
It used to be that the Devil and the threat of Hell were the scariest notions to me as a child. These thoughts were stuffed into my head at an early age and I could not let them go for a very long time. My parents weren’t religious fanatics; however, my mother in particular knew what weapons to use to get her children to cooperate fully. These days, the Devil and Hell often seem not much different from what we see around us on a regular basis, so I’m not any more afraid of those ideas than I am of life itself. What really frightens me now is religious fundamentalism and extremism and the power these continue to wield over a significant portion of the world’s population. I don’t think I need to provide examples about the many evil acts that have been committed in the name of a higher power or being.
“If by the time I die, I haven’t got him baptized, it’ll be up to you. It’ll be the first mission the Lord sends you.”
Left an orphan at a young age, Francis Marion Tarwater was kidnapped by his great-uncle Mason from his uncle Rayber’s home and brought to a backwoods, isolated location to be raised in the manner of a prophet-in-training. When Mason dies, the now fourteen-year-old Tarwater begins a journey – one literal, to Rayber’s home, and the other, a spiritual battle between the frenzied, obsessive voice in his head and the voice of reason. He is determined to fight the urge to baptize Rayber’s young, disabled son, Bishop.
“The affliction was in the family. It lay hidden in the line of blood that touched them, flowing from some ancient source, some desert prophet or pole-sitter… Those it touched were condemned to fight it constantly or be ruled by it.”
Rayber too has fought such a battle, having got into the clutches of Mason as a boy himself. He believes he has remained unscathed – but has he? His goal is to rescue Tarwater and bring him up with the advantages of an education untainted by this monomania that has been ingrained in his psyche. What follows is a dark, ugly story where the depravity feels utterly relentless, holding the reader in its grip along with these tragic characters throughout. Through her depictions, Flannery O’Connor explores with intensity the concept of religious fundamentalism. Don’t expect her to hold your hand. There will be no mollycoddling or tender glimpses of hope.
This is bleak and full of the destructive forces of unhinged, obsessive minds. It’s easy to see how children often fall victim to the ‘ideals’ of others, plunging them into the depths of madness and corruption as they blindly follow those who have control over their education and a mastery of their souls. I’ve read O’Connor before, and I’ll most certainly read her again. Her writing is incisive, full of rich symbolism, and steeped with a Southern Gothic style in its finest form. The only reason this is garnering four stars rather than five is that it was not deliciously dark but rather tirelessly dismal at times.
“Life had never been good enough to him for him to wince at its destruction. He told himself that he was indifferent even to his own dissolution. It seemed to him that this indifference was the most that human dignity could achieve��� To feel nothing was peace.”
It used to be that the Devil and the threat of Hell were the scariest notions to me as a child. These thoughts were stuffed into my head at an early age and I could not let them go for a very long time. My parents weren’t religious fanatics; however, my mother in particular knew what weapons to use to get her children to cooperate fully. These days, the Devil and Hell often seem not much different from what we see around us on a regular basis, so I’m not any more afraid of those ideas than I am of life itself. What really frightens me now is religious fundamentalism and extremism and the power these continue to wield over a significant portion of the world’s population. I don’t think I need to provide examples about the many evil acts that have been committed in the name of a higher power or being.
“If by the time I die, I haven’t got him baptized, it’ll be up to you. It’ll be the first mission the Lord sends you.”
Left an orphan at a young age, Francis Marion Tarwater was kidnapped by his great-uncle Mason from his uncle Rayber’s home and brought to a backwoods, isolated location to be raised in the manner of a prophet-in-training. When Mason dies, the now fourteen-year-old Tarwater begins a journey – one literal, to Rayber’s home, and the other, a spiritual battle between the frenzied, obsessive voice in his head and the voice of reason. He is determined to fight the urge to baptize Rayber’s young, disabled son, Bishop.
“The affliction was in the family. It lay hidden in the line of blood that touched them, flowing from some ancient source, some desert prophet or pole-sitter… Those it touched were condemned to fight it constantly or be ruled by it.”
Rayber too has fought such a battle, having got into the clutches of Mason as a boy himself. He believes he has remained unscathed – but has he? His goal is to rescue Tarwater and bring him up with the advantages of an education untainted by this monomania that has been ingrained in his psyche. What follows is a dark, ugly story where the depravity feels utterly relentless, holding the reader in its grip along with these tragic characters throughout. Through her depictions, Flannery O’Connor explores with intensity the concept of religious fundamentalism. Don’t expect her to hold your hand. There will be no mollycoddling or tender glimpses of hope.
This is bleak and full of the destructive forces of unhinged, obsessive minds. It’s easy to see how children often fall victim to the ‘ideals’ of others, plunging them into the depths of madness and corruption as they blindly follow those who have control over their education and a mastery of their souls. I’ve read O’Connor before, and I’ll most certainly read her again. Her writing is incisive, full of rich symbolism, and steeped with a Southern Gothic style in its finest form. The only reason this is garnering four stars rather than five is that it was not deliciously dark but rather tirelessly dismal at times.
“Life had never been good enough to him for him to wince at its destruction. He told himself that he was indifferent even to his own dissolution. It seemed to him that this indifference was the most that human dignity could achieve��� To feel nothing was peace.”
December 3, 2025
L’ACQUA BATTEZZA E ANNEGA
Flannery O’Connor ha combattutto tutta la vita contro una malattia autoimmune, il lupus, che si portò via suo padre quando lei aveva solo 15 anni.
Secondo, e ultimo, romanzo di questa scrittrice che si è dedicata forse di più ai racconti, molto stimata e apprezzata dalla critica, ma con la quale io non sono mai entrato in sintonia: troppi predicatori e troppo preti e troppo profeti abitano le sue pagine, e troppa religione e troppo dio di qualche tipo e bandiera per i miei gusti. Troppi fanatici e troppo fanatismo, gran sventolare di bibbie e frasi tonanti.
Non per niente O’Connor viene da quella parte degli Stati Uniti, la zona sud orientale del paese, soprannominata Bible Belt, e questa sua geografia dell’anima è presente e palpabile nella sua letteratura.
Condita con quell’ironia venata di nero, anche un po’ di gotico, che dalle sue parti va forte.
Rimane che perlopiù parla di gente e argomenti che io trovo respingenti.
Il vecchio, che diceva di essere un profeta, aveva cresciuto il ragazzo insegnandogli ad aspettare a sua volta la chiamata del Signore, e a tenersi pronto per il giorno in cui l’avrebbe udita. L’aveva istruito sui mali che toccano a un profeta, quelli che vengono dal mondo, e sono trascurabili, e quelli che vengono dal Signore e lo purificano ardendolo, perché lui stesso era stato purificato ardendo più e più volte. Lui, aveva imparato attraverso il fuoco.
Nonostante l’ironia, la scelta narrativa di Flannery O’Connor è piuttosto estrema: la sua religione contempla il diavolo, include passione e collera, si muove su toni pressoché primitivi. I suoi personaggi sono infestati da dio piuttosto che pervasi, ne sono letteralmente intossicati.
Il predicatore prozio che ha lo stesso cognome del ragazzino protagonista, Tarwater, è un eremita mezzo ubriacone propenso al rapimento con sequestro: lo ha fatto col nipote, lo fece prima con lo zio. Lo scopo sarebbe educativo, crescere le creature nel verbo divino, l’unico autentico.
Come dicevo nipote e prozio condividono il cognome, Tarwater, che vuol dire acqua catramata, e quando il giovane nipote si troverà a dover compiere il rito battesimale, il nome diventa omen.
Entrambi Tarwater: il vecchio Mason, il giovane Francis Marion, nome composto, quasi femmineo, a sottolineare il carattere ben più gentile del giovane.
Dopo averlo rapito, il prozio ha cresciuto il nipote in un eremo campestre imponendogli la sua come unica presenza umana, e imponendogli il quotidiano insegnamento divino: il prozio è convinto che il nipote è destinato a diventare un profeta.
Quando il prozio muore, quasi all’inizio, il piccolo Tarwater (ha solo quattordici anni!) ci prova a seppellirlo: ma non c’è nessuno che possa aiutarlo, gli manca la forza, il vecchio Tarwater è una botte piena d’alcol. E allora Francis Marion pensa che l’unica soluzione sia dar fuoco alla casa e celebrare il funerale con un bel falò: in fondo cenere siamo e cenere torneremo a essere.
A questa punto, avendo in senso letterale terra bruciata alle spalle, si trasferisce dallo zio Rayber, che sembra di tutt’altra natura: ragione non fede, cultura non religione, scienza al posto di dio.
E di tutt’altra natura è anche il suo milieu: la città, invece di quella campagna selvaggia e isolata dove il vecchi Tarwater ha costretto il piccolo Tarwater a venire su.
Francis Mason ha una missione da compiere, che gli è stata assegnata dal prozio prima di passare a miglior vita: battezzare Bishop, il figlio ritardato di suo zio Rayber.
E lo zio Rayber non è poi così diverso dal defunto prozio: il suo approccio alla ragione e al sapere è di stampo illuministico, è impregnato di un credo che è molto simile alla fede del vecchio Tarwater, fede nell’uso del pensiero razionale.
Romanzo di forti dualismi: prozio e zio, uno la religione, dunque la fede, l’altro la ragione (vissuta però, ahimè, come un altro tipo di fede); campagna e città, il primo luogo del vecchio prozio, e dunque della fede religiosa, della distanza dalle tentazione terrene, l’altro luogo dello zio, e dunque della ragione, e della perdizione (O’Connor a me pare propendere per la campagna, anche se questo non si porta dietro un rifiuto della ragione); acqua e fuoco, l’acqua che battezza (ma anche annega), il fuoco che distrugge, ma genera risorgimento, un altro tipo di battesimo.
Pur essendo Flannery O’Connor di forte e chiara fede religiosa cattolica, nel suo romanzo (non solo questo, anche nell’altro Wise Blood – La saggezza del sangue, e anche nei racconti che ho letto), ogni tipo di fede, sia quella religiosa che quella razionale, hanno un forte connotato di violenza e prevaricazione. O’Connor mette in scena la dark side della religione, dove pietà e amore attraversano furia e ira, il peccato si accompagna al castigo perché non c’è mai autentico perdono.
Per questo il cielo è dei violenti. E dei pazzi. Degli intransigenti, degli invasati.
Flannery O’Connor a sinistra.
Flannery O’Connor ha combattutto tutta la vita contro una malattia autoimmune, il lupus, che si portò via suo padre quando lei aveva solo 15 anni.
Secondo, e ultimo, romanzo di questa scrittrice che si è dedicata forse di più ai racconti, molto stimata e apprezzata dalla critica, ma con la quale io non sono mai entrato in sintonia: troppi predicatori e troppo preti e troppo profeti abitano le sue pagine, e troppa religione e troppo dio di qualche tipo e bandiera per i miei gusti. Troppi fanatici e troppo fanatismo, gran sventolare di bibbie e frasi tonanti.
