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How Is Tarwater Being Guided By The Supernatural Destiny

1312 Words6 Pages

Hudson Haasz
Mr. Kerr
ENG III: American Literature
6 February 2023
Supernatural Guidance
In the novel The Violent Bear It Away by Flannery O'Connor dDestiny is present with all of the characters. Tarwater, the protagonist of the story, has different destiny’s and paths opened for him by the people around. Such as the path of being a prophetcy set by the old man and the pathway to freedom and rejecting the old man's teachings by his uncle. In another perspective, Flannery O’Conner is portraying destiny for Tarwater as something else, which could be argued as Tarwater not being worthy of a big and heroic destiny, but if he does it on his own it will lead him to the worst imaginable. The question is could Tarwater be being guided by the supernatural. …show more content…

During this part of the novel book Tarwater is exposed to living under the principles of faith and being a prophet. All he understands and knows at the beginning of his life is that he needs to live his life as a prophet and follow the teachings of god. He doesn’t know it yet but before being introduced to the outside world of freedom he thinks that what he is being taught by the old man is normal. He later learns that it is one of the most traumatic experiences he has ever had. The main portion of this part of the novel that goes into depth about what his destiny “should be” starts out with the old man saying “If by the time I die, he had said to Tarwater, I haven’t got him baptized, it’ll be up to you. It’ll be the first mission the Lord sends you” (9). This quote shows that in Tarwater’s eyes he believes that he has to be prophet and has to baptize the child which he later finds out is his Bishop. This is all that he has been exposed to so far in the novel and even then he eventually comes to the conclusion that he needs to find his own destiny that does not work out for him either. With that being said a lot of the time during the novel all of the decisions that Tarwater makes are obviously based on his characteristics and who he is. In this instance for the main part of his childhood all he knew was following …show more content…

The Violent Bear It Away. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007.
Mallon, Anne Marie. “Mystic Quest in ‘The Violent Bear It Away.’” The Flannery O’Connor Bulletin, vol. 10, 1981, pp. 54–69. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/26669934. Accessed 27 Jan. 2023.
Burns, Stuart L. “Flannery O’Connor’s ‘The Violent Bear It Away’: Apotheosis in Failure.” The Sewanee Review, vol. 76, no. 2, 1968, pp. 319–36. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27541622. Accessed 27 Jan. 2023.
Mayer, David R. “‘The Violent Bear It Away’: Flannery O’Connor’s Shaman.” The Southern Literary Journal, vol. 4, no. 2, 1972, pp. 41–54. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20077437. Accessed 27 Jan. 2023.
Hatch, Derek C. “‘EVEN WHEN CHRIST IS NOT RECOGNIZED’: THE THOMISTIC MEDIATION OF DIVINE GRACE IN ‘THE VIOLENT BEAR IT AWAY.’” Religion & Literature, vol. 46, no. 1, 2014, pp. 75–92. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24752989. Accessed 8 Feb. 2023.
Skelton, Shannon. “An Argument for the Salvation of George Rayber in The Violent Bear It Away.” Flannery O’Connor Review, vol. 14, 2016, pp. 28–42. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26671325. Accessed 8 Feb.

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