Some critics argue that a fiction writer's Christianity, or understanding of ultimate reality in terms of humanity's fall and redemption through Jesus Christ , automatically disconnects that writer from "reality" as the modern world defines and experiences it, thus confining that writer's work within a closed system of possibilities and purposes. Yet Catholic writer Flannery O'Connor directly opposes this notion in her prose, creatively demonstrating the scope and comprehensiveness of her vision. Perhaps the modern "horror" that he found most contrary to his faith and vision was his world's belief in the self-sufficiency of the human individual without God. John F. Desmond believes that the motivation behind his work was "rooted in fact that the era speciously believed in its own ability to achieve completeness by excluding the divine, a situation it found truly grotesque" (53). While this general human tendency to rely on oneself rather than God as the source of truth and fulfillment in life is hardly a modern development, O'Connor perceptively identifies and contrasts the particular "shapes and colors" in which this ancient mistake appears in his modern world. Through many of his cultured (or "philosophically sophisticated") characters, O'Connor effectively exposes the limited "field of vision" of his world and seeks to open our eyes to an all-encompassing reality: the boundless mystery and possibilities of God's grace. .Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay THEORY OF THE CHRISTIAN WRITER "Connor sought, in his personal belief system and his fiction, a complete worldview that did not separate the reality of human experience and knowledge from abstract or spiritual truth. In his essay “The Nature and Aim of Fiction,” recognizes that this Manichaean separation of “spirit and matter” is “practically the modern spirit” (68). He complains of critics who approach his stories only as statements of abstract truth and forget that “the whole story is the meaning, because it is an experience, not an abstraction” (73). Furthermore, he believed that the Church had also focused too long on the abstract at the expense of the imagination: Christian writers, therefore, "they will seek to enclose the mystery without the fact, and a further series of separations will follow which are inimical to art. Judgment will be separated from vision; reason from imagination" ("The Catholic Novelist in the Protestant South " 864). As a result, O'Connor saw a unique and important vision for his fiction: he called it "an incarnational art" ("The Nature and Aim of Fiction" 68) – an apt description for his work that certainly firmly embodies the truths spiritual in the world of cinema. "flesh" of a visible, tangible and often grotesque reality. O'Connor uses many of her characters to show how the modern mind is guilty of the "separations" she mentions, particularly the separation of "reason from imagination," or what I also call the separation of head from heart. Firmly believing in the need to convince his readers "through the senses" ("The Nature and Aim of Fiction" 67), O'Connor reveals the inconsistencies and ineffectiveness of such worldly philosophies often through entirely "natural" means. Bring these proud, intellectual characters to confront real, undeniable evidence of invincible evil or unfathomable love to expose their true blindness and helplessness. Critic Carter W. Martin divides O'Connor's atheists into several groups, one of which includes those who "reject Christianity on the basis ofexistentialist philosophy that leads them to believe only in nothing" (55). I include Joy-Hulga from “Good Country People” and Hazel Motes from Wise Blood in this group, and I would also add Julian from “Everything that RisesMust Converge,” Asbury from “The Enduring Chill,” and Thomas from “The Comforts of Home.” There is a certain danger in stereotyping O'Connor's characters; O'Connor herself, I believe, would have objected to removing characters outside of their unique experiences within a story and placing them under an abstract label. Neither all intellectuals nor all worldly philosophies are the same. These characters (mentioned above) are true to life; O'Connor "embodies" various deviations from God's truth into the complex realities of human experience. He does so, however, to identify shared philosophical errors and practical ineffectiveness and to reveal the limitless powers of his broader vision of reality. JOY-HULGA Joy-Hulga is perhaps one of O'Connor's most famous intellectuals, and this moment where someone with such a proud and tough exterior is brought to a state of complete vulnerability and helplessness is probably one of her funniest scenes. With her PhD in philosophy, Joy-Hulga seems confident and comfortable in her nihilistic beliefs: "'some of us have taken off our blindfolds and see that there is nothing to see. It's a kind of salvation'" (280), he tells Manley Pointer. O'Connor skillfully uses Joy-Hulga's mind, however, to give the reader a more realistic view of her. It seems that her education has brought her no practical benefit: she is lazy, unpleasant, and