Non per niente O’Connor viene da quella parte degli Stati Uniti, la zona sud orientale del paese, soprannominata Bible Belt, e questa sua geografia dell’anima è presente e palpabile nella sua letteratura.
Condita con quell’ironia venata di nero, anche un po’ di gotico, che dalle sue parti va forte.
Rimane che perlopiù parla di gente e argomenti che io trovo respingenti.
Il vecchio, che diceva di essere un profeta, aveva cresciuto il ragazzo insegnandogli ad aspettare a sua volta la chiamata del Signore, e a tenersi pronto per il giorno in cui l’avrebbe udita. L’aveva istruito sui mali che toccano a un profeta, quelli che vengono dal mondo, e sono trascurabili, e quelli che vengono dal Signore e lo purificano ardendolo, perché lui stesso era stato purificato ardendo più e più volte. Lui, aveva imparato attraverso il fuoco.
Nonostante l’ironia, la scelta narrativa di Flannery O’Connor è piuttosto estrema: la sua religione contempla il diavolo, include passione e collera, si muove su toni pressoché primitivi. I suoi personaggi sono infestati da dio piuttosto che pervasi, ne sono letteralmente intossicati.
Il predicatore prozio che ha lo stesso cognome del ragazzino protagonista, Tarwater, è un eremita mezzo ubriacone propenso al rapimento con sequestro: lo ha fatto col nipote, lo fece prima con lo zio. Lo scopo sarebbe educativo, crescere le creature nel verbo divino, l’unico autentico.
Come dicevo nipote e prozio condividono il cognome, Tarwater, che vuol dire acqua catramata, e quando il giovane nipote si troverà a dover compiere il rito battesimale, il nome diventa omen.
Entrambi Tarwater: il vecchio Mason, il giovane Francis Marion, nome composto, quasi femmineo, a sottolineare il carattere ben più gentile del giovane.
Dopo averlo rapito, il prozio ha cresciuto il nipote in un eremo campestre imponendogli la sua come unica presenza umana, e imponendogli il quotidiano insegnamento divino: il prozio è convinto che il nipote è destinato a diventare un profeta.
Quando il prozio muore, quasi all’inizio, il piccolo Tarwater (ha solo quattordici anni!) ci prova a seppellirlo: ma non c’è nessuno che possa aiutarlo, gli manca la forza, il vecchio Tarwater è una botte piena d’alcol. E allora Francis Marion pensa che l’unica soluzione sia dar fuoco alla casa e celebrare il funerale con un bel falò: in fondo cenere siamo e cenere torneremo a essere.
A questa punto, avendo in senso letterale terra bruciata alle spalle, si trasferisce dallo zio Rayber, che sembra di tutt’altra natura: ragione non fede, cultura non religione, scienza al posto di dio.
E di tutt’altra natura è anche il suo milieu: la città, invece di quella campagna selvaggia e isolata dove il vecchi Tarwater ha costretto il piccolo Tarwater a venire su.
Francis Mason ha una missione da compiere, che gli è stata assegnata dal prozio prima di passare a miglior vita: battezzare Bishop, il figlio ritardato di suo zio Rayber.
E lo zio Rayber non è poi così diverso dal defunto prozio: il suo approccio alla ragione e al sapere è di stampo illuministico, è impregnato di un credo che è molto simile alla fede del vecchio Tarwater, fede nell’uso del pensiero razionale.
Romanzo di forti dualismi: prozio e zio, uno la religione, dunque la fede, l’altro la ragione (vissuta però, ahimè, come un altro tipo di fede); campagna e città, il primo luogo del vecchio prozio, e dunque della fede religiosa, della distanza dalle tentazione terrene, l’altro luogo dello zio, e dunque della ragione, e della perdizione (O’Connor a me pare propendere per la campagna, anche se questo non si porta dietro un rifiuto della ragione); acqua e fuoco, l’acqua che battezza (ma anche annega), il fuoco che distrugge, ma genera risorgimento, un altro tipo di battesimo.
Pur essendo Flannery O’Connor di forte e chiara fede religiosa cattolica, nel suo romanzo (non solo questo, anche nell’altro Wise Blood – La saggezza del sangue, e anche nei racconti che ho letto), ogni tipo di fede, sia quella religiosa che quella razionale, hanno un forte connotato di violenza e prevaricazione. O’Connor mette in scena la dark side della religione, dove pietà e amore attraversano furia e ira, il peccato si accompagna al castigo perché non c’è mai autentico perdono.
Per questo il cielo è dei violenti. E dei pazzi. Degli intransigenti, degli invasati.
Flannery O’Connor a sinistra.
July 3, 2018
Francis Marion Tarwater buries his great uncle (figuratively) and heads to civilization to meet his uncle, the school teacher Rayber. Before his great uncle passed, he decreed that if he didn't baptize Rayber's son Bishop, Francis would. Can Rayber and the younger Tarwater fight destiny and break the elder Tarwater's hold on Francis from beyond the grave?
Flannery O'Connor sure was an upbeat person when it came to religion, wasn't she? The Violent Bear It Away is a tale of how one man's obsession took root in his entire family and ruined their lives time and time again, even after his death.
I had high hopes for the young Tarwater after the old man cashed in his chips. Unfortunately, fourteen years of living in the woods and tending a moonshine still didn't do much to prepare him for the outside world. Will he be able to shake his upbringing and find peace?
Fuck no, this is a Flannery O'Connor book, a book that tells you that clouds are lined with poison, not silver, and no matter how shitty your lot in life, things can always get a thousand times worse. I got lulled into a false sense of security a few times but should have seen the foreshadowing for what it was.
There were a couple holy shit moments near the end and while this was one bleak, powerful book, I was glad as shit that our time together was over. I wolfed it down in one sitting and I'm glad I did. I don't know that I would have felt up to finishing it otherwise.
The Violent Bear It Away is another feel good Flannery O"Connor tale of religion, revelation, and redemption. Or at least attempted redemption. 3.5 out of 5 stars.
Note: I added the figuratively at the top because some people took it literally and felt the need to be dicks about it.
Flannery O'Connor sure was an upbeat person when it came to religion, wasn't she? The Violent Bear It Away is a tale of how one man's obsession took root in his entire family and ruined their lives time and time again, even after his death.
I had high hopes for the young Tarwater after the old man cashed in his chips. Unfortunately, fourteen years of living in the woods and tending a moonshine still didn't do much to prepare him for the outside world. Will he be able to shake his upbringing and find peace?
Fuck no, this is a Flannery O'Connor book, a book that tells you that clouds are lined with poison, not silver, and no matter how shitty your lot in life, things can always get a thousand times worse. I got lulled into a false sense of security a few times but should have seen the foreshadowing for what it was.
There were a couple holy shit moments near the end and while this was one bleak, powerful book, I was glad as shit that our time together was over. I wolfed it down in one sitting and I'm glad I did. I don't know that I would have felt up to finishing it otherwise.
The Violent Bear It Away is another feel good Flannery O"Connor tale of religion, revelation, and redemption. Or at least attempted redemption. 3.5 out of 5 stars.
Note: I added the figuratively at the top because some people took it literally and felt the need to be dicks about it.
July 24, 2017
Violence to Youth of Southern-Fried Fundamentalism
I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it's most certainly Christ-haunted.
F. O'Connor
If you were raised in the rural South or spent summers there with someone in a WASP family, perhaps you suffer the occasional nightmare, as do I from one summer staying with a cousin and being dragged a few times to a hyper-fundamentalist church, due to the trauma left by hellfire/brimstone sermons at an impressionable age (7 to 14), and from being spooked by the bountiful grotesquery that surrounded you.
Flannery O'Connor, a devout Southern Catholic, was super-critical of fundamentalist Protestants. Her short stories and two novels either explored dark religious themes or were tinged with often morbid religious undertones.
THE VIOLENT BEAR IT AWAY's title is taken from a verse in the Douay-Rhiens Catholic Bible at Matthew 11:12: "From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent bear it away."
I'll forego delving into possible meanings of the title. Too much discussion of the novel gives a spoiler, so I'll say it's a BRUTAL book, dealing with a 14-year-old boy and the effect on him of growing up around a fanatical Southern fundamentalist. Related themes hit on destruction and redemption. "People are never so completely and enthusiastically evil as when they act out of religious conviction." Umberto Eco, Prague Cemetery
If you're looking for a fun read to end your summer, perhaps you should look elsewhere. If you'd like to get a sampling of the deeply dark, morbid and haunting world of some Southern fundamentalist ol' time religion, read this book.
I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it's most certainly Christ-haunted.
F. O'Connor
If you were raised in the rural South or spent summers there with someone in a WASP family, perhaps you suffer the occasional nightmare, as do I from one summer staying with a cousin and being dragged a few times to a hyper-fundamentalist church, due to the trauma left by hellfire/brimstone sermons at an impressionable age (7 to 14), and from being spooked by the bountiful grotesquery that surrounded you.
Flannery O'Connor, a devout Southern Catholic, was super-critical of fundamentalist Protestants. Her short stories and two novels either explored dark religious themes or were tinged with often morbid religious undertones.
THE VIOLENT BEAR IT AWAY's title is taken from a verse in the Douay-Rhiens Catholic Bible at Matthew 11:12: "From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent bear it away."
I'll forego delving into possible meanings of the title. Too much discussion of the novel gives a spoiler, so I'll say it's a BRUTAL book, dealing with a 14-year-old boy and the effect on him of growing up around a fanatical Southern fundamentalist. Related themes hit on destruction and redemption. "People are never so completely and enthusiastically evil as when they act out of religious conviction." Umberto Eco, Prague Cemetery
If you're looking for a fun read to end your summer, perhaps you should look elsewhere. If you'd like to get a sampling of the deeply dark, morbid and haunting world of some Southern fundamentalist ol' time religion, read this book.
November 22, 2015
“You have to quit confusing a madness with a mission.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Violent Bear it Away
O'Connor was ruthless in her vision. The struggle of Tarwater and his uncle Rayber against their joint destinies and the pull of fundamentalism and secularism is fully realized in this short novel. 'The Violent Bear it Away' is biblical, American, and absolutely brutal in both its imagery of destruction and language of redemption. I can only think of a handful of writers who seem to grab both my brain, my spine, and my gut at the same time. O'Connor can't be over-appreciated; she was an absolute genius of passion and power. So brilliant and terrible was this novel, that I STILL exceedingly fear, tremble and quake.
