St. Julian the Hospitaller

   

     Julian Chestny claims multiple times throughout “Everything That Rises Must Converge” that he wants to teach his mother a lesson. By the end of the second to last page of this story, it can be argued that Julian’s goal is achieved, his mother definitely learns a lesson regarding racism. But can it also be argued that within the lesson that was taught to his mother, Julian learned a lesson himself? 

While in his headspace, Julian sits and daydreams about all of the possible lessons he could teach his mother, and the perfect lesson begins to unfold right before his eyes. A black man steps onto the bus and sits leaving an empty seat next to him. This allows Julian to implement his plan. Julian immediately invokes anger and frustration within his mother as he seats himself next to the black man. Her anger only accumulates as a black woman joins the party on the bus. As Julian lays his eyes upon the hideous green and purple hat, he grins knowing that his mother is about to learn the most valuable lesson. To his dismay, Julian quickly realizes that the lesson had, “rolled off [Mrs. Chestny] like rain on a roof” (O’Connor 417) due to her own conceit. Julian, disappointed by the failure of the perfect plan, saw a second lesson present itself. As the next series of events unfolded, and Mrs. Turpin ended up with her butt knocked onto the pavement, Julian becomes satisfied. He gloated as his mother lie in shock:

I hope this teaches you a lesson…That was the whole color race which will no longer take your condescending pennies. That was your black double. She can wear the same hat as you…and to be sure, it looked better on her than it did on you. What all this means, is that the old world is gone. The old manners are obsolete, and your graciousness is not worth a damn…You are not who you think you are. (O’Connor 419)

Julian feels power and superiority as he stands above his mother and gloats about her final realization. This feeling of being invincible quickly dissipates as Julian watches his mother slowly die of a stroke. This marks the turning point of when the lesson is being shifted onto Julian. Up until this point, Julian has felt nothing but indignation for and dominance over his mother because he believes he has made himself better than her. This ultimately switches as he helplessly yelps out for someone to come and save his mother lying on the sidewalk. Julian slowly understands the lesson he has been taught as he entered, “into the world of guilt and sorrow” (O’Connor 420) after witnessing and causing his mother’s death.

        

        The significance of Julian ultimately being the one who learns the lesson in this story was O’Connor’s intent. As author David Jauss discusses in his journal article, Julian is the character that is intended to learn a lesson because of the significance of his name. Like most of O’Connor’s work, blatant and hidden ties to Christianity can be found, and Julian’s name is one of those. Julian The Hospitaller is a saint in Roman Catholicism, and like O’Connor’s Julian, he also kills his mother. Aside from both of these Julian’s slaying their mothers, O’Connor creates many parallels between the two. Jauss argues that O’Connor flips the original story of Julian the Hospitaller to fit the situation of her own Julian. O’Connor’s Julian is first the hospitaller as he assists his mother to and from the YMCA each Wednesday, and then he kills his mother. In Julian the Hospitaller’s story, he first kills his parents, and then he becomes a guide that assists people across a river in order to redeem himself. Jauss says O’Connor does this to show that Julian does not rise like his counterpart, “[he] fails to rise because he refuses to ‘converge’ with his mother as St. Julian converged with the leper. He fails to recognize Christ in his mother…discriminating against her in a crueler way then she…discriminates against blacks” (77). Even though it seems as though Mrs. Chestny is the intended villain who needs to learn a lesson, O’Connor sneakily places the lesson on the person we as readers are least likely to suspect is the counterpart to a saint. O’Connor utilizes the parallels between the Julian’s to show how simply one can redeem or fail to redeem oneself.  

Sources: 

Jauss, David. "Flannery O'Connor's Inverted Saint's Legend." Studies in Short Fiction, vol. 25, no. 1, 1988, pp. 76-78.

JJO'Connor, Flannery. "Everything That Rises Must Converge." The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor. Frarar, Straus, and Giroux, 1971, pp. 405-420

Self-Punishment

    

    At the beginning of the film, we see a young Hazel Motes in a flashback being absolutely terrorized by his preacher grandfather. The entire scene is odd. Hazel is in what looks like a large circus tent with dark creepy lighting, coffins, and sounds of his grandfather spitting hellfire and brimstone, yet there is still something else that leaves me pondering. In this flashback, young Hazel is standing on rocky dirt ground, and eventually we see him pick up this rocky ground and put it in each of his shoes. While this is merely a dreamlike flashback, this is not the only time we see Hazel do this in the Wise Blood film. Towards the end of the film when Hazel’s landlady is taking care of him, she picks up his shoes and notices they are quite heavy. As she feels their weight, she realizes there is something in them and dumps the contents onto the ground. To her surprise, she finds rocks and dirt in Hazel’s shoes. This left me wondering, what makes Hazel want to put rocks in his shoes?