has an exaggerated view of her own intellectual significance. He sees philosophical meaning in the trivial or irrelevant: he regards the name “Hulga,” for example, as “the name of her highest creative act” (267). She also reads a philosophical meaning into her first conversation with the Bible salesman and pretends that their arranged meeting has "profound implications in it" (275). He imagines bringing him out of his innocence into a “deeper understanding of life” (276). Ironically, he is the one who ultimately gives Joy-Hulga this opportunity. This moment comes as Joy-Hulga gradually makes herself more and more vulnerable to Pointer. Of course, the humor lies in the fact that Joy-Hulga, who prides herself on her knowledge and intellectual abilities, is completely fooled by a calculating con man who thinks she is the face of "true innocence" (281) and has "an instinct that came from beyond wisdom" (281). Joy-Hulga, of course, is not whole; his physical imperfection is the symbol of a spiritual handicap. He remedied his physical handicap with the artificial leg, as artificial and clumsy as the intellectual "leg" that he uses to compensate for his paralyzed soul. His intellectual "self-sufficiency" became a false "wooden" shell of protection against the exposure of his childish heart and weak soul: "He cared for it as another would his soul, in private and almost with her own eyes turned away" (281). Because Joy-Hulga's mind is not as strong as she thinks, and because her soul still has a longing for love that her worldly philosophy has not satisfied, Pointer is able to trick her into believing that exposing her leg "was like lose it." own life and finding it, miraculously, in his" (281). At this point, however, he doesn't know how prophetic, in a spiritual sense, his thoughts will prove to be. Just as she is left in a completely helpless situation when Manley Pointer steals her wooden leg, she also becomes more vulnerable (or open) to receiving grace when evil strips her “leg” of pride and intellect to leave a naked and helpless soul. In this moment when absolute evil confronts the soul, all independence and strengthintellectual find themselves lacking or useless: "Without his leg he felt completely dependent on him. His brain seemed to have stopped thinking altogether and devoted itself to some other function that he is not very good at" (282). O'Connor emphasizes the weakness and vulnerability of human powers, physical or mental, in the face of real-life difficulties and evils. Having brought her character to this condition, O'Connor typically leaves her with only two options: accept or reject the available pardon. HAZELI It's the same dilemma that Hazel Motes in Wise Blood tries to escape. Although her education is not mentioned in the novel, Hazel is clearly seeking a "philosophical" path as an escape; he wants to believe that he does not have "the impulse of Jesus in his voice" (27), as Hawks correctly understands of him. With every effort to prove this to be true, however, he encounters contradictions or circumstances that he cannot control. In his attempt to escape from this truth (and to deny that any truth exists), he only shows that he is actually still searching for some kind of truth. This is the absurdity and self-contradiction of nihilism that O'Connor seeks to demonstrate; he believes that people who try to "convert to nothingness instead of evil" (12) are only deceiving themselves. The novel thus traces Hazel's attempted escape from this truth and his encounters with numerous obstacles that ultimately block his every path and leave him, like Hulga, to face his own true helplessness. Hazel tries to proclaim (through her words and actions) that there is no such thing as sin. He knows that recognizing the forces of good and evil therefore means recognizing God and would mean that he must make a conscious choice between the two. As he tries to deny sin, however, he ultimately realizes that this is useless if sin doesn't exist in the first place: "I don't have to run from anything because I don't believe in anything" (43). But this awareness does not cure his sense of guilt. He ultimately has to resort to killing Onnie Jay Holy's false prophet, Solace Layfield, Hazel's "conscience" as he is a reflection of Hazel's hypocritical life. He is as incapable of denying sin as he is in his desire for Jesus or salvation. He cannot help his interest in Hawks, for example, and finds himself preaching the need for a "new Jesus": "'What you need is something to take Jesus' place'" (80). Evidently "nothing" is not enough. Her rejection of the mummy that Enoch offers as the “new Jesus” is another moment of truth for Hazel. As much as he tries to run away from him, Christ is still a dominant force in his life and actions. Even his Church without Christ is a comic irony. If Jesus is just a man and so insignificant, why specify his absence from the church? By denying it, Hazel is actually asserting her importance. It is also ironic in this sense: it shows that while he denies Christ he simultaneously affirms a new truth, a new religion. This is, of course, contrary