― Flannery O'Connor, The Violent Bear it Away
O'Connor was ruthless in her vision. The struggle of Tarwater and his uncle Rayber against their joint destinies and the pull of fundamentalism and secularism is fully realized in this short novel. 'The Violent Bear it Away' is biblical, American, and absolutely brutal in both its imagery of destruction and language of redemption. I can only think of a handful of writers who seem to grab both my brain, my spine, and my gut at the same time. O'Connor can't be over-appreciated; she was an absolute genius of passion and power. So brilliant and terrible was this novel, that I STILL exceedingly fear, tremble and quake.
August 21, 2013
THE INTRO
It often seems that novelists have taken it upon themselves to compile a comprehensive catalogue of all of the thousand and one ways human beings can contrive to be unpleasant to one another.
This novel is one such. Although you may say it’s more about how God contrives to be unpleasant to human beings.
Right at the beginning it’s like going to a big gig – I’m in the audience and we’re all so stoked up that even when we know the band won’t be out for at least 45 minutes, when the roadie comes out on stage to fiddle with the amp we give him a cheer and a round of excited applause – he’s just a roadie, we know that! So when on page one of TVBIA a 14 year old boy is getting too drunk to dig the grave to bury his great uncle who’s just died right there at the breakfast table, in the shack, in the middle of the backwoods, and no one else for miles – I’m yelling
Awright – let’s rawk…!
Little did I know.
THE CAST OF NUTCASES
Main characters – Old Tarwater – a religious fanatic
Young Tarwater, brainwashed by Old, & hence, a very stroppy surly religious fanatic
His uncle George Rayber, a strict secularist who lives a painful ascetic life because he knows that if he relaxes his concentration for even a moment, he’s likely to turn into a religious fanatic too
Bishop Rayber – a mentally challenged young boy, in plain language an idiot, the only main character who couldn't ever be a religious fanatic
WHAT'S THIS DAMNED BOOK ABOUT ANYWAY
There’s a lack of agreement about the nature of this book. Some readers can’t help seeing in it a grotesque parody of religious lunacy full of black ironic humour. It says it’s ironic on the very blurb.
Alas, that might be wrong. It seems that FOC herself spoke up on the side of the chief nutter Old Tarwater and called him a “true prophet”.
Oops! If this is so then FOC was barking mad herself, great writer or no great writer.
I liked Wise Blood, it was funny. The movie is great too, Brad Dourif’s finest moment. This one isn’t funny at all. By the end I was hating on it to such an extent I was looking forward to sprinkling lighter fluid on it and setting it on fire (in a celebration of one of the book’s main motifs). That would be extreme, yes – even caricatured and, well, frankly grotesque – Flannery would have loved it. Especially if burning my copy of her novel got out of hand & my whole house caught fire. Boy, she would have loved that.
Flannery herself said:
The novelist with Christian concerns will find in modern life distortions which are repugnant to him, and his problem will be to make these appear as distortions to an audience which is used to seeing them as natural; and he may well be forced to take ever more violent means to get his vision across to this hostile audience. . . . you have to make your vision apparent by shock - to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures."
Yes but when you do this you are rapidly going to reduce your novel to Mere Symbolism, and that I think is what happened here and why TVBIA is a great failure. She’s in good company – other novels strangled to death by symbolism include The Rainbow and The Great Gatsby. It’s like a creeping moss or mould which covers the sharp individual contours of the characters until all you can see in them is the crude delineation of medieval woodcuts – The Devil – the Good Man – Mrs Do-As-You-Would-Be-Done-By - Youthful Rebellion – the Faithless Lover – and so forth. I don’t like it. In fact I vomit it forth. Symbolism leads to sock puppetry, which is something authors really should not do. I admit that a novel is always going to be some kind of sock puppetry, even amongst the novelists who tell you that their characters take on a life of their own, but the puppetry should be as buried as an undiscovered murder. If we want to read an essay we will not pick up a novel.
WHAT YOU GET IN TVBIA
1) Sentences like
His fury seemed to be stirring from buried depths that had lain quiet for years and to be working upward, closer and closer, towards the roots of his peace.
That gets a yellow card from me. Two of those and you’re sent off. And there’s about two hundred.
2) Dark looks all round
The boy looked at him fiercely
The boy looked at him angrily
He threw her an ugly glance
He was looking at his uncle now with a completely fresh contempt
and many others
3) TEDIOUS EMO-FESTS
Life had never been good enough to him for him to wince at its destruction. He told himself that he was indifferent even to his own dissolution.
SKIP THIS IF YOU’RE NOT THEOLOGICALLY INCLINED
Also you get an obsession with baptism - which if you think about it is a strange and confused subject. What does baptism do, exactly? There’s a big difference between infant baptism (Catholic – seen as superstitious nonsense by some prots) and adult baptism (Protestant, and from my point of view, clearly the way to go). But it’s all too murky. Why does Old Tarwater want to baptise the idiot son? To save him from Hell? or just to annoy his secular father? What about this quote from the secular father of the idiot boy:
I was already baptized. My mother never overcame her upbringing and she had it done. But the damage to me of having it done at the age of seven was tremendous. It made a lasting scar.
THE OUTRO
A quote from an online critic:
It is not, as might be expected, a parody of religious fanaticism, but a psychological study of the mysterious, frightening, and sometimes offensive nature of the religious calling.
Offensive is right. If we didn’t know anything about Flannery O'Connor we could take this novel as a really cruel lampoon of religious fools. It would then be a nasty novel, making bitter fun of the delusions of the less intellectually endowed. Not a very healthful pursuit. But of course she was profoundly religious, and so this novel perforce appears to be pushing an exceptionally distasteful conception of what God is (vengeful, merciless, indifferent to human suffering), where Man fits in (you have unswerving obedience or the devil will rape you) and the manner in which these matters should be discussed (hysterical morbidity).
It often seems that novelists have taken it upon themselves to compile a comprehensive catalogue of all of the thousand and one ways human beings can contrive to be unpleasant to one another.
This novel is one such. Although you may say it’s more about how God contrives to be unpleasant to human beings.
Right at the beginning it’s like going to a big gig – I’m in the audience and we’re all so stoked up that even when we know the band won’t be out for at least 45 minutes, when the roadie comes out on stage to fiddle with the amp we give him a cheer and a round of excited applause – he’s just a roadie, we know that! So when on page one of TVBIA a 14 year old boy is getting too drunk to dig the grave to bury his great uncle who’s just died right there at the breakfast table, in the shack, in the middle of the backwoods, and no one else for miles – I’m yelling
Awright – let’s rawk…!
Little did I know.
THE CAST OF NUTCASES
Main characters – Old Tarwater – a religious fanatic
Young Tarwater, brainwashed by Old, & hence, a very stroppy surly religious fanatic
His uncle George Rayber, a strict secularist who lives a painful ascetic life because he knows that if he relaxes his concentration for even a moment, he’s likely to turn into a religious fanatic too
Bishop Rayber – a mentally challenged young boy, in plain language an idiot, the only main character who couldn't ever be a religious fanatic
WHAT'S THIS DAMNED BOOK ABOUT ANYWAY
There’s a lack of agreement about the nature of this book. Some readers can’t help seeing in it a grotesque parody of religious lunacy full of black ironic humour. It says it’s ironic on the very blurb.
Alas, that might be wrong. It seems that FOC herself spoke up on the side of the chief nutter Old Tarwater and called him a “true prophet”.
Oops! If this is so then FOC was barking mad herself, great writer or no great writer.
I liked Wise Blood, it was funny. The movie is great too, Brad Dourif’s finest moment. This one isn’t funny at all. By the end I was hating on it to such an extent I was looking forward to sprinkling lighter fluid on it and setting it on fire (in a celebration of one of the book’s main motifs). That would be extreme, yes – even caricatured and, well, frankly grotesque – Flannery would have loved it. Especially if burning my copy of her novel got out of hand & my whole house caught fire. Boy, she would have loved that.
Flannery herself said:
The novelist with Christian concerns will find in modern life distortions which are repugnant to him, and his problem will be to make these appear as distortions to an audience which is used to seeing them as natural; and he may well be forced to take ever more violent means to get his vision across to this hostile audience. . . . you have to make your vision apparent by shock - to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures."
Yes but when you do this you are rapidly going to reduce your novel to Mere Symbolism, and that I think is what happened here and why TVBIA is a great failure. She’s in good company – other novels strangled to death by symbolism include The Rainbow and The Great Gatsby. It’s like a creeping moss or mould which covers the sharp individual contours of the characters until all you can see in them is the crude delineation of medieval woodcuts – The Devil – the Good Man – Mrs Do-As-You-Would-Be-Done-By - Youthful Rebellion – the Faithless Lover – and so forth. I don’t like it. In fact I vomit it forth. Symbolism leads to sock puppetry, which is something authors really should not do. I admit that a novel is always going to be some kind of sock puppetry, even amongst the novelists who tell you that their characters take on a life of their own, but the puppetry should be as buried as an undiscovered murder. If we want to read an essay we will not pick up a novel.
WHAT YOU GET IN TVBIA
1) Sentences like
His fury seemed to be stirring from buried depths that had lain quiet for years and to be working upward, closer and closer, towards the roots of his peace.
That gets a yellow card from me. Two of those and you’re sent off. And there’s about two hundred.
2) Dark looks all round
The boy looked at him fiercely
The boy looked at him angrily
He threw her an ugly glance
He was looking at his uncle now with a completely fresh contempt
and many others
3) TEDIOUS EMO-FESTS
Life had never been good enough to him for him to wince at its destruction. He told himself that he was indifferent even to his own dissolution.
SKIP THIS IF YOU’RE NOT THEOLOGICALLY INCLINED
Also you get an obsession with baptism - which if you think about it is a strange and confused subject. What does baptism do, exactly? There’s a big difference between infant baptism (Catholic – seen as superstitious nonsense by some prots) and adult baptism (Protestant, and from my point of view, clearly the way to go). But it’s all too murky. Why does Old Tarwater want to baptise the idiot son? To save him from Hell? or just to annoy his secular father? What about this quote from the secular father of the idiot boy:
I was already baptized. My mother never overcame her upbringing and she had it done. But the damage to me of having it done at the age of seven was tremendous. It made a lasting scar.
THE OUTRO
A quote from an online critic:
It is not, as might be expected, a parody of religious fanaticism, but a psychological study of the mysterious, frightening, and sometimes offensive nature of the religious calling.
Offensive is right. If we didn’t know anything about Flannery O'Connor we could take this novel as a really cruel lampoon of religious fools. It would then be a nasty novel, making bitter fun of the delusions of the less intellectually endowed. Not a very healthful pursuit. But of course she was profoundly religious, and so this novel perforce appears to be pushing an exceptionally distasteful conception of what God is (vengeful, merciless, indifferent to human suffering), where Man fits in (you have unswerving obedience or the devil will rape you) and the manner in which these matters should be discussed (hysterical morbidity).
