Wise Blood and The Catholicism By Reem Abbas 43380421 Flannery O’Connor is one of the greatest Southern writers during the twentieth century. She is considered as a faithful and a good Christian writer. In her fiction, she never neglects her Catholic concerns. The large respect for O'Connor’s religion appears in most of her literary works. Thus, this paper intends to investigate how the Catholicism of Flannery O'Connor is visible in the characters, plot, and themes of Wise Blood. It is obvious that the explicit religious worldview is the main element of Wise Blood. When the author recognizes that most of the readers will disagree with her beliefs, and she might lose many of her audience, she decides to imbue comedy with religion in her writing. Also, she resorts to the grotesque in her fiction for the same reason. Margert Peller who examines Wise Blood as a "Christian commedia" points out that O.Connor's novel has many thematic parallels to the ancient drama . She describes it as humors and black comedy, Greek tragedy because it has the elements of the traditions of the romance and of grotesque (105) . …show more content…
Throughout the characters of her first novel Wise blood, O’Connor depicts what kind of living has those who pass through spiritual suffering. Their spiritual dilemma will lead them to struggle from displacement during their lives. Beside the displacement suffering, their lives will end in a very tragic way. For example, Insoon Choi marks the main character of wise Blood Hazel Motes “a quintessential displaced person” (174) because he has spiritual suffering. Choi mentions that he was not only displaced from his native land, but also from the whole
Just like many other authors, Cormac McCarthy uses a lot of intertextuality, or allusions in his work. These allusions are connected with many literary classics like Moby Dick and Paradise Lost etc. Many of these allusions are also connected with the Christian tradition in a direct or an indirect way. Some of the most obvious examples of these allusions can be found in both The Road, which attracted a lot of criticism, among other reasons, because of the amount of biblical allusions; and Blood Meridian which is by now a highly esteemed literary classic, but nevertheless very controversial due to its violent content. But what is the reason why McCarthy decided to implement so many allusions into his work?
Kinney, Arthur F. “Flannery O'Connor and the Art of the Holy.” Critical Insights: Flannery O'Connor, 20 Jan. 2011. Arthur Kinney’s article “Art of the Holy” speaks volumes to the way Flannery O’Connor religion plays. The article was published with the
Flannery O’Connor uses the literary device of the epiphany in many of her short stories. The epiphany, typically used at the conclusion of the short story, highlights the redemptive possibilities for characters that have become engulfed by the increasing secular world. That being said, the chance for redemption is not a smooth and carefree process. Several of O’Connor’s short stories contain a protagonist that experiences an epiphany that transforms them, only then to suffer from some act of violence that solidifies their move towards Christianity. In Good Country People and Revelation, the development of the protagonists and their eventual epiphanies reveal the fullest implications of the stories’ themes.
The nonlinear structure of these novels, depicts a very apparent sense of suffering, isolation and deceit, and the struggle for bravery at the hands of such an absurd world. Pain at the hands of war is inevitable, and suffering is the unfortunate price to pay. The narrative pattern, or lack thereof, demonstrates this suffering however in an unusual light, claiming that suffering is necessary to allow individuals to come to self-realization about their thoughts on the world they live in. The nonlinear structure of the novels is a way of expressing these ideas.
Jalissa Sheppard Professor Conway April 7th, 2015 Flannery O'Connor is a writer who is well known for stories like "A Good Man Is Hard To Find" and "The Life You Save May Be Your Own". Although both stories rely on theme and foreshadowing, she uses these elements to paint a larger picture. Her stories can sometimes show violence and or redemption, but there is always a lesson in the end. O'Connor uses theme in order to foreshadow to readers her inevitable endings. In "A Good Man Is Hard To Find", a family vacation suddenly ends violently.
O'Connor had a general theme for all of her short stories: religion. This should not come as a surprise to anybody who knows or is familiar with O'Connor's work, seeing as she never missed a mass wherever she lived. Even though she was an obviously devout Catholic she did not let that get in the way of her writing, rather she applied her faith to her writing instead. O’Connor insisted her writing was Christian based and that all of her stories in some way were related to Jesus Christ’s life.
