The Violent Bear It Away (1952), Flannery O’Connor’s second novel, is a story about prophetic calling and religious conversion. It is, like almost all her works, set in the “Christ-haunted” American South, and illustrates that while a broken humanity may descend to savagery and insanity in their religious angst and zeal, the essential power and meaning of faith not only survives its own mistreatment at their hands but... The Violent Bear It Away (1952), Flannery O’Connor’s second novel, is a story about prophetic calling and religious conversion. It is, like almost all her works, set in the “Christ-haunted” American South, and illustrates that while a broken humanity may descend to savagery and insanity in their religious angst and zeal, the essential power and meaning of faith not only survives its own mistreatment at their hands but emerges in a clarified and accentuated form.

         Old Mason Tarwater, who is dead by the time the story opens, was a self-proclaimed prophet. After initial attempts to proclaim his message of judgment, baptism, and redemption in a nearby city, he retreated to a secluded property, where he supported himself by brewing whiskey and dedicated his spiritual energies to converting his male relatives. When his adult brother proved unreceptive to his message, Old Tarwater placed his faith in the impressionable nature of young children, kidnapping first his nephew George Rayber and years later his grand-nephew Francis Tarwater with the goal of baptizing the boys and overseeing their religious formation.
     Rayber’s father took him from Mason’s custody after several years, and by the time the story opens, he his living in town with his mentally retarded son, Bishop. He loudly proclaims the old man’s insanity and his own dedication to the gospel of education and science, but he feels the seeds of the old man’s convulsive passion within himself, and he seeks to repress its development by strict intellectual discipline and the resolve never to feel anything too deeply. Rayber had hoped to give Francis Tarwater, the son of his dead sister, a model intellectual formation (free of religion), but Old Mason frustrated those dreams when he kidnapped Francis as a small child and violently repelled Rayber’s single attempt to reclaim him. Rayber’s attitude toward Bishop is deeply ambivalent. Manifestly incapable of the intellectual endeavors Rayber believes makes human existence worthwhile, Bishop nonetheless provides Rayber with a circumscribed focus of love, saving him from the dilemma he perceives between complete emotional death and descent into religious frenzy.

     Though they have the common goal of rejecting the haunting influence of the old man, mutual incomprehension leads Rayber and Tarwater first to stalemate and then to ironic tragedy. Seizing eagerly upon his long-lost ward, Rayber resolves to cure young Tarwater by encouraging him to acknowledge the strength of his religious compulsions imbibed from the old man and then suppressing them by means of reason and education. He is particularly intent upon getting Tarwater to acknowledge his desire to baptize Bishop, believing this compulsion to be at the root of his uncle’s delusion. Tarwater, too, believes that baptism is the root concern, but he resents Rayber’s insistence that he is sympathetic to the old man and believes that Rayber’s methods are insufficient to deal with issue in question. Instead he resolves, encouraged by the stranger, to pull up his vocation by the roots. Exhausted by his intractable struggle with Tarwater, Rayber allows him to take Bishop out on a boat in a nearby lake in order to gain a few minutes of peace. Only when he hears the drowning bellows of his retarded son does he realize the decisive action that Tarwater has resolved upon. And with his focus of circumscribed love removed, and the path of religious zeal rejected, he feels himself sinking into emotional death.

The vocational significance of his own action dawns only gradually on Tarwater. He sullenly recognizes that the drowning death of Bishop was an incidental baptism, and as he hitchhikes back to the burned-out settlement, he feels in himself a hunger that will not respond to food. His final ride comes from a seedy stranger, the embodiment of his long-time shadowy companion. He encourages Tarwater to drink whiskey and later leaves him naked in the woods. This marks Tarwater’s definitive break with the stranger, for when he once again approaches in a more shadowy form, the boy is overcome with wrath and drives him away by setting the woods on fire.
     Upon reaching the settlement, Tarwater’s unwilling conversion to his prophetic vocation is complete. He learns for the first time that while he was still in a drunken stupor and before he set the house afire, one of the Negroes had finished digging his great-uncle’s grave and buried his corpse under a cross. Lying on that grave, Tarwater recognizes within himself an insatiable hunger for the Bread of Life and he hears as well the dreaded command: “GO WARN THE CHILDREN OF GOD OF THE TERRIBLE SPEED OF MERCY.” He once again sets his face toward the city, but this time as a converted prophet.

BRIEF NOTES

Flannery O’Connor (Savannah, Georgia, 1925 – Milledgeville, Georgia 1964), American writer.

Flannery O’Connor, “Three by Flannery O’Connor – Wise Blood, The Violent Bear It Away, Everything That Rises Must Converge”, New American Library, New York, 1983.

First Publishing: 1960.  O’Connor wrote two novels as well as the materials for two collections of short stories before her premature death.  The Violent Bear It Away is widely regarded as her most accomplished work. 

Links: Georgia College & State University / The Comforts of Home /

Eric Arthur Goddard, December 2004.