First Encounter with Flannery O’Connor
I first encountered Flannery O’Connor in high school when Wise Blood was assigned reading for my AP English class at the government (public) school I attended. At the time, I was a brand-new Christian, attending an evangelical church, and eagerly searching for biblical themes in everything I read. I regularly harassed my teachers about my faith and had the nickname “Bible Man” my senior year. Since I hadn’t been raised in a Christian home, I often joked that my rebellion was becoming straight-edge and Christian—leading a Christian club on campus, holding weekly meetings, and engaging in “evangelism” as I understood it.
As I read Wise Blood, I was struck by the overt presence of Christian characters, theological questions, and religious imagery. O’Connor’s portrayal of faith in the American South fascinated me, and I found myself bringing up denominational differences allusions to the Bible in the text. The main character’s name Hazel Motes calls back to Christ’s words in St. Matthew’s gospel: “why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye?” I was first skeptical of her Catholic faith, but soon sided with her against the fundamentalists she lampooned.
A Quick Summary of Wise Blood
If you haven’t read it, Wise Blood follows Hazel Motes, a disillusioned veteran who rejects his Christian upbringing and attempts to establish the “Church Without Christ.” His encounters with other characters—such as the blind preacher Asa Hawks—highlight his struggle with faith, free will, and redemption. Despite his efforts to escape belief, Hazel’s journey ultimately reveals the inescapable nature of grace and the cost of spiritual blindness. It ends with a fantastic allusion to the Oedipus story and was also my very first introduction to classical literature.
My teacher, noticing my enthusiasm, asked me to prepare a lesson on Christianity in O’Connor’s work and its connection to Southern culture. Not only did I present it to my class, but she was so impressed with my explanation that she had me give the lesson to the other AP English classes studying Wise Blood as well. I remember giving my 17-year-old version of the history of the Reformation and explaining different denominational perspectives on things like election and predestination.
My First Catholic Teacher
I was deeply skeptical of her Catholic faith, but I was convinced she must be one of the “good Catholics.” How else could she give such a persona and visceral appreciation for the personal relationship that Jesus had for sinners? As I began reading more of her work, her Catholicism bled into my own thinking as I became more and more skeptical of the revivalism in American religion. Her grotesque yet redemptive characters, her unapologetic exploration of grace and judgment, and her ability to depict the shocking nature of divine encounters made her work a type of devotional for me.
She challenges readers to confront the realities of sin, redemption, and the mystery of God’s grace in a fallen world. I was an evangelical in a “John Piper” type or calvinist-lite church where we taught “total depravity” but O’Connor writes total depravity into her characters.
Her work played an important role in my early spiritual formation, teaching me that fiction and literature could be powerful means of theological reflection. To this day, she remains my favorite author, a writer whose works continue to challenge and inspire me as both a Christian and a lover of great storytelling.
Leave a ReplyCancel reply