to what he says he wants to do: believe in nothing. Yet Hazel is determined to convince everyone that she is not a preacher of Christ, but she cannot help but be a preacher of something (even if that something is "nothing"). He's still trying to get some sort of salvation. Once again, O'Connor seeks to target the logical incoherence of nihilism. Since he had previously chosen to ignore the contradictions of his new truth—that he would "forget it, that it wasn't important" (69)—he seems to become increasingly irrational. O'Connor comments that nihilism and other human philosophies do not make Jesus irrelevant or erase humans' need for him; they simply try to replace it with something else. The destruction of Hazel's car, his "faithful" means of escape, is the final obstacle preventing him from escaping the truth. ANDthrough this gradual process of truly reducing his nihilistic beliefs to "nothingness" that his nihilism, as O'Connor writes in a letter, begins to bring him "back to the fact of his Redemption" (923). Suddenly, with all hope gone, "his face seemed to reflect the entire distance across the clearing and beyond, the entire distance that stretched from his eyes to the empty gray sky that stretched, depth after depth, into space " (118) . His eyes are open to a reality greater than himself: "Hazel's vision is his first and last. He is, in effect, all-inclusive; having seen it, he has nothing left to see" (Bumbach 342). When he receives this vision of grace, he dedicates his life only to paying the debt of his redemption. JULIANJulian may seem like a completely different kind of person than Hazel, but her basic problem is the same: she believes in her own self-sufficiency. Even though he thinks he can appreciate his Southern heritage better than his naïve and thoughtless mother, he can only appreciate it with his mind, not his heart: "'True culture is in the mind, the mind'" (489), he tells her, Julian thinks he has escaped the prejudices and narrow-mindedness of his upbringing and is "instead of being blinded by love for her [his mother". ] as it was for him, he was "emotionally freed from her and could see her with complete objectivity" (492). This is ironic in light of the ending, in which he discovers that he truly loves her. Given his lack of "mind" and Julian's lack of "heart", I think O'Connor's suggestion is that the truth is somewhere between the two. Perhaps this is also part of the meaning of the title "Everything that arises must converge": the story is gradually working towards a convergence of heart and mind. Julian, like Hulga, is educated but is still supported by his mother. He is intelligent, but "too intelligent to succeed" (491). He, like his mother, has an escape from the unpleasant realities around him. She continues to live in the "heart" of her past, but he retreats into the "mental bubble" (491) of his own mind: "From it he could see and judge, but in it he was safe from any kind of penetration by without” (491). This is a further criticism from O'Connor that intellectuals often divorce themselves from real life to diagnose the problems of the world without ever participating in the active correction of those problems I realize that Julian is right: the world of the past is gone, and she is a stranger in the current one. It is a moment in which her heart, which is good but without the guidance of her mind, converges with Julian's mind to bring her to a moment of truth. Julian's mind, which functions well enough but has been separated from his heart, will have to converge with his mother's heart. In the panicked moments when he realizes that his mother is having a stroke, his love for her seems to return running. This moment of convergence for both leads to true self-understanding and exposes all ignorance and pride. For her mother it seems to be a reality she cannot face; he wants to escape him into the familiarity of his home and his old nurse, Caroline. For Julian it means "his entry into the world of guilt and pain" (500). ASBURYAsbury is another proud and unsuccessful intellectual who will enter this same world of guilt and pain, albeit through an entirely different kind of experience. If he can be given a specific philosophical label, he seems to be more of an existentialist than a nihilist. While Julian takes pride in the fact that (in his opinion) he has overcome his stifling upbringing, Asbury believes that his artistic and imaginative capacity has been ruined: "I have no imagination. I have no talent. I can't create. I have nothing but the desire for these things.Why didn't you kill that too?'" (554), he writes in a letter to his mother. It is true that he has this desire, but blaming his upbringing for his inability to find a way to satisfy this desire is only one way to escape responsibility. He evidently uses Kafka as inspiration for the letter to his mother (554), and indeed its contents sound "Kafkaesque" by trying to turn his death into something as tragic and heroic as Kafka's he morbidly enjoys the thought of everyone realizing this after his passing. He views this death as a "victory" and "his greatest