November 23, 2019
Religious fanaticism in the American sticks. An old man, a soi-disant prophet of Christ, a fanatic, a nut job, steals an orphan named Tarwater from his citified nephew's home and bolts to the backwoods to raise him in the way of the Lord -- and to make moonshine. The boy receives a highly selective version of homeschooling from the old man. They are isolated in the sticks from society of any kind, not counting the occassional buyer of hooch. As the novel opens the old man has died at the breakfast table with his eyes locked on Tarwater. Now the boy must make his way among real people for the first time in his life. There's a wonderful moment, after the old man's death, when Tarwater hears his own voice as if for the first time. "The voice was loud and strange and disagreeable," (p. 12) and that moment is loaded for the reader with a terrible foreboding, not only for Tarwater, but for those he will soon come into contact with. There's this strain of the American frontiersman, of Whitman's exultant life-affirmer having turned into a kind of shadowy cul de sac of the soul. "The Lord had seen fit to guarantee the purity of his upbringing, to preserve him from contamination, to preserve him as His elect servant, trained by a prophet for prophecy." (p. 17) The advent of the strange voice signals some essential split in 14-year-old Tarwater. (I'm reminded of Robert Jay Lifton's book The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide and the split or dualism he describes in the personalities of the medical SS at Auschwitz. This split allowed them to lead relatively normal lives with family, friends, home leave, etc., while at the same time undertaking the medical killing of scores of innocents all in the name of a specious reading of Darwin.)
May 21, 2024
I read this in one go, sitting up late in bed. I was shaking when I finished it. I've only (voluntarily) stayed up late reading something for a class a few times, and I think they were all for this same course. I can't remember the professor's name and don't think she got tenure, but man was she good at picking books.
[this was written long before trigger warnings were a thing, but it would definitely have trigger warnings now]
[this was written long before trigger warnings were a thing, but it would definitely have trigger warnings now]
Read
August 6, 2020I have now read both novels and many of O'Connor's short stories, and my first observation is that she is a brilliant author, but difficult and not very pleasant to read. Her characters are all haunted, and in both this and Wise Blood, insanity rules. Dark and depressing. I prefer her short stories. No star rating because I have no idea. I may return to rate it later, as I mull it over.
August 22, 2020
"From the days of John the Baptist until now, The Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence and the violent bear it away."
Matthew 11:12
Fourteen-year-old Francis Marion Tarwater had been taken by his great-uncle Mason when he was a baby. The old man claimed to be a prophet, and trained the boy to follow in his footsteps. Tarwater was told to baptize the disabled son of his schoolteacher uncle, Rayber. When Mason dies, Tarwater is torn between carrying out his great-uncle's request, and listening to the voice of a stranger in his head representing the Devil, non-belief, and freedom from the old man's teachings.
Rayber had also been kidnapped by Mason when he was a child, baptized, and indoctrinated. Rayber is still struggling with the conflict between his professed rationalism and the remnants of his childhood exposure to religious fanaticism. He's also struggling with his emotions as he deals with the difficult task to trying to love his disabled son, Bishop. When Tarwater lands on Rayber's doorstep, Rayber takes him in. There are ideological struggles as Rayber attempts to save Tarwater from the old prophet's clutches from the grave.
This is a dark story of religious fanaticism, mental illness, and violence. Water is used for both destruction and spiritual redemption. Mason's unhinged ideas have had repercussions into the next three generations. Mason, Tarwater, Rayber, and Bishop are not likable or realistic characters, but Gothic grotesques. Are the characters struggling with a call from the divine, or religious madness? "The Violent Bear It Away" is haunting, dark, and intense.
Matthew 11:12
Fourteen-year-old Francis Marion Tarwater had been taken by his great-uncle Mason when he was a baby. The old man claimed to be a prophet, and trained the boy to follow in his footsteps. Tarwater was told to baptize the disabled son of his schoolteacher uncle, Rayber. When Mason dies, Tarwater is torn between carrying out his great-uncle's request, and listening to the voice of a stranger in his head representing the Devil, non-belief, and freedom from the old man's teachings.
Rayber had also been kidnapped by Mason when he was a child, baptized, and indoctrinated. Rayber is still struggling with the conflict between his professed rationalism and the remnants of his childhood exposure to religious fanaticism. He's also struggling with his emotions as he deals with the difficult task to trying to love his disabled son, Bishop. When Tarwater lands on Rayber's doorstep, Rayber takes him in. There are ideological struggles as Rayber attempts to save Tarwater from the old prophet's clutches from the grave.
This is a dark story of religious fanaticism, mental illness, and violence. Water is used for both destruction and spiritual redemption. Mason's unhinged ideas have had repercussions into the next three generations. Mason, Tarwater, Rayber, and Bishop are not likable or realistic characters, but Gothic grotesques. Are the characters struggling with a call from the divine, or religious madness? "The Violent Bear It Away" is haunting, dark, and intense.
September 29, 2014
I know virtually nothing about Flannery O’Connor’s life and outlook on life. I know that she was a Catholic and that she raised peacocks and that she died too young, of lupus. That’s about it. She also inherited, either through blood or Southern literary tradition, a fire-and-brimstone vision of life and human passions, and more than even Wise Blood, The Violent Bear it Away is an expression of this vision.
Seems the only characters that really matter to O’Connor are the extremists, either in their beliefs or (professed) disbeliefs. And it’s the inner war within each character (and most characters are seriously schizoid) that impels their actions and manifests as further conflict in the world, seemingly without end. The Violent Bear it Away is a novel of deep psychological interiors shadowed by pasts heavy with violence and coercive control, and one theme is the conflict not only of logic and faith, but of psychological reductionism (from the heyday of pop-Freudianism) and illogical passionate prophetic impulse. It’s possible she portrays the extremes as a way of opening up the middle and showing its substance and strengths via reflection, but she doesn’t provide an applicable characterization of this middle, instead she leaves it up to the reader. I suspect as a person O’Connor inhabited this middle.
There’s a lot about this book that reminds me of Cormac McCarthy – the stark intensity and almost mechanical violence of characters portrayed in hallucinatory heightened relief, and the apocalyptic vision of these fiery characters setting fire to the landscape and everything around them.
Seems the only characters that really matter to O’Connor are the extremists, either in their beliefs or (professed) disbeliefs. And it’s the inner war within each character (and most characters are seriously schizoid) that impels their actions and manifests as further conflict in the world, seemingly without end. The Violent Bear it Away is a novel of deep psychological interiors shadowed by pasts heavy with violence and coercive control, and one theme is the conflict not only of logic and faith, but of psychological reductionism (from the heyday of pop-Freudianism) and illogical passionate prophetic impulse. It’s possible she portrays the extremes as a way of opening up the middle and showing its substance and strengths via reflection, but she doesn’t provide an applicable characterization of this middle, instead she leaves it up to the reader. I suspect as a person O’Connor inhabited this middle.
There’s a lot about this book that reminds me of Cormac McCarthy – the stark intensity and almost mechanical violence of characters portrayed in hallucinatory heightened relief, and the apocalyptic vision of these fiery characters setting fire to the landscape and everything around them.
August 15, 2020
The Violent Bear It Away: Between God and the Devil
"Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one. To be able to recognize a freak, you have to have some conception of the whole man, and in the South the general conception of man is still, in the main, theological. That is a large statement, and it is dangerous to make it, for almost anything you say about Southern belief can be denied in the next breath with equal propriety. But approaching the subject from the standpoint of the writer, I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted. The Southerner, who isn’t convinced of it, is very much afraid that he may have been formed in the image and likeness of God. Ghosts can be very fierce and instructive. They cast strange shadows, particularly in our literature. In any case, it is when the freak can be sensed as a figure for our essential displacement that he attains some depth in literature. Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose, Flannery O'Connor
As I fast approach the age of sixty-right I have lost count of the freaks I have recognized over the course of my life. Had I not been a career prosecutor for twenty-eight years, perhaps I would not have been so cognizant of them. Yet I chose the career I did for the monsters I met could not be denied. Killers, wife beaters, child rapists. I recognize the truth of O'Connor's words set out above.
I also agree that in the South we are raised with a haunting dose of theology. I was raised a Sunday go to meeting Methodist. I was sprinkled, not baptized. Much to my relief as my Grandmother had warned me to never go near the water until I knew how to swim. I have yet to learn to swim. I prefer showers to baths.
Summers brought Bible School. Stories that regaled. David and Goliath. Joseph in his many colored robe. Moses. There was nothing presented in the way of fire and brimstone. Except those awful plagues God sent over Egypt. We budding Methodists were terrified that God killed all those first born children. Being an only child I worried over making God mad again. But then it was snack time. Ice cold grape Kool Aid and coconut bar cookies. My worries vanished.
Along the way I was saved by Billy Graham. Although I admit I was more attracted by the movie that played before I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. The movie starred Johnny Crawford who played The Rifleman's son on TV.
To be continued
"Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one. To be able to recognize a freak, you have to have some conception of the whole man, and in the South the general conception of man is still, in the main, theological. That is a large statement, and it is dangerous to make it, for almost anything you say about Southern belief can be denied in the next breath with equal propriety. But approaching the subject from the standpoint of the writer, I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted. The Southerner, who isn’t convinced of it, is very much afraid that he may have been formed in the image and likeness of God. Ghosts can be very fierce and instructive. They cast strange shadows, particularly in our literature. In any case, it is when the freak can be sensed as a figure for our essential displacement that he attains some depth in literature. Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose, Flannery O'Connor
As I fast approach the age of sixty-right I have lost count of the freaks I have recognized over the course of my life. Had I not been a career prosecutor for twenty-eight years, perhaps I would not have been so cognizant of them. Yet I chose the career I did for the monsters I met could not be denied. Killers, wife beaters, child rapists. I recognize the truth of O'Connor's words set out above.
I also agree that in the South we are raised with a haunting dose of theology. I was raised a Sunday go to meeting Methodist. I was sprinkled, not baptized. Much to my relief as my Grandmother had warned me to never go near the water until I knew how to swim. I have yet to learn to swim. I prefer showers to baths.
Summers brought Bible School. Stories that regaled. David and Goliath. Joseph in his many colored robe. Moses. There was nothing presented in the way of fire and brimstone. Except those awful plagues God sent over Egypt. We budding Methodists were terrified that God killed all those first born children. Being an only child I worried over making God mad again. But then it was snack time. Ice cold grape Kool Aid and coconut bar cookies. My worries vanished.
Along the way I was saved by Billy Graham. Although I admit I was more attracted by the movie that played before I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. The movie starred Johnny Crawford who played The Rifleman's son on TV.