            In class we discussed the idea that Hazel puts the rocks in his shoes in a way to punish himself. Not only do we see self-punishment with the rocks, but also with the barbed wire wrapped around his torso and his self-inflicted blindness. While I do agree that this was no doubt a way for Hazel to punish himself for the sins that he has committed, I wonder, why did he punish himself to that extent? As Brian Ingraffia mentioned in his journal article, “If Jesus Existed, I Wouldn’t Be Clean: Self Torture in Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood,” he discusses the idea that Hazel punishes himself in this way to show that he has finally been converted to Christianity. Ingraffia, as well as other critics, see Hazel’s acts of self-punishment as a sort of penance, even though they are extremely brutal and painful. After reading this article discussing Hazel’s self-punishment, it then left me asking, could he have repented in a less severe way?

            Catholics and protestants have been repenting in ways far less painful than blinding oneself and walking on rock shards, so why does Hazel Motes face his penance in this way?

Could he not simply confessed to the sins he has committed like most Christians do now? What Ingraffia and other critics have argued while trying to answer this question is that Hazel could not simply confess because thus far in his life that is not the kind of Christianity he has been taught. From the time Hazel was a young boy, he was only taught Christianity to its extreme. His grandfather instilled a version of God in Hazel’s mind that inflicted fear in him to the extent that he would pee himself. Because of this, Hazel only knows religion by its extremes. To him, the punishment of being blind, putting rocks in his shoes, and wrapping himself in barbed wire is perfectly just. Hazel was taught the extreme hellfire and brimstone version of God which carried over into every aspect of his life. Because he was taught this extreme version of Christianity, in his journey away from it, Hazel felt he needed to sin in the most extreme way. He sleeps with a prostitute, creates a religion without Christ, and even murders a man. These extreme acts of sin then lead to his extreme acts of penance. To Hazel though, this is all fitting because “his life of penance ‘is as grotesque in his embrace of God as his life of flight from God had been” (Ingraffia 79). To you and me these acts of penance make us wince and scratch our heads, but to Hazel they make perfect sense. Hazel knows no other way of being a good Christian than to devout his whole life to every extreme. 

Source: Ingraffia, Brian. “‘If Jesus Existed I Wouldn’t Be Clean’: Self-Torture in Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood.” Flannery O'Connor Review, vol. 7, 2009, pp. 78–86. 

Was O'Connor a Recovering Racist?

           

     In Flannery O’Connor’s story “Revelation,” we are introduced to another one of her infuriating and judgmental characters, Mrs. Turpin. Though in this story Mrs. Turpin makes many remarks that are very telling of her self-righteous personality, one of the comments she made that really stood out to me was her reference to what black people really want to do, “improve their color” (O’Connor 496). While in the waiting room, the woman Mrs. Turpin refers to as white-trash makes a comment saying she wishes all black people would return to Africa because that is what they want to do. Mrs. Turpin in return disagrees and says, “Nooo, they’re going to stay here where they can go to New York and marry white folks and improve their color. That’s what they all want to do, every one of them, improve their color” (O’Connor 496). Considering Mrs. Turpin’s view on class ranking, this comment aligns perfectly with her beliefs. She believes for a black person to better themselves; they need to marry a white person and create what her husband Claud calls, “white-faced _______” (O’Connor 496). 

    

        What I found interesting about this comment is that in other pieces of literature written and taken place during this time period, interracial couples were completely unthought of and extremely controversial. Up until the Supreme Court Case Loving vs. Virginia in 1967, interracial marriage was outlawed. Knowing this, it was very surprising to me that interracial marriage was even considered by someone as judgmental as the character Mrs. Turpin. This then led me to think about the discussion we had about O’Connor’s true intentions when writing about race. Though this particular story is very racially charged, the fact that Mrs. Turpin is not completely disgusted by the concept of interracial marriage leaves me to question O’Connor’s intent yet again. 

 

             As we discussed in class, many critics and everyday readers of O’Connor’s work have a difficult time deciding whether or not she was racist, standing up against racism, or merely a product of her own time. I too am someone who has become especially torn over O’Connor’s stance on race. From the personal letters that have been released, or the stories like “Revelation”, it can be easy for one to decide that O’Connor was racist. However, through her character Mrs. Turpin, I have to think that maybe her stance on race was a lot more complex than what we understand. As Angela Alaimo O’Donnell suggests in her book, Radical Ambivalence: Race in Flannery O’Connor, maybe O’Connor was what she calls, a “recovering racist.” Much like a recovering alcoholic or even recovering catholic, one is traumatized by their experience and though they are trying to get away from it, it still takes up a large part of their lives. Classifying O’Connor as a recovering racist somewhat combines all of the categories many critics of her work try to shove her in. 

            By writing stories such as “Revelation,” O’Connor is not only exposing racism for what it is, but maybe she is also writing to better understand how to overcome it herself. O’Connor uses characters like Mrs. Turpin to expose white southerners who feel as though they are superior to black people, while also purging her own personal thoughts that she knows are racist. Because O’Connor lived in the South where racism ran ramped, she used her writing as a way to help herself and others see just how wrong racism was.  O’Donnell’s term, recovering racist, is something that helps me better understand O’Connor’s work. While though it seems that she uses many of her characters as tools to break down racism, they may also be a tool to help O’Connor cope with and mend her own racist views.