triumph" (560). of his being knows to be true. He was now tormented by the thought of his useless life. His solution to this feeling, however, is himself: seeks "some last significant culminating experience which he must have for himself before he dies---do for himself with his own intelligence" (568). Of course, this is impossible, and he only becomes more frustrated at not being able to create this meaning for himself. In this sense he is artistically "paralyzed". He realizes that “there would be no meaningful experience before he died” (570). Even his last hope that his death will be this "meaningful experience" is dashed when he learns that he only has "undulating fever" from drinking the raw milk and that he would not die. Although he had hoped to leave his mother with "a lasting chill" (555), ironically, in the end, he is the one left with the lasting "ice" (572). Like the undulating fever, it will keep coming back but it won't kill him. THOMAST Thomas, in "The Comforts of Home," is more comparable to Julian; he also seems pleased with himself in his "mental bubble". He tries to ignore his natural inclinations towards love and pity, but cannot escape them entirely. For example, he admits that he loved his mother "because it was in his nature to do so, but there were times when he couldn't stand her love for him. There were times when it became nothing more than pure idiotic mystery and he felt in him the forces, invisible currents entirely beyond his control" (575). He is unable to understand his mother's love for him and Sarah Ham because love is not something that can be fully understood by the only faculty he pays attention to: his mind. O'Connor acknowledges that humans have been given both reason and the capacity to love, but clearly suggests that people like Thomas are wasting both faculties: "Thomas had inherited his father's reason without his ruthlessness and love of his mother without her tendency to pursue him. The plan for any practical action was to wait and see what developed" (577). Sarah Ham forces an internal conflict between Thomas' heart and mind. Sarah Ham's literal intrusion into his home mirrors the intrusion of moral and intellectual dilemma that she introduces into Thomas' previously well-fortified and comfortable "mental bubble." He is no longer protected by the “comforts of home” or the clear boundaries and order of his rationalistic approach to life. His mother's "irrational" love for Sarah brings this contradiction directly into his face. Sarah Ham, as the undeserving object of her mother's compassion, is beyond her "analytical capabilities." He believes that if it were not for Sarah, he might have continued to ignore or rationalize both the evil in the world and his mother's love: "The bang [of the gun] was like a sound meant to put an end to the evil in the world." . Tommaso heard it as a sound that would break the whores' laughter until all the screaming had stopped and there was nothing left todisturb the peace of perfect order" (593). But following his father's evil mind, he silenced not the "laughter of sluts" but the loving heartbeat of his mother. Through his final act of sacrifice - the maxim "irrationality" in Thomas' worldview - his mother forever disturbs the "peace of perfect order" that he thought existed in the world and in his mind As Jesus does with the misfit in "A Good Man is Hard to Find." , she "upsets the balance" of Thomas's life and, like that of Christ, her sacrifice brings divine grace to an earthly and corrupt reality. Two other important intellectuals in O' Connor's works, Rayber of The Violent Bear It Away and Sheppard from "The Lame Shall Enter First", are very similar to each other but are quite different from the other characters examined so far. Martin places them in his group that rejects Christianity «as a dangerous myth that interferes with adaptation psychological and social aspects of the individual" (55). They are differentHulga, for example, who is content not to believe in anything. They are different from Asbury, who is desperate for meaning other than “nothing.” They are different from Thomas, who wants to remain isolated from the problems of the world. Rayber and Sheppard believe strongly in their own minds and in the "saving" power of human knowledge for all humanity. Once again, O'Connor argues against this philosophy, not through abstract arguments, but "through the senses," through dramatic confrontations with the very real but "irrational" parts of human experience. Rayber's problem is that he nevertheless persists in believing that he can, through his efforts, overcome this "madness" in himself and in Tarwater: "'It's the way I chose for myself. It's the way you take as a result of rebirth naturally --- through your own efforts” (451) Although Rayber realizes that Tarwater's problem is "a compulsion" beyond reason (421) and that his love for Bishop comes from an uncontrollable source, he still believes he can make Tarwater "become his savior" (375) and that he can control himself "by sheer force of will" (376). you think you are reasonable, this thought is in fact completely unreasonable. His