To be continued
August 25, 2018
A fairly thick slice of Southern Gothic packed with symbolism and religious imagery. The title is taken from the Bible: Matthew 11:12. From the Douay Bible, translated from the Latin Vulgate and commonly used in Catholic churches:
“From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent bear it away.”
There are a limited numbers of characters and all of the main ones are male. There are spoilers ahead, necessary to discuss the novel effectively. Fourteen year old Francis Tarwater lives with his great-uncle Mason Tarwater. His great-uncle has a clear vision that Francis, like him, is to be a prophet. He has raised Francis in a backwoods cabin, without outside assistance or school. When the old man dies, Francis travels to his uncle Rayber. He has had no contact with him since early childhood. Rayber is a secularist and he has a disabled son called Bishop. The disability is not made clear, but may well have been Down’s Syndrome. Before his death Mason had charged Francis with baptizing Bishop and so save his soul.
The three spend some time together, Rayber and Tarwater both battling with their destinies. Rayber wanting to civilize and educate Tarwater and Tarwater battling with whether he should be a prophet or not. Neither character is likeable and the violent act towards the end of the book confirms this. Tarwater hears a voice which turns out to be the devil. The voice tells him to drown Bishop: he does so, but accidentally baptizes him in the process. The book ends with Tarwater deciding he should be a prophet after all.
O’Connor was a devout Catholic and this novel does highlight what she felt about secularism and Protestant fundamentalism. The real message is that secular intellectualism will always fail.
There is also the approach to disability and mental illness to take into account. O’Connor weaves together mental illness and a certain type of fundamentalism. Disturbingly neither character is guilt-ridden or concerned about the death of Bishop; Rayber faints because he realizes he feels nothing in relation to the death. There is a lot of ambiguity in the novel, but in that ambiguity the differentness of religion and disability become linked to physical violence and one is left with negative stereotypes. Destiny is also a theme and there is a feel for that you really cannot escape it. The reader also has to consider the attitudes to race, O’Connor documents the white south very well.
There is a great deal going on in this novel and it is in turn striking, shocking and disturbing. The strength of O’Connor’s own faith is obvious and I didn’t agree with one of her central messages. I found the use of mental illness and disability as tropes unpleasant, but it was an interesting and challenging read.
“From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent bear it away.”
There are a limited numbers of characters and all of the main ones are male. There are spoilers ahead, necessary to discuss the novel effectively. Fourteen year old Francis Tarwater lives with his great-uncle Mason Tarwater. His great-uncle has a clear vision that Francis, like him, is to be a prophet. He has raised Francis in a backwoods cabin, without outside assistance or school. When the old man dies, Francis travels to his uncle Rayber. He has had no contact with him since early childhood. Rayber is a secularist and he has a disabled son called Bishop. The disability is not made clear, but may well have been Down’s Syndrome. Before his death Mason had charged Francis with baptizing Bishop and so save his soul.
The three spend some time together, Rayber and Tarwater both battling with their destinies. Rayber wanting to civilize and educate Tarwater and Tarwater battling with whether he should be a prophet or not. Neither character is likeable and the violent act towards the end of the book confirms this. Tarwater hears a voice which turns out to be the devil. The voice tells him to drown Bishop: he does so, but accidentally baptizes him in the process. The book ends with Tarwater deciding he should be a prophet after all.
O’Connor was a devout Catholic and this novel does highlight what she felt about secularism and Protestant fundamentalism. The real message is that secular intellectualism will always fail.
There is also the approach to disability and mental illness to take into account. O’Connor weaves together mental illness and a certain type of fundamentalism. Disturbingly neither character is guilt-ridden or concerned about the death of Bishop; Rayber faints because he realizes he feels nothing in relation to the death. There is a lot of ambiguity in the novel, but in that ambiguity the differentness of religion and disability become linked to physical violence and one is left with negative stereotypes. Destiny is also a theme and there is a feel for that you really cannot escape it. The reader also has to consider the attitudes to race, O’Connor documents the white south very well.
There is a great deal going on in this novel and it is in turn striking, shocking and disturbing. The strength of O’Connor’s own faith is obvious and I didn’t agree with one of her central messages. I found the use of mental illness and disability as tropes unpleasant, but it was an interesting and challenging read.
July 22, 2017
Δυστοπικό και γκροτεσκο. Φώκνερικο μοτίβο κ υπόγεια μάχη χαρακτήρων. Θρησκοληψία κ παραδοξολογία στην αμερικάνικη ενδοχώρα. Τενεσί. Τέσσερις βασικοί χαρακτήρες, που ίσως και να είναι ένας, σε μια εξαιρετικά ευφυής προβολή , με απαράμιλλο ύφος κ εικόνες που σου καρφώνονται, αφήνοντας ανεξίτηλα σημάδια
September 1, 2024
A normal life. This life is a concept unknown to Flannery O'Connor, a great Catholic devotee who, after the magnificent Wise Blood, continues with The Violent Bear it Away, her crusade against the fanatical fundamentalism of the South, from false prophets to God's fools and the entire evangelical congregation in general that she has encountered only too often in her native Georgia. Through the early years of Francis Tarwater, she delivers to us a captivating, feverish, and brutal work on indoctrination, impossible redemption, and, of course, violence. The book's title, 'The Violent Bear it Away, 'is a powerful metaphor for the struggles and conflicts that the characters face, and it underscores the book's exploration of the violent and often brutal nature of religious fervor. It is a phrase from the Bible and one of the main characters, Matthew, says in substance: "From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven is taken by violence, and it is the violent who prevail."
July 14, 2021
Francis Tarwater, órfão, 14 anos, cujo tio-avô criou num quase total isolamento para que, à sua semelhança, fosse profeta. O velho transferiu o seu fanatismo religioso para o sobrinho-neto, legando-lhe mesmo a obrigação de baptizar Bishop, atrasado mental e primo de Tarwater, ou sofrer alguma terrível consequência.
Quando o tio-avô morre, Tarwater vai para casa do seu tio Rayber, irmão da mãe e pai de Bishop. Rayber é professor e empenha-se numa missão: curar o sobrinho das suas loucas convicções inamovíveis ou descobrir a razão por que ele é assim.
Se o início do livro é caracterizado por situações de fino humor que nos fazem sorrir e criar uma certa empatia com as personagens, rapidamente os nossos sentimentos se alternam entre a compaixão e a fúria.
E quanto a Tarwater? Irá evitar situações extremas, ou rumará a um encontro violento com a sua sina?
Nunca sabemos se somos nós que escolhemos a nossa vida ou se é a vida que escolhe por nós.
Exemplarmente escrito com palavras com «a sonoridade de um sino de vidro», é um livro violento sobre o fanatismo religioso com acontecimentos chocantes e, à luz do nosso tempo, com certos detalhes politicamente incorrectos.
O título em português tem um enorme impacto, tanto mais que Flannery O'Connor escolhe como epígrafe uma passagem de Mateus, 11:12:
«Desde os dias de João Baptista até agora, o reino dos céus tem sido objecto de violência e os violentos apoderam-se dele à força.
Gosto da escrita da autora, mas não dos assuntos que aborda.
Quando o tio-avô morre, Tarwater vai para casa do seu tio Rayber, irmão da mãe e pai de Bishop. Rayber é professor e empenha-se numa missão: curar o sobrinho das suas loucas convicções inamovíveis ou descobrir a razão por que ele é assim.
Se o início do livro é caracterizado por situações de fino humor que nos fazem sorrir e criar uma certa empatia com as personagens, rapidamente os nossos sentimentos se alternam entre a compaixão e a fúria.
E quanto a Tarwater? Irá evitar situações extremas, ou rumará a um encontro violento com a sua sina?
Nunca sabemos se somos nós que escolhemos a nossa vida ou se é a vida que escolhe por nós.
Exemplarmente escrito com palavras com «a sonoridade de um sino de vidro», é um livro violento sobre o fanatismo religioso com acontecimentos chocantes e, à luz do nosso tempo, com certos detalhes politicamente incorrectos.
O título em português tem um enorme impacto, tanto mais que Flannery O'Connor escolhe como epígrafe uma passagem de Mateus, 11:12:
«Desde os dias de João Baptista até agora, o reino dos céus tem sido objecto de violência e os violentos apoderam-se dele à força.
Gosto da escrita da autora, mas não dos assuntos que aborda.
March 17, 2015
La polvere e il cappello
“Al suo fianco, ritto come una guida c'era l'amico fedele, snello come un'ombra, che l'aveva consigliato in campagna e in città. Affrettati, diceva, il tempo è danaro, e il danaro è sangue, e il tempo trasforma il sangue in polvere”.
L'amore per Dio è un amore violento, che porta via il male dal regno dei cieli; la devastazione e il delitto portano con sé la grazia, la follia si coniuga con la fede. La forza interiore e spirituale giunge alla rivelazione e all'estasi attraverso uno scontro mortale, una violenza che rifiuta la vita terrena per esaltare ciò che si nasconde dietro di essa: la pietra dello scandalo, del divino che c'è in ogni essere umano. Il fanatismo in Flannery O'Connor appare in forma di parola profetica, esasperazione maniacale della fede, intollerante opposizione alla razionalità: un territorio dominato dall'idea di destino e dal potere della passione, dove i personaggi cercano dentro se stessi l'oscurità della creazione, la forza della redenzione, l'imperscrutabilità della distruzione. Come in un rapimento, i protagonisti del romanzo vivono in un mistero insondabile, interrogandosi senza mai arretrare; non c'è dimensione plausibile se non nella verità e nella luce della determinazione. E se è vero che scrivere è il primo atto di violenza, la vicenda si giustifica nella purezza della crudeltà, nell'incontro con la voce dell'avversario: in una fiamma selvatica che estingue la vita all'origine, frantumandone l'innocenza e la colpa in una caduta fatale.
“La sua fame non era più una sofferenza, ma una marea. La sentì sorgere dentro di sé, dal tempo, dall'oscurità e dai secoli, e seppe che veniva da una stirpe di uomini che erano stati scelti per subirla, che avrebbero vagato per il mondo, stranieri, figli di quella terra violenta, dove il silenzio non era mai spezzato se non dal grido della verità”.
“Al suo fianco, ritto come una guida c'era l'amico fedele, snello come un'ombra, che l'aveva consigliato in campagna e in città. Affrettati, diceva, il tempo è danaro, e il danaro è sangue, e il tempo trasforma il sangue in polvere”.
