The Violent Bear It Away

I am new to Flannery O'Connor. My introduction to her was through popular culture. She was mentioned in an interview with Bono and Sufjan Stevens adores her. And who hasn't heard of "A Good Man is Hard to Find," even if they haven't read it? Regardless, I don't read a lot of fiction, and am by no means a literary critic, but some thoughts follow. I can't say why I started with this book and not "A Good Man...", other than that I wanted to start with something that was not as familiar. Having read nothing about the book prior to reading it (which is the best way to experience it), I came away utterly astonished at what I had read. To echo another reviewer's comments, sometimes it becomes excruciatingly painful to continue reading, but I was so drawn into the story that I couldn't put it down. I knew of O'Connor's penchant for shock, but there was one event in particular that I was absolutely unprepared for, and I'll let the reader discover what that was. I'm very impressed with O'Connor's crisp style, which is intelligent yet accessible and capable of vividly portraying the internal transformation of her characters. She is also gifted in her manipulation of her characters' faults to serve the drama. One example of this genius was revealed when I found out why Rayber had a hearing aid--not why he needed one, but why the story needed him to have one. It was a masterful stroke. My only complaint is that Frances, at age 14, seemed far more sure of himself and the world around him and what he wanted and didn't want than are most real children his age. In that regard, he was a little unbelievable, but it didn't take too much away from my enjoyment of this haunting, beautiful, and astonishing novel.

What a compelling, gripping book, that I first read in September of 1996 and promised myself to read again someday. It has lost none of its power for me. Almost a thriller. After about halfway through, I simply couldn't put it down - again. The two main characters, Rayber and Tarwater, mesmerizing. But to correct a misconception - this book was published in 1960. And since Flannery was born in 1925, she was 40 when it first came out, a matter of simple math. Not 30, as one reviewer noted. She did not even complete the first draft until 1959. About bible-belt southern poor, that, being from the South, I recognize and know. These people are not as far-fetched as many might think. Yet it is such an unlikely plot for such an incredible read. Flannery, a life-long staunch Catholic, is not at all satirizing here. Quite plainly nature in the novel is used as a kind of sacrament, and Tarwater (the boy) does indeed emerge as the prophet from the wilderness (Powderhead). She sets Rayber, the intellectual humanist and rationalist against both the Tarwaters. Rayber is total commitment to disbelief; old Tarwater a total committment to faith. In the novel, there is no middle course. But Rayber's is the way of self-deception and self-destruction according to Flannery. In the end, he just collapses and that is all the further we hear of him. But Tarwater is given, so he comes to realize, a vision of his prophecy that he cannot deny, no matter what the cost to himself. In another time these people would not have been looked upon as freaks, mad and compulsive, certainly not in Biblical times. Rayber's love for his son just dissolves, while Tarwater's vision for his nephew, young Tarwater, takes wing. Of course, there is one staggering problem - that the boy Tarwater commits a murder on his way to salvation. Flannery seem not to consider this as of much importance. What exactly is Bishop to Rayber and the boy? I'm not sure. But I do know that this book is not easily forgotten, nor the questions it raises. Is it that Rayber, by constantly fighting against forces in himself, and thus denying his true nature, collapses, while the boy finally gives in? Read it and ask yourself.

O'Connor defended the grotesque element in her fiction this way:"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."O'Connor is certainly a "novelist with Christian concerns." Some of her early reviewers misread her as satirizing her protagonists, in the manner of Erskine Caldwell's THE JOURNEYMAN. Nothing could be further from her intention. In THE VIOLENT BEAR IT AWAY (VBIA), for example, she says that she if 100% on Mason Tarwater's side; that is, on the side of a violent old man, a self-styled backwoods prophet, who had been locked up four years in a mental institution.Francis Tarwater's urban uncle Rayber sometimes experiences an "unhealthy" surge of absolute love, and with it, "a rush of longing to have to have the old man's [Mason's] eyes-insane, fish-colored, violent with their impossible vision of a world transfigured-turned on him once again." O' Connor sees Mason as a true prophet, in the line the equally mad OT prophets-Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos, Hosea, etc. And she shares his insane vision of "a world transfigured"; ie, the Kingdom of God. Jesus himself may not have been a comfortable person to be around.An interesting aspect of O'Connor's fiction is that she was a devout Catholic, yet Catholicism and Catholics play only a very small part in her fiction-and none at all in VBIA. She wrote about what she knew about, which was Southern evangelism. Indeed, in VBIA, no church is featured, and only once do we see Tarwater happening into a store-front church. Other than this, there is no churchgoing. The Christianity of her characters is a difficult, lonely one.The psychological structure and center of VBIA, like that of WISE BLOOD and many of the stories, is the protagonist's resistance to vocation. Perhaps O'Connor would agree with Heraclitus that "character is fate," that is, that our true vocation is programmed deep within us. Tarwater expressed this in the trope "seeds dropped in the blood." The mark of one's true vocation seems to be the calling we fight hardest against. Rayber wages a successful fight against his vocation; Tarwater, an unsuccessful one.The thematic center of the novel, as I see it, is the passage dealing with Rayber and divine love:"For the most part Rayber lived with him [his retarded son Bishop] without being painfully aware of his presence but the moments would still come when, rushing from some inexplicable part of himself, he would experience a love for the child so outrageous that he would be left shocked and depressed for days, and trembling for his sanity. It was only a

This book is probably O'Connor's finest work of fiction. The story itself is much stronger than the more highly acclaimed Wise Blood, as are its characters. I find it interesting that one reviewer referred to disliking the grotesque characters, while admiring O'Connor's use of symbolism and metaphor. One who has read O'Connor knows that there are few characters in the author's opus that could not be classified as grotesque. As far as her use of symbolism, one must certainly recognize that O'Connor's characters were the most obvious manifestations of her symbolism and metaphor. As she herself said, when drawing for a child, one makes the figure overly-clear. Also, while this book, might seem to tread between rational humanism and religion, the end finds O'Connor squarely on the side of the seemingly tyrannical, certainly unbalanced uncle. The story is funny, full of observation and commentary, and endowed with the wisdom of one who has seen the world and is on their way out, as O'Connor was by the time the Violent Bear it Away was written. In short, no library is complete without this work-the paramount achievement of one of the century's greatest authors.

I can agree with almost any reader who disliked this work. I can understand why people would not like it; this is a terrible book, but it is a wonderfully terribly book. It is in the terribleness where the lesson lies. The fact that Francis Tarwater acts out on both sides of the extreme to release himself from the religious plague that has netted itself around him is in itself the horror of this whole book. A life of extremes in whatever it is that people do, whether it be in thoughts or actions, can only lead to a form of destruction. Religion and humanistic rationalism are each wonderful things, but only if they are on an equilibrium -- a balanced scale. Tarwater is in the middle, not knowing what side to lean towards, when in actuality he should not have moved towards either. The indecision, doubt and confusion of what Tarwater goes through is horrible, but the lesson we, as readers get from his experience and decisions, make us better for seeing what O'Connor chooses to do with him.We need to see the grotesque blackness in this novel, because it is for our own betterment and salvation. The characters are stark, bold. It is absolutely impossible to symapthize or identify or connect with them. Who would want to?