failure to reform Tarwater, and the reminders, time and time again, that Tarwater's "affliction" is not something responsive to reason do not free Rayber from his beliefs. Like Hazel, when his philosophy collapses before his eyes, he ultimately must resort to even greater irrationality to protect his "rational" beliefs. The result, as O'Connor demonstrates, is a kind of "numbness" or ineffectiveness of both mind and emotion: "he should resist feeling anything, thinking anything. It should anesthetize his life" (443). Even after it seems like all his efforts have failed, Rayber comes up with one last plan to "save" Tarwater: "It was to bring him back to Powderhead and make him face what he had done... His fears and irrational impulses would explode and his uncle, understanding, knowledgeable, capable of understanding in a unique way, he would have been there to explain them to her" (423). Once there, he continues to "preach" that Tarwater must be "saved" and that he is the only one who can truly save him. O'Connor's description of him at this point---that he "seemed like a fanatical country preacher" (438)---suggests that Rayber is not eliminating all religion but instead creating a new one. Rayber never expects that returning to Powderhead would have the effect on him that it has: he is overcome by a "dreaded sense of loss" (445). Whenever the old, uncontrollable "madness" within him threatens to rise to the surface, he pushes it away with his mind and continues to plan to solve Tarwater's "problem". Themoment when he realizes that his failure is complete – that Tarwater not only baptized but also drowned Bishop – may be his moment of grace. It's the equivalent of Hazel losing her car, but unlike Hazel, Rayber turns down her opportunity. He truly "anesthetized" himself before the vision and grace that could have been his: "He was waiting for the violent pain, the intolerable hurt that was due to him, to begin, so that he could ignore it, but he still felt nothing" (456). SHEPPARD Sheppard's similarities to Rayber are clear: his faith in the mind, his "enlightenment" optimism, and his equally unsuccessful attempts to reform a troubled young man. His final choice, however, is acceptance instead of rejection. The story becomes a conflict between Sheppard's desire to have Johnson "make the most of your intelligence" (600) and Johnson's insistence that Satan "has me in his power" (600). Sheppard has great faith in the human mind and scientific knowledge: “He wanted [Johnson] to see the universe, to see that its darkest parts could be penetrated” (601). This knowledge, therefore, is the answer to "evil" and is destined to improve the human condition: "Where there was intelligence, everything was possible" (601). Norton, although less intelligent than his father, clearly has more heart Faced with Norton's desire to believe that his mother is in heaven (which is his heart's natural response), Sheppard can only make a noble comparison between the man who reached the moon and "'the first fish that crawled out' from water to earth billions and billions of years ago" (612-13) is demonstrating the inability of the mind to satisfy the needs of the heart, or the inability of man's knowledge to satisfy the natural desire and need of God of the heart. This is also the ultimate reason why Sheppard fails Johnson. Johnson believes what Sheppard does not: "'No one can save me but Jesus'" (624). . However, he encounters the same problems as Rayber. Despite his exposure of the world's knowledge to Johnson, Johnson returns to his "old ignorance" (601) and the life of crime and poverty. It becomes clear that reforming Johnson is actually protecting the " security" of Sheppard's beliefs: "Secretly, Johnson was learning what he wanted him to learn: that his benefactor was impervious to insults, and that they existed. no chink in his armor of kindness and patience where a successful rod could be planted" (611). Of course, there is a chink in the armor of his "philosophy," and his failure with Johnson is the "tree" which is driven home and causes him to fall completely to pieces. Defeat, however, has not yet brought Sheppard to the point of admitting his mistakes and accepting the truth. He still mocks the Bible and Christianity, saying, “'It's for the cowards, the people who are afraid to stand up and figure things out for themselves'" (627). Of course, his efforts to figure things out for himself have failed. Johnson has to run away and purposely get caught by the police because this penetrates Sheppard's stubborn mind: "'show that big tin Jesus" (630). Johnson is right: even if Sheppard does not say he is God, he has replaced God with himself. This crisis for Sheppard slowly makes him understand the falsehood that he told himself: that he acted altruistically. As these lies "echoed in his mind, each syllable a dull thud" (632), he hears Johnson's judgment more clearly: "'Satan has you in his power'" (631). This revelation leads to true self-knowledge: “the image of himself withered until all was black before him” (632). Unlike Rayber, who rejects his vision and does not, 1961. 63-86.