L'amore per Dio è un amore violento, che porta via il male dal regno dei cieli; la devastazione e il delitto portano con sé la grazia, la follia si coniuga con la fede. La forza interiore e spirituale giunge alla rivelazione e all'estasi attraverso uno scontro mortale, una violenza che rifiuta la vita terrena per esaltare ciò che si nasconde dietro di essa: la pietra dello scandalo, del divino che c'è in ogni essere umano. Il fanatismo in Flannery O'Connor appare in forma di parola profetica, esasperazione maniacale della fede, intollerante opposizione alla razionalità: un territorio dominato dall'idea di destino e dal potere della passione, dove i personaggi cercano dentro se stessi l'oscurità della creazione, la forza della redenzione, l'imperscrutabilità della distruzione. Come in un rapimento, i protagonisti del romanzo vivono in un mistero insondabile, interrogandosi senza mai arretrare; non c'è dimensione plausibile se non nella verità e nella luce della determinazione. E se è vero che scrivere è il primo atto di violenza, la vicenda si giustifica nella purezza della crudeltà, nell'incontro con la voce dell'avversario: in una fiamma selvatica che estingue la vita all'origine, frantumandone l'innocenza e la colpa in una caduta fatale.
“La sua fame non era più una sofferenza, ma una marea. La sentì sorgere dentro di sé, dal tempo, dall'oscurità e dai secoli, e seppe che veniva da una stirpe di uomini che erano stati scelti per subirla, che avrebbero vagato per il mondo, stranieri, figli di quella terra violenta, dove il silenzio non era mai spezzato se non dal grido della verità”.
December 22, 2021
"Go warn the children of God of the terrible speed of mercy”--Francis Tarwater’s destiny to be a prophet
“And from the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent bear it away”--Matthew 11:12
So I spent a little time trying to figure out this verse from the Bible from which the title of this novel came. It’s strange, baffling, and ambiguous. In the main it appears that it has to do with a view that violence is an affront to God, unless you are "violent with the love of God" and then can “bear heaven away.” One example of this is supposedly seen when our protagonist, 14-year-old Francis Tarwater, our prophesied-to-be-a-prophet (spoiler alert) both simultaneously baptizes and drowns the little boy Bishop. Some would have us understand that the baptism somehow “bears away” the consequences of the murder. Death begets life, as when Christ dies on the cross so others can live forever.
I don’t know. I was raised in a conservative church, and I know a little bit about extreme theology, but this view even seems extreme to me. As in, hey, it’s still murder, folks. So if you decide to read this book and you have no background in Southern Gothic literature or religion you may find it just strange, but you may still be entertained by this, as the writing is engaging and darkly beautiful, tinged with horror and touches of humor. Regardless of your religious background, you will find almost every character in this book batshit crazy. But you should also know that Flannery O’Connor was a devout Roman Catholic. She once famously said that “If the Eucharist is just a symbol, then I say the Hell with it.” So the underlying point of the book endorses faith and destiny, or predestination.
The Violent Bear It Away (there are no violent bears in the book, as GR reviewer Paul Bryant would complain) is filled with mostly non-Catholic fundamentalist Protestant Christians and atheists, both of which FOC thinks of as ridiculous and just plain wrong. Laughable, but ultimately damnable. This, her last work, is a less funny book than Wise Blood, her other novel (she’s known primarily for her stories, some of the best ever) with all the ridiculous false prophets. Like everything she wrote, it is filled with “grotesque” characters: We have Uncle Marion who sees himself as a prophet, kidnaps Francis as a baby, and raises him to also be a prophet. Marion might be described by some as mentally ill. With pretty whacky views, let’s just say. Then we have the atheist teacher Rayber whom most secular readers may feel some sympathy toward, as he rails against any kind of religious beliefs, but FOC actually finds him even more ridiculous than Marion Tarwater. But at base this is a coming of age story, as fourteen-year-old Francis comes eventually to accept his role as prophet in the Biblical tradition.
Throughout the book, Francis Marion Tarwater intends to escape the destiny his uncle has prescribed for him. He listens to a “voice” in his head from time to time, which O’Connor acknowledged in letters is the voice of Satan. While religious commitment is never peripheral for FOC, one way to look at this book is as a coming of age book about a boy growing into what he should do with his life.
Sound crazy enough for you? If I had the time right now, I would type out fifteen of the best and most amusing similes in the English language from this book, which I would set against the theologically confusing aspects of the story. It is maybe my least favorite of FOC's works, but it has a lot of great writing in it, and mystery, great dialogue, darkly satirical comedy and serious religious commitment underneath it all.
PS: There's some interesting ideas in here on "righteous" violence. (I'm essentially a pacifist). I have a friend writing about violence in the service of justice, particularly climate justice (i.e., this country is founded on violence, as in the American revolution against England; Franz Fanon wrote about violence as a last result, as did Malcolm X; the January 6 insurrection was not a tour of the Capitol Building, and other related items).
“And from the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent bear it away”--Matthew 11:12
So I spent a little time trying to figure out this verse from the Bible from which the title of this novel came. It’s strange, baffling, and ambiguous. In the main it appears that it has to do with a view that violence is an affront to God, unless you are "violent with the love of God" and then can “bear heaven away.” One example of this is supposedly seen when our protagonist, 14-year-old Francis Tarwater, our prophesied-to-be-a-prophet (spoiler alert) both simultaneously baptizes and drowns the little boy Bishop. Some would have us understand that the baptism somehow “bears away” the consequences of the murder. Death begets life, as when Christ dies on the cross so others can live forever.
I don’t know. I was raised in a conservative church, and I know a little bit about extreme theology, but this view even seems extreme to me. As in, hey, it’s still murder, folks. So if you decide to read this book and you have no background in Southern Gothic literature or religion you may find it just strange, but you may still be entertained by this, as the writing is engaging and darkly beautiful, tinged with horror and touches of humor. Regardless of your religious background, you will find almost every character in this book batshit crazy. But you should also know that Flannery O’Connor was a devout Roman Catholic. She once famously said that “If the Eucharist is just a symbol, then I say the Hell with it.” So the underlying point of the book endorses faith and destiny, or predestination.
The Violent Bear It Away (there are no violent bears in the book, as GR reviewer Paul Bryant would complain) is filled with mostly non-Catholic fundamentalist Protestant Christians and atheists, both of which FOC thinks of as ridiculous and just plain wrong. Laughable, but ultimately damnable. This, her last work, is a less funny book than Wise Blood, her other novel (she’s known primarily for her stories, some of the best ever) with all the ridiculous false prophets. Like everything she wrote, it is filled with “grotesque” characters: We have Uncle Marion who sees himself as a prophet, kidnaps Francis as a baby, and raises him to also be a prophet. Marion might be described by some as mentally ill. With pretty whacky views, let’s just say. Then we have the atheist teacher Rayber whom most secular readers may feel some sympathy toward, as he rails against any kind of religious beliefs, but FOC actually finds him even more ridiculous than Marion Tarwater. But at base this is a coming of age story, as fourteen-year-old Francis comes eventually to accept his role as prophet in the Biblical tradition.
Throughout the book, Francis Marion Tarwater intends to escape the destiny his uncle has prescribed for him. He listens to a “voice” in his head from time to time, which O’Connor acknowledged in letters is the voice of Satan. While religious commitment is never peripheral for FOC, one way to look at this book is as a coming of age book about a boy growing into what he should do with his life.
Sound crazy enough for you? If I had the time right now, I would type out fifteen of the best and most amusing similes in the English language from this book, which I would set against the theologically confusing aspects of the story. It is maybe my least favorite of FOC's works, but it has a lot of great writing in it, and mystery, great dialogue, darkly satirical comedy and serious religious commitment underneath it all.
PS: There's some interesting ideas in here on "righteous" violence. (I'm essentially a pacifist). I have a friend writing about violence in the service of justice, particularly climate justice (i.e., this country is founded on violence, as in the American revolution against England; Franz Fanon wrote about violence as a last result, as did Malcolm X; the January 6 insurrection was not a tour of the Capitol Building, and other related items).
June 24, 2019
I'm not sure what to say about this short story. I liked parts of the story but mostly, it just wasn't for me. If I were to recommend a short story by Flannery O'Connor it would be A Good Man Is Hard To Find. For me, the latter was much more enjoyable.
April 6, 2022
Hillbilly Sophistry
In a way, Flannery O'Connor strikes me as a Catholic version of Erskine Caldwell; by that I mean that they both infused their stories with abject poverty and fanatical religiosity. Much like ‘Tobacco Road’ (Caldwell, 1932), ‘The Violent Bear It Away’ (O’Connor, 1960) is replete with racist derelicts who are also pious zealots. Both books are chock full o’ bumpkins, hicks and hayseeds; the subtle difference being that O’Connor’s novel is set in Tennessee and Caldwell’s is set in Georgia.
By all accounts Flannery O’Connor was spiritually devout, but her portrayals of Christianity are not at all flattering; the perpetrators of violence, arson, rape and murder within these pages are christians (albeit protestants, not catholics). The creation and publication of such allegorical characters, especially in 1960, was arguably audacious and incredibly gutsy. 4 stars.
In a way, Flannery O'Connor strikes me as a Catholic version of Erskine Caldwell; by that I mean that they both infused their stories with abject poverty and fanatical religiosity. Much like ‘Tobacco Road’ (Caldwell, 1932), ‘The Violent Bear It Away’ (O’Connor, 1960) is replete with racist derelicts who are also pious zealots. Both books are chock full o’ bumpkins, hicks and hayseeds; the subtle difference being that O’Connor’s novel is set in Tennessee and Caldwell’s is set in Georgia.
By all accounts Flannery O’Connor was spiritually devout, but her portrayals of Christianity are not at all flattering; the perpetrators of violence, arson, rape and murder within these pages are christians (albeit protestants, not catholics). The creation and publication of such allegorical characters, especially in 1960, was arguably audacious and incredibly gutsy. 4 stars.
May 28, 2018
O'connor'a hayranlığım gittikçe artıyor. Biçim-içerik, konu ve betimlemeleri çok etkiliyeci.
10/8
10/8
November 29, 2025
"Il Signore non sta meditando su di te, non sa nemmeno che esisti, e non si sognerebbe di far niente, se lo sapesse. Tu sei solo al mondo, hai solo te stesso da interpellare, da ringraziare o da giudicare, hai solo te stesso."
Una lettura per niente facile. Non so se il mio agnosticismo mi abbia impedito di leggere tutte le sfumature che la O'Connor usa.
Una storia di profeti e professori, ognuno intento a plasmare o riplasmare il 14enne Francis Marion Tarwater.
Il prozio, profeta o pazzo, rapisce
Tarwater quando ancora in fasce, lo cresce nella solitudine dei boschi, nell'attesa della chiamata del Signore.
Lo plasma a sua immagine e somiglianza, ma si sa, i ragazzi cercano in tutti i modi di andar contro chi li cresce. Così quando il vecchio muore, Tarwater scappare in città dallo zio professore.
