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Title: The Violent Bear It Away : A Novel by Flannery O'Connor ISBN: 0-374-50524-1 Publisher: Noonday Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 1960 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.15 (13 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: The virus of religious fanaticism
Comment: It was predicted by Francis Tarwater's great-uncle that young Tarwater would become a prophet and would baptize the son of the great-uncle's other nephew, Rayber. Young Tarwater is orphaned in a car crash and is raised by his great-uncle, a very disturbed Tennesee backwoods religious fanatic. At the great-uncle's death, young Tarwater comes to live with Rayber apparently for the sole purpose of carrying out his mission to baptize Rayber's young, supposedly mentally defective child. Rayber, a school teacher with Hamlet-like indecisiveness, is, nevertheless, adamantly opposed to his nephew's scheme. He instead wants young Tarwater educated and to overcome his ignorant notions. Even though young Tarwater swears that he wants no part of his great-uncle's prophesies, he is nevertheless compelled to carry out his destiny. Interestingly, Rayber suffers from may of the same neurotic compulsions of his nephew, but struggles to hold them in check. Young Tarwater and a very emotionally flawed Rayber are virtually at war for the young child's soul.
Ms. O'Connor freely uses metaphors and symbolism to draw her characters and to embellish her story. She particularly utilizes the elements of nature throughtout this novel: fire, water, earth, air, and often refers to young Tarwater's great "hunger," another elemental force that he cannot seem to satiate. _The Violent Bear It Away_ is very well-written and very frightening in its intensity. Some very disturbing (maybe too disturbing) things occur in this book. It is made perfectly clear that once the virus of religious righteousness infects somebody, there is nothing that person would not do to fulfill his crusade, even if it means trampling on the rights of the innocent.
Rating: 4
Summary: undeniably affecting
Comment: From the days of John the Baptist until now, the Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence, and the
violent bear it away.
-Matthew 11:12
Flannery O'Connor wrote with one of the most distinctive voices in American Literature; a kind of grotesque amalgam of Jonathan Edwards, Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Allen Poe, and William Faulkner. She perceived the world in starkly Manichean terms, as a struggle between the forces of Light and Dark, Good and Evil. The Violent Bear it Away is a psychomachia--literally a battle for the soul--the story of a backwoods Southern boy named Francis Marion Tarwater (see The Violent Bear it Away and The Bible by Angela Lucey for more on this). The boy's great uncle, an Old Testament style patriarch, kidnapped him away from an uncle, George Rayber, and has raised him to be a prophet of God. Upon his great uncle's death, Tarwater rejects the prophetic mission and heads to the city to live with his uncle, who tries to wean the boy away from the teachings of the great uncle. Through a series of increasingly violent actions Tarwater is eventual driven back to the woods and a final acceptance of God and his own role in God's plans.
This is powerful stuff, O'Connor felt that exaggeration and caricature were more likely to reach a modern audience than more subtle styles ever could. Combine that with her vision of violence as a sort of crucible which forces the individual to make a final choice between Good and Evil, and you've got the makings of a truly disturbing fiction. The book will surely not appeal to all tastes, but it is undeniably affecting and thought provoking.
GRADE: B-
Rating: 3
Summary: A Far-fetched Tale
Comment: Many of the themes in this book were just to difficult for me to focus on without stepping back to question whether anything like this could really happen....at least in this way. For instance, the lack of emphasis on the drowing death of Bishop is just hard to understand. What about Tarwater's moral accountability for Bishop's death?? Tarwater was also a heavy drinker....which is not very likely in the time eriod this is writen, especially for his age. It was a good moral message, but i think ia little overdone.
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Title: Wise Blood : A Novel by Flannery O'Connor ISBN: 0374505845 Publisher: Noonday Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 1962 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The Complete Stories by Flannery O'Connor ISBN: 0374515360 Publisher: Noonday Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 1971 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: The Habit of Being : Letters of Flannery O'Connor by Flannery O'Connor, Sally Fitzgerald ISBN: 0374521042 Publisher: Noonday Press Pub. Date: 01 August, 1988 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: Mystery and Manners : Occasional Prose by Flannery O'Connor, Sally Fitzgerald, Robert Fitzgerald ISBN: 0374508046 Publisher: Noonday Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 1969 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O'Connor, Robert Fitzgerald ISBN: 0374504644 Publisher: Noonday Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 1965 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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