In Flannery O 'Connor collected works there are distinct parallels to the characters she created and her personal life. These parallels become apparent after reading her collected letters, in which she discussed her home life. In these letters O 'Connor wrote to her friends and family she often talks about her mother with whom she lived with since she had a chronic illness that kept her from living on her own. The mother characters she had wrote were often single and owned a farm, much like her own mother, Regina, who had a dairy farm in Georgia where they had lived long after her father had died of lupus when she was a teenager. The maternal characters she created were single and worked on a farm, Unlike her mother the characters portrayed
Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood contains several characters who reject Jesus and the idea of original sin and God’s redemption. Wise Blood shows that without God people either become shrunken humans or animals. Enoch Emery becomes an animal figure by the end of the novel. While O’Connor connects Enoch’s lack of faith to his animalistic tendencies, one can also ascertain that Enoch completely immerses himself in his wise blood because his life lacks a love for God and other people, promoting the theme that without divine or human love one can only act like an animal. O’Connor’s introduction to Enoch establishes his lonely, unloved existence.
Beattie, Peter M. The Tribute of Blood: Army, Honor, Race, and Nation in Brazil, 1864-1945. Durham: Duke University Press, 2001. Peter Beattie examined the transition from an impressment based military to a conscription based military in Brazilian history. Beattie eloquently argued that the transition was vital to the development of Brazilian nationalism in The Tribute of Blood: Army, Honor, Race, and Nation in Brazil, 1864-1945. Beattie artfully showed how the change from impressment to conscription, as a method of maintaining a military, required both a change in the public perception of the military men’s honor and the removal of the military from their historic policing and penal roles.
The horrors of the war are reflected throughout the novel, but Ninh uses the landscape of the Central Highlands to reflect on Kien, and how the war affects him. There are sharp and horrific descriptions of the Jungle of Screaming Souls, where effective language conveys images of Kien’s suffering and the overwhelming power that it has on Kien’s mental state. Ninh also uses strong images and juxtaposition to reflect on his image of his hometown, and how that image has changed after the war, where the reader interprets people’s horrible suffering in poverty. The relationship between the violence and the natural landscape also conveys the traumatic environment that soldiers had to cope with, to the reader, using grim language to describe both the landscape and the violence.
A suppressed, detached tone is formed as a result of figurative language, syntax, and diction in such situations. The use of specific figurative language, especially similes and imagery, is essential in the development of this detached, painful tone when Offred is describing her present feelings. For instance, when Offred describes her relationship with the Marthas, she recalls how their interactions include “soft and minor” voices that are as “mournful as pigeons in the eaves troughs.” (11) Imagery is used to illustrate the “closed face and pressed lips,” of the Marthas, and Offred herself is considered “like a disease, or any form of bad luck.” (10) It is evident that Offred feels alone and ostracized, and is not able to have a true connection with those around her.
Symbolism has been seen as a very important role in Flannery O’Connor’s short story “Good country people”. Flannery O’Conner has written several short stories portraying herself as a Catholic writer who attacks religious views being opposed, though uses the fundamentals of nihilism portrayed through Hulga (Joy), a character from her story. She uses multiple frank descriptions and the usage of different types of symbolism to get the audience to understand her main points. The symbolistic use of names and an artificial leg give a vivid description of the main character and her views towards nihilism. The usage of names, name change and a prosthetic leg all link the main character’s nihilistic philosophy of life which leads to her tragic event.
“Her characters, who sometimes accept and other times reject salvation, often have a warped self-image, especially of their moral status and of the morality of their actions” (Hobby). This addresses how some of the important lines in the story describe to the reader about the extreme exaggeration and the psychological realism of the church, which O’Connor wanted to express within her story. The extreme use of exaggeration and how the use of the characters bring a sense of an uncanny feeling of good and evil within each character, portrays how deep the meaning is seen in this short story. “the story is filled with dark, grotesque humor created largely by the story 's many ironies” (Hobby). The author of this source highly emphasizes that O’Connor creates this dark humor for her characters to build on her meaning in the story and uses irony to create the distortion within her
Overcoming a challenge, not giving up, and not being afraid of change are a few themes demonstrated in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Perhaps the most prominent theme derived from the novel is defying the odds, or in other words rising above the expectations of others. Junior Spirit exemplifies this theme throughout the entirety of the book. As Junior is an Indian, he almost expects that he will never leave the reservation, become an alcoholic, and live in poverty like the other Indians on the reservation—only if he sits around and does not endeavor to change his fate. When Junior shares the backstory of his parents, he says that his mother and father came from “poor people who came from poor people who came from poor people, all the way back to the very first poor people” (11).
The second movie we watched opened my eyes to something I haven’t really thought of. I guess I had a lack of understanding of the way veterans were treated before, considering the way veterans are treated today. The movie First Blood, about a war veteran John Rambo, was able to showcase the harsh reality many veterans at the time faced as a result of the wars that the U.S. fought during that time (Kotcheff, First Blood). I think people have learned how to appreciate what those who serve at home and abroad do for the country and the sacrifices they make, so we don’t have to do them.