Qui quest'ultimo, rapito a sua volta dal vecchio all'età di sette anni, cercherà di riportare Francis sulla strada della ragione.
Un viaggio tra ricordi e nuovi inizi, ma pieno di buche e strade sterrate difficili da percorrere.
Personaggi cupi, violenti, per nulla empatici, ma profondamente connessi l'uno all'altro pur odiandosi.
Nessuna salvezza, nessuna nascita a nuova vita, nessuna redenzione.
Ne "il cielo è dei violenti" si toccano temi anche come la malattia mentale e la disabilità.
Come dicevo, una lettura impegnativa, ma affrontabile.
Poi Flannery ha scritto solo due romanzi e mi sentivo in dovere di leggerlo.
Ah, l'ironia non manca, ma di certo non è quella a cui si è abituati.....
"Non riesci a mangiare perché, dentro, hai qualcosa che ti mangia, - dichiarò. - E io ho intenzione di dirti cos'è.
- I vermi, - sibilò il ragazzo"
☆☆☆,5
Una lettura per niente facile. Non so se il mio agnosticismo mi abbia impedito di leggere tutte le sfumature che la O'Connor usa.
Una storia di profeti e professori, ognuno intento a plasmare o riplasmare il 14enne Francis Marion Tarwater.
Il prozio, profeta o pazzo, rapisce
Tarwater quando ancora in fasce, lo cresce nella solitudine dei boschi, nell'attesa della chiamata del Signore.
Lo plasma a sua immagine e somiglianza, ma si sa, i ragazzi cercano in tutti i modi di andar contro chi li cresce. Così quando il vecchio muore, Tarwater scappare in città dallo zio professore.
Qui quest'ultimo, rapito a sua volta dal vecchio all'età di sette anni, cercherà di riportare Francis sulla strada della ragione.
Un viaggio tra ricordi e nuovi inizi, ma pieno di buche e strade sterrate difficili da percorrere.
Personaggi cupi, violenti, per nulla empatici, ma profondamente connessi l'uno all'altro pur odiandosi.
Nessuna salvezza, nessuna nascita a nuova vita, nessuna redenzione.
Ne "il cielo è dei violenti" si toccano temi anche come la malattia mentale e la disabilità.
Come dicevo, una lettura impegnativa, ma affrontabile.
Poi Flannery ha scritto solo due romanzi e mi sentivo in dovere di leggerlo.
Ah, l'ironia non manca, ma di certo non è quella a cui si è abituati.....
"Non riesci a mangiare perché, dentro, hai qualcosa che ti mangia, - dichiarò. - E io ho intenzione di dirti cos'è.
- I vermi, - sibilò il ragazzo"
☆☆☆,5
August 8, 2015
Published in 1960, The Violent Bear It Away is the second and (due to her death at the age of 39), final novel by Flannery O'Connor. Chapter 1 had been published in 1955 as You Can't Be Any Poorer Than Dead in the literary journal New World Writing. I read it in O'Connor's masterful short story collection The Complete Stories, so this story and characters were as familiar to me as an old ghost story.
The novel is the account of fourteen-year-old Francis Marion Tarwater, raised solely by a man claiming to be his great-uncle, Mason Tarwater. They live in a two-story barn in a backwoods clearing the old man calls Powderhead, in what we later learn to be Tennessee. The old man cultivates corn, manufactures a little whiskey and has prepared Tarwater for the day he too will hear the Lord's call and follow in the old man's footsteps to become a prophet. All Tarwater knows of the world he knows because the old man has told him.
Tarwater was born in an automobile wreck which claimed the lives of his mother and his grandparents. His father was already dead by suicide. Briefly taken in by his uncle, a schoolteacher named Rayber, young Tarwater was abducted by the old man, baptized and instructed in the hard facts of serving the Lord. Rayber attempted to rescue his nephew from Powderhead with a welfare woman in tow, but the old man shot him. Buckshot in his leg and his ear drove Rayber off never to return again.
The old man said that with the devil having such a heavy role in his beginning, it was little wonder that he should have an eye on the boy and keep him under close surveillance during his time on earth, in order that the soul he had helped call into being might serve him forever in hell. "You are the kind of boy," the old man said, "that the devil is always going to be offering to assist, to give you a smoke or a drink or a ride, and to ask you your bidnis. You had better mind how you take up with strangers. And keep your bidnis to yourself." It was to foil the devil's plans for him that the Lord had seen to his upbringing.
Alone in the world following the death of the old man at the breakfast table, Tarwater makes an effort to bury his great-uncle according to the precise instructions he left, but Tarwater begins to hear a strange voice that tells him it would be easier to walk away from the expectations placed on him. The boy gets drunk and burns the barn to the ground. He hitches a ride in to town and shows up on the doorstep of his uncle to fulfill his destiny.
Rayber, who wears a hearing aid after being shot, raises a dim-witted son named Bishop from his brief marriage to the welfare woman. Rayber was also spirited away by the old man at a young age and has spent his life embracing knowledge and culture and rejecting the spiritual obsessions of the old man. Despite the boy's claims that he too thinks for himself, it becomes apparent to Rayber that Tarwater has come to fulfill the old man's wishes and baptize Bishop. Rather than allow his, Rayber sets out to save his nephew.
I had mixed emotions about the novel.
O'Connor's immense contributions to Southern Gothic are set in a specific place and time -- the Dixie South on the eve of the Civil Rights Era. Her characters, be they prideful land owners, smug progressives in town, or backwoods prophets bitten by visions of Jesus, are ushered to an abyss, a great pit where their lives should be, and forced to gaze into it. This is not a haunting by ghosts or goblins but of their conscience, of the lies they've been carrying.
I'm enamored by O'Connor's writing, which is sensual, witty and latches onto truth, refusing to let go.
Powderhead was not simply off the dirt road but off the wagon track and footpath, and the nearest neighbors, colored not white, still had to walk through the woods, pushing plum branches out of their way to get to it. Once there had been two houses; now there was only the one house with the dead owner inside and the living owner outside on the porch, waiting to bury him. The boy knew he would have to bury the old man before anything would begin. It was as if there would have to be dirt over him before he would be thoroughly dead. The thought seemed to give him respite from something that pressed on him.
Both O'Connor's power and style are on full display in the short story You Can't Be Any Poorer Than Dead. Most of the novel seemed to be a repeat of the first chapter: the old man is crazier than a peach orchard boar, the schoolteacher can't be trusted, the boy is thick as a brick. The story is an amazing bicycle ride that turns down a cul-de-sac and keeps circling it. After two days, I started getting tired of the view.
I also felt that the names didn't fit the characters. The boy is referred to as "Tarwater" which sounds more like a real estate company than it does a fourteen-year-old; Frank or Frankie would've been fine. "Rayber" sounds like the boy's name, a surefire goober if there ever was one, but is misplaced on the schoolteacher, an intellect. "Bishop" doesn't fit on the dim-witted son. Maybe it's just me, but I struggled to identify whose point of view O'Connor had shifted to by these names.
My recommendation would be the read The Complete Stories and explore The Violent Bear It Away if you're as riveted by O'Connor as I am. Her short stories settle over me like a shroud, prompting me to see differently than I would out of costume. This 1994 edition boasts one of several beguiling covers commissioned by Charlotte Strick, then art director of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, by illustrator June Glasson.
The novel is the account of fourteen-year-old Francis Marion Tarwater, raised solely by a man claiming to be his great-uncle, Mason Tarwater. They live in a two-story barn in a backwoods clearing the old man calls Powderhead, in what we later learn to be Tennessee. The old man cultivates corn, manufactures a little whiskey and has prepared Tarwater for the day he too will hear the Lord's call and follow in the old man's footsteps to become a prophet. All Tarwater knows of the world he knows because the old man has told him.
Tarwater was born in an automobile wreck which claimed the lives of his mother and his grandparents. His father was already dead by suicide. Briefly taken in by his uncle, a schoolteacher named Rayber, young Tarwater was abducted by the old man, baptized and instructed in the hard facts of serving the Lord. Rayber attempted to rescue his nephew from Powderhead with a welfare woman in tow, but the old man shot him. Buckshot in his leg and his ear drove Rayber off never to return again.
The old man said that with the devil having such a heavy role in his beginning, it was little wonder that he should have an eye on the boy and keep him under close surveillance during his time on earth, in order that the soul he had helped call into being might serve him forever in hell. "You are the kind of boy," the old man said, "that the devil is always going to be offering to assist, to give you a smoke or a drink or a ride, and to ask you your bidnis. You had better mind how you take up with strangers. And keep your bidnis to yourself." It was to foil the devil's plans for him that the Lord had seen to his upbringing.
Alone in the world following the death of the old man at the breakfast table, Tarwater makes an effort to bury his great-uncle according to the precise instructions he left, but Tarwater begins to hear a strange voice that tells him it would be easier to walk away from the expectations placed on him. The boy gets drunk and burns the barn to the ground. He hitches a ride in to town and shows up on the doorstep of his uncle to fulfill his destiny.
Rayber, who wears a hearing aid after being shot, raises a dim-witted son named Bishop from his brief marriage to the welfare woman. Rayber was also spirited away by the old man at a young age and has spent his life embracing knowledge and culture and rejecting the spiritual obsessions of the old man. Despite the boy's claims that he too thinks for himself, it becomes apparent to Rayber that Tarwater has come to fulfill the old man's wishes and baptize Bishop. Rather than allow his, Rayber sets out to save his nephew.
I had mixed emotions about the novel.
O'Connor's immense contributions to Southern Gothic are set in a specific place and time -- the Dixie South on the eve of the Civil Rights Era. Her characters, be they prideful land owners, smug progressives in town, or backwoods prophets bitten by visions of Jesus, are ushered to an abyss, a great pit where their lives should be, and forced to gaze into it. This is not a haunting by ghosts or goblins but of their conscience, of the lies they've been carrying.
I'm enamored by O'Connor's writing, which is sensual, witty and latches onto truth, refusing to let go.
Powderhead was not simply off the dirt road but off the wagon track and footpath, and the nearest neighbors, colored not white, still had to walk through the woods, pushing plum branches out of their way to get to it. Once there had been two houses; now there was only the one house with the dead owner inside and the living owner outside on the porch, waiting to bury him. The boy knew he would have to bury the old man before anything would begin. It was as if there would have to be dirt over him before he would be thoroughly dead. The thought seemed to give him respite from something that pressed on him.
Both O'Connor's power and style are on full display in the short story You Can't Be Any Poorer Than Dead. Most of the novel seemed to be a repeat of the first chapter: the old man is crazier than a peach orchard boar, the schoolteacher can't be trusted, the boy is thick as a brick. The story is an amazing bicycle ride that turns down a cul-de-sac and keeps circling it. After two days, I started getting tired of the view.
