Grace Changes Us and the Change is Painful

Regarding Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood, one Amazon reviewer wrote, “Like Being Inside a Fun House That Wasn't Fun.” That comment made me want to revisit this author. Other reviewers have described Wise Blood as “‘low comedy and high seriousness’ with disturbing religious themes.” In the Author’s Notes to the 1962 edition, she wrote, “The book was written with zest and, if possible, it should be read that way. It is a comic novel about a Christian malgré lui [in spite of himself], and as such, very serious, for all comic novels that are any good must be about matters of life and death.” She continues, “Does one’s integrity ever lie in what he is not able to do? I think that usually it does, for free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived simply. It is a mystery and one which a novel, even a comic novel, can only be asked to deepen.”  

I’ve always considered myself a fan of O’Connor’s work, but it’s been a very long time since I’ve immersed myself in one of her books. I discovered Wise Blood, O’Connor’s first novel published in 1952, was on Boxall’s 1,001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, along with Everything That Rises Must Converge. The Violent Bear It Away was removed from the list in 2008. I got the Kindle, opened it up, and tried to keep an open mind about what lay ahead, knowing some have found the book appalling.

The book opens with a young discharged WWII veteran riding a train home to Tennessee, only to find the home abandoned, he continues his travels to the fictional city of Taulkinham, Tennessee, believed to be in the western part of the state known for fields and hills, vs the mountains in the east. He determined, like his grandfather before him, to become a preacher, “had known since 12 years old he would be a preacher,” but it turns out he’s now the anti-Jesus kind, as he later explains, “If you believed in Jesus, you wouldn’t be so good.” Some suggest the horrors of war which included an injury may inform his worldview about organized religion and the inhumanity of civil society. He is plagued by bad dreams involving death, which might suggest PTSD, and describes an almost mistrust of faith, “Later he saw Jesus move from tree to tree in the back of his mind, a wild ragged figure motioning him to turn around and come off into the dark where he was not sure of his footing, where he might be walking on the water and not know it and then suddenly know it and drown.”  

The supporting cast of characters as well as the protagonist, seem the type of “grotesques” usually lurking in Southern Gothic fiction, and one was described: “Enoch kept wetting his lips. They were pale except for his fever blister, which was purple.” These characters are usually close to destitute, the underbelly of society, struggling just to survive, and those who interact with them, often profiting at their expense. Sometimes uneducated with few marketable skills, they are like peasants from a Peter Bruegel painting transported from their raw and earthy town lives into the future. It is an unblinking look with society’s jaundiced eye at those not normally populating palatable fiction. 

 Bridgett Marshall describes the mood of such books, “Some of these characteristics include exploring madness, decay and despair, continuing pressures of the past upon the present, particularly with the lost ideals of a dispossessed Southern aristocracy and continued racial hostilities.” It’s fair to say a young man returning from the ravages of war would struggle with lost ideals, a crisis of faith, and “the many wills conflicting in one man,” which may include the vestiges of racism. 

One of O’Connor’s great strengths is her ability to create unforgettable, if unsavory, morally flawed characters, who move through their unvarnished lives in often ill advised ways, forcing us to contemplate the human condition, often far from ideal. I ended up with 40 highlights from the book, powerful passages and images, and a respect for O’Conner’s ability to articulate humanity’s struggles. 

 In The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor, editor Sally Fitzgerald notes, “However grotesque the setting, she tried to portray her characters as open to the touch of divine grace. This ruled out a sentimental understanding of the stories' violence, as of her own illness. She wrote: ‘Grace changes us and the change is painful.’" O’Connor was a devout Catholic, and raises this in her Author’s Notes: “That belief in Christ is to some a matter of life and death has been a stumbling block for readers who would prefer to think it a matter of no great consequence.” 

O’Connor’s characters teach us much about our own sense of compassion, the power of forgiveness, and redemption by a higher authority who reaches out to those who understand mistakes they’ve made, like the king who asks his Jester to make a prayer in Edward Rowland’s “A Fool’s Prayer.” Rowland writes, "Earth bears no balsam for mistakes; Men crown the knave, and scourge the tool That did his will; but Thou, O Lord, Be merciful to me, a fool! The room was hushed; in silence rose The King, and sought his gardens cool, And walked apart, and murmured low, ‘Be merciful to me, a fool!’" 

O’Connor’s struggling characters’ lives often appear as Shakespeare’s depiction of life’s drama, “Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.” But if we pay attention to the artists’ words and the stories they weave, the significance is ours to learn.