The Crazy Bear It Away

I'm on a teaching high! Today we wrapped up O'Connor's novel The Violent Bear It Away, and I've been pondering the class discussion for the past hour. Most students were actively engaged with the religious dimension of the novel and we had a great discussion about free will and determinism and theology and prophets and Satan. Great stuff. And some students, as usual, are resisting the religious interpretations of the novel, offering alternative interpretations--mostly psychological. This is something that has been going on and that I have encouraged throughout the class, considering O'Connor's essays in which she makes claims about the meaning of her fiction and then questioning whether the meaning is inherent or whether it is conditioned by O'Connor herself. Is it there because she says it's there? Or could it be something else altogether? And what is the point of the novel if they're all just crazy?

Interestingly, O'Connor's letters predict specific "misinterpretations" of her works, and those are the precise interpretations that my students have offered. They are getting it wrong in just the right ways! I have drawn their attention to those letters and reaction has been mixed. But the ones who are seeking non-religious interpretations are sticking to their guns. While some students play "Find the action of Grace" others play "Find the meaning that does not include Jesus." Which is great--I am not resisting that, and such questions are quite relevant to the state of O'Connor scholarship.

So here's what I'm left to ponder: How are these students so confident in non-religious interpretation when the central action of the novel is a baptism and every other word is Jesus, God, Lord, Almighty, Holy Ghost, devil, prophet. It seems that it takes a concerted effort to ignore those words. And if Christian mystery is not central to the meaning, what does it all mean? This is just a particular brand of crazy?

The resistance to religious interpretation up until now--when all we had read were the short stories in A Good Man Is Hard to Find--has been unremarkable because frequently Biblical allusions can be easily overlooked and references to Christ can be attributed to Southern manners. But not in this novel. It is a big job to intentionally avoid religion when the protagonist is called as a prophet and Satan shows up as a character.