I also felt that the names didn't fit the characters. The boy is referred to as "Tarwater" which sounds more like a real estate company than it does a fourteen-year-old; Frank or Frankie would've been fine. "Rayber" sounds like the boy's name, a surefire goober if there ever was one, but is misplaced on the schoolteacher, an intellect. "Bishop" doesn't fit on the dim-witted son. Maybe it's just me, but I struggled to identify whose point of view O'Connor had shifted to by these names.
My recommendation would be the read The Complete Stories and explore The Violent Bear It Away if you're as riveted by O'Connor as I am. Her short stories settle over me like a shroud, prompting me to see differently than I would out of costume. This 1994 edition boasts one of several beguiling covers commissioned by Charlotte Strick, then art director of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, by illustrator June Glasson.
September 21, 2020
Η Ο' Κοννορ ήταν τόσο συνεπής στον Χριστιανισμό που την έχω ικανή να φώναζε, Μία λαβιδα, αλλά expect the unexpected (βλ. Μαργαρίτη για γκέι & υιοθεσια, Βελοπουλο για Ζακ, Κλιζ για Μπρέξιτ). Δεν με νοιάζει η πίστη της για την υπαρξη σκοπού που πρέπει να εκπληρωθεί, ούτε που γίνεται σύμμαχος με τον πιο ζωντανό νεκρό. Όλα αυτά καπελωνονται από την συγγραφική της δεινότητα. Οι εικόνες που γεννούν τα αποσπάσματα στιγματιζουν το μυαλό, τα φλασμπακ—μέσα σε μια (ήδη) πνιγηρη ατμόσφαιρα—σφηνωνουν με μαεστρία, οι παρομοιωσεις της συνταρακτικές, και κάπως έτσι η τάση για κατήχηση γίνεται λογοτεχνικό αριστούργημα.
May 15, 2018
Din ekseninde insan ruhunun karanlık yönünü su yüzüne çıkarıyor O'Connor. Kitabı okurken gittim geldim, bir kırılma olacağını ve gidişatın bir yerlerde değişeceğini düşündüm hep. Bunun sebebi biraz da yazarın okuduğum ilk kitabı olmasıydı, tavrına ve tarzına aşina değildim. Oysaki ister doğamızın getirisi olsun, isterse yedi gün ya da on dört yıl kötülüğe maruz kalalım farketmiyor. İnsanın özünde var bunlar. İşte yazar bu noktaları gösteriyor okuyucusuna. Mekan güney amerika ama her an her yerde yaşanılabilecek şeyler anlattıkları. Tanıdık bile geldi bana. Kitabı bitirdiğimde zihnimde çalınan şarkı "Yok başka bir cehennem, yaşıyorsunuz işte" oldu. Kafamızı boşaltmak istediğimiz bir zamanda değil ama sular duruyken edebiyatın gücüne sığınarak belki de görmek, duymak, bilmek istemediğimiz şeylerle yüzleşmek için doğru bir adres. Çeviri anlamında bütünsel olarak değilde güney kırsalının konusmasını yansıtırken üç beş cümlede bir kullanılan tek kelime benim için yeterli olmadı, yapay kaldı. Bu biraz okuma zevkimi azaltsa da kalan kitaplarını da okuyacağım bir yazarla tanışmak memnun etti beni. Bu haliyle bile güney gotiğinin kurucularından olması hasebiyle kendine önemli bir yer edinmiş yazar, 39 yaşında ölmese kimbilir ardında ne zengin bir külliyat bırakırdı diye düşünmeden edemedim.
January 2, 2021
I don’t write reviews.
This was thick, sumptuous and demented. I love her use of the language. It’s like honey and lemonade. Sitting on a picnic blanket even though ants are crawling over your toes.
This was thick, sumptuous and demented. I love her use of the language. It’s like honey and lemonade. Sitting on a picnic blanket even though ants are crawling over your toes.
April 27, 2015
L’immediato approccio con il romanzo è il titolo. Esso è tratto da un versetto del Vangelo di Matteo, e ciò subito induce a pensare che la scelta della scrittrice americana cattolica, credente, praticante e rigorosa non avrebbe potuto essere diversa. La religiosità permea ogni pagina ed è la “ratio” profonda dell’opera.
Come si manifesta il divino nella vita dell’uomo? Si chiede Flannery O’ Connor . In modi e forme misteriose all’uomo stesso, scelte discrezionalmente da Dio, ma -e questo il messaggio profondo che la scrittrice trasmette- il seme divino è presente in tutti gli uomini, dipende dalla volontà divina stabilire il momento e i modi in cui si manifesterà l’avvenuto attecchimento e la nascita dell’uomo “nuovo”, finalmente redento nella fede.
Nel prozio Tarwater, folle profeta fondamentalista, il segnale divino è giunto per mezzo di una visione profetica, che gli ha imposto di scappare nei boschi portando con sé il pronipote che porta il suo stesso nome, per allevarlo e prepararlo ad aspettare la chiamata del Signore e tenersi pronto per il giorno in cui l’avrebbe udita. La sua opera educativa sembra destinata a fallire: il giovane Tarwater respinge gli insegnamenti del prozio, al quale non solo nega l’ultimo conforto religioso ma viola il suo corpo con la violenza del fuoco, per distruggere ogni segno del suo passaggio su questa terra. In realtà, il suo animo è dolorosamente diviso in due. Una parte di sé, un amico e mentore che lo accompagna in ogni momento, lo incita all’azione, a liberarsi del passato e del fardello lasciatogli dal prozio, in ciò supportato da un terzo protagonista, lo zio maestro Ryber, che, anche lui rapito per pochi giorni dal prozio quando era bambino, è riuscito a sfuggirgli ed è giunto alla negazione della fede e all’affermazione del principio del rigido controllo dell’intelletto su tutto; nell’altra parte di sé, invece, il seme divino è stato sotterrato, cresce e matura dentro di lui come il grano seminato sotto la neve invernale. E infine la dura lotta trova un vincitore, che riuscirà a sopraffare l’altra parte solo dopo azioni violente e tragiche subite e compiute dal ragazzo. Quello è il segnale divino, al quale non si può opporsi né sfuggire. E ancora una volta c’è il fuoco, a segnalare stavolta la purificazione e la redenzione del “nuovo” uomo.
Nonostante la tragicità dei toni e l’importanza dei temi trattati, la lettura del romanzo non rimane pesante, perché grande è la bravura della scrittrice, che descrive la fede ossessiva e fanatica del prozio Tarwater , la lotta interna all’animo del giovane Tarwater e la ragione sterile del maestro Ryber non attraverso flussi di coscienza o con dialoghi cervellotici, ma attraverso comportamenti, intonazioni di voce, espressioni del volto. Flannery O' Connor è stata una bella scoperta.
Come si manifesta il divino nella vita dell’uomo? Si chiede Flannery O’ Connor . In modi e forme misteriose all’uomo stesso, scelte discrezionalmente da Dio, ma -e questo il messaggio profondo che la scrittrice trasmette- il seme divino è presente in tutti gli uomini, dipende dalla volontà divina stabilire il momento e i modi in cui si manifesterà l’avvenuto attecchimento e la nascita dell’uomo “nuovo”, finalmente redento nella fede.
Nel prozio Tarwater, folle profeta fondamentalista, il segnale divino è giunto per mezzo di una visione profetica, che gli ha imposto di scappare nei boschi portando con sé il pronipote che porta il suo stesso nome, per allevarlo e prepararlo ad aspettare la chiamata del Signore e tenersi pronto per il giorno in cui l’avrebbe udita. La sua opera educativa sembra destinata a fallire: il giovane Tarwater respinge gli insegnamenti del prozio, al quale non solo nega l’ultimo conforto religioso ma viola il suo corpo con la violenza del fuoco, per distruggere ogni segno del suo passaggio su questa terra. In realtà, il suo animo è dolorosamente diviso in due. Una parte di sé, un amico e mentore che lo accompagna in ogni momento, lo incita all’azione, a liberarsi del passato e del fardello lasciatogli dal prozio, in ciò supportato da un terzo protagonista, lo zio maestro Ryber, che, anche lui rapito per pochi giorni dal prozio quando era bambino, è riuscito a sfuggirgli ed è giunto alla negazione della fede e all’affermazione del principio del rigido controllo dell’intelletto su tutto; nell’altra parte di sé, invece, il seme divino è stato sotterrato, cresce e matura dentro di lui come il grano seminato sotto la neve invernale. E infine la dura lotta trova un vincitore, che riuscirà a sopraffare l’altra parte solo dopo azioni violente e tragiche subite e compiute dal ragazzo. Quello è il segnale divino, al quale non si può opporsi né sfuggire. E ancora una volta c’è il fuoco, a segnalare stavolta la purificazione e la redenzione del “nuovo” uomo.
Nonostante la tragicità dei toni e l’importanza dei temi trattati, la lettura del romanzo non rimane pesante, perché grande è la bravura della scrittrice, che descrive la fede ossessiva e fanatica del prozio Tarwater , la lotta interna all’animo del giovane Tarwater e la ragione sterile del maestro Ryber non attraverso flussi di coscienza o con dialoghi cervellotici, ma attraverso comportamenti, intonazioni di voce, espressioni del volto. Flannery O' Connor è stata una bella scoperta.
April 19, 2018
Τι μπορεί άραγε να πει στο ελληνικό αναγνωστικό κοινό του 21ου αιώνα ένα μυθιστόρημα γραμμένο το 1960 από μια καθολική συγγραφέα ιρλανδικής καταγωγής που έζησε τη σύντομη και δύσκολη ζωή της (1925–1964) στον αμερικανικό Νότο; Πολύ περισσότερο μάλιστα όταν πρόκειται για ένα γκροτέσκο μυθιστόρημα που διαπνέεται από τις αντιλήψεις της βαθιά θρησκευόμενης δημιουργού του, οι οποίες έχουν στο κέντρο τους την πίστη ότι η θρησκεία και το πεπρωμένο επικρατούν στο τέλος πάντα; Και, σε κάθε περίπτωση, πόσο ρόλο στην ερμηνεία ενός κειμένου παίζουν οι προθέσεις του/της συγγραφέα, αλλά και η ήδη καθιερωμένη πρόσληψη του κειμένου αυτού σε άλλα πολιτισμικά περιβάλλοντα;
Η συνέχεια της κριτικής μου για το βιβλίο στο τρίτο τεύχος των Marginalia: https://marginalia.gr/arthro/kai-anag...
Η συνέχεια της κριτικής μου για το βιβλίο στο τρίτο τεύχος των Marginalia: https://marginalia.gr/arthro/kai-anag...
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