Wiseblood by Flannery O

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Wiseblood by Flannery OConnor
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Overview

• Genre Comedy
• Irony
• HyperbolegtGrotesque
• Symbol
• Theme
• Allusion

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Comedy

• All comic novels that are any good must be about
  matters of life and death
• Two visions of integrity authors and popular
  cultures
• Free will does not mean one will but many wills
  conflicting in one man.
• Freedom cannot be conceived of simply.
• It is a mystery and one which a comic novel can
  only be asked to deepen.

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Mystery Versus Problem

• Opening into Awe, catharsis
• cf. Role of Greek Theater
• not something to be solved

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Irony

• Jesus would have him in the end.
• the way to avoid Jesus was to avoid sin.

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Symbols The Automobile (recall Faustuss
ambitions)

• The Essex (Death in Life, Pulpit, escape)
• No body with a good car needs to be justified.
  113
• This is a good car.I knew when I first saw it
  that it was the car for me, and since Ive had
  it, Ive had a place to be that I can always get
  away in. 115
• I told you this car would get me anywhere I
  wanted to go 127
• Irony and truth and many wills escape itself as
  symbol (false) of freedom

• The Preachers hatgrandfather and Hazes past
• That Jesus Seeing Hat (60) take of that hat ,
  king of the beasts and she sent it flying across
  the room into the dark. 170
• Woman in Casket sin/death (cf women in
  Faustus--Nan Spit/Helen)

• I dont have to run from anything because I dont
  believe in anything.
• Wiseblood(irrational, intuitive)
• Blindness-false and true (paradox) He preached
  on the blindness of Paul114

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Names and characterizations

• Sabbath Lily Hawks (bird imageryHaze is describe
  with a nose like a shrikes)
• Mary Brittlepopular philosophy/advice
• Read some books on Ethical culture. 119
• Im adjusted okay to the modern world. 120
• Worst thing you could possibly bethink about it

• It was plain that she was so well adjusted that
  she didnt have to think any more. 60
• Trip to the whore house, 147
• You aint true. 155

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Truth The Role of The Double--externalize
internal conflict

• MODERNISM
• No truth behind all truths is what I and this
  church preach! Where you come from is gone, where
  you thought you were going to never was there,
  and where you are is no good unless you can get
  away from it. Where is there a place for you to
  be? No place.

• Your conscience is a trick cf. Kants proof
• It dont exist and if you think it does, you had
  best get it out in the open and hunt it down and
  kill it, because its no more than your face in
  the mirror is or your shadow behind you. 166 cf.
  The True Prophet

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Action as SymbolConversion

• ...Snatched the shriveled body and threw it
  against the wall. The head popped and trash
  inside sprayed out in a little cloud of
  dust.Ive seen the only truth there is!
• To some other city, I got a car to get there in,
  I got.it sounded like a little yell for help at
  the bottom of the canyon. 189

• What does the new jesus do for Enoch in return
  for his services?
• No gorilla in existence, whether in the jungles
  of Africa or California, or in New York City was
  happier at that moment than this one, whose god
  had finally rewarded it. 198

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Metanoia an outward manifestation

• Does ones integrity ever lie in what he is not
  able to do?

• You aint true you believe in jesus.
• Take off that suit
• Cf gorilla suit/Enoch as Intuition/ pushing Haze
  along
• Essex runs over him
• Jesus hep me.

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Metanoia?folks, I really mean this and so does
OConnor Haze stops running

• Haze stood for a few minutes, looking over at the
  scene. His face seemed to reflect the entire
  distance across the clearing and on beyond, the
  entire distance that extended from his eyes to
  the blank gray sky that went on, depth after
  depth, into space. His knees bent under him and
  he sat down on the edge of the embankment with
  his feet hanging over.
• The patrolman. . . . leaned on down with his
  hands on his knees and said in an anxious voice,
  "Was you going anywheres?"
• "No," Haze said (107-8)

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Why such problems?

• Cadmus preserve family name
• Faustus wont repent and chooses to suffer
  eternal torment because he fears bodily pain
• Can contemporary students take seriously the
  issue of Sacred Versus the Profane?
• Or understand that some literature does?

• LK ch 8 His disciples asked him what this
  parable meant. 10He said, The knowledge of the
  secrets of the kingdom of God has been given to
  you, but to others I speak in parables, so that,
  though seeing, they may not see       though
  hearing, they may not understand.
• If you yourself would become the parable

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Irony parallels

• Followed by blinding self. (paradox, irony of
  symbol)
• Tiresisas, Saul/Paul
• To her the blind man had a look of seeing
  something 214

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Apollonian rationalism control

• She thought of her own head as a switchbox where
  she controlled from (Apollonian)

but with him , she could only imagine the outside
in, the whole black world in his head and his
head bigger than the world, his head big enough
to include the sky, planets and whatever was or
had been or would be. How would he know if he
was going backwards or forwards or if he was
going along with it? (Dionysian)
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Recall C.S. Lewis the problem of Will

• For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had
  been how to conform the soul to reality, and the
  solution had been knowledge, self-discipline and
  virtue.
• For magic and applied science alike the problem
  is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men.
• Recall The God I serve is mine own appetite
  what of the mind of man limits of human vision

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Perspectives on ConversionIrony

• Im as good, Mr. Motes,not believing in Jesus
  as a many a one that does.
• Youre better, he said, If you believed in
  Jesus you wouldnt be so good.
• He had never paid her a compliment before!

• If theres no bottom to your eyes, they hold
  more.
• I want to go on where Im going. 230

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Irony of conversions Simile

• She imagined it was like you were walking in a
  tunnel and all you could see was a pin point of
  light. She had to imagine the pin point of
  light she couldnt think of it all without that.
  why? She saw it as some kind of star, like the
  star on Christmas cards. She saw him going
  backwards to Bethlehem and had to laugh.

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Become the parable!

• She felt as if she were blocked at the entrance
  of something. She sat staring with her eyes
  shut, into his eyes, and felt as if she had
  finally got to the beginning of something she
  couldnt begin, and saw him moving farther and
  farther into the darkness until he was a pin
  point of light. 232

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Comparisons tragedy Vs comedy

• Elements of Tragedy
• Empathy
• Catastrophe
• Marlows response
• The tale to tell
• Triumph of the individual will leads to the
  horror, the horror
• Consumer society

• Elements of Comedy
• Distance
• Harmony
• Mrs. Flood response
• The start of something
• Secular defeat is Spiritual Victory
• Consumer Society

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