Diamond-Bright Darkness – Grappling the Unknown in “The Violent Bear It Away” by Flannery O’Connor

Humans are a religious creature. We create worlds and cosmos and continually seek to answer and explain life, the unknown, the beyond. Whether we use actual religion or science or politics or a cult of personality or anything else, we will use something as our religion – our means by which we organize and systematize our daily lives and being. In The Violent Bear It Away by Flannery O’Connor we see this religious process exercise itself in two opposing forces – the religious zealotry of old Uncle Tarwater and the rational atheist school teacher Rayber. Both men seek to control, convert, possess, and colonize, the mind, body, and being of young Tarwater. Although old Tarwater and Rayber are arch nemesis with each other, they both ultimately behave and treat young Tarwater in similar ways. Old Uncle Tarwater is a self-proclaimed prophet, unschooled and unsuccessful while Rayber is an atheist school teacher that lives in the nearby town in a comfortable home. Though their beliefs and lifestyles are diametrically opposed, their fervor and zeal as well as their conversion methods upon young Tarwater are surprisingly alike. In both instances, each of the men attempt to justify themselves under the guise of caring for the young boy when in actuality both of them are really just using young Tarwater. He is their experiment, their testing lab, to prove once and for all, and most especially to themselves, that what they believe is in fact true and right and good. And of course that the one is the better than the other. The force of good is the real subject of this novel, and the violent results of that force, as well as whatever opinions the novel itself could be attempting to convey, can all be found in what happens to young Tarwater.

Water plays a significant role in this novel, not the least of which can be found in the actual name of the boy and uncle – Tarwater. But it is important to note that the name Tarwater also includes the word “tar” which is something thick, opaque, black, heavy, and slow. The surname Tarwater then, just like the actual characters that carry the name, are complicated and confused. They are infused with polar opposites in their very being and therefore are battling themselves at their core. They are struggling existentially with who they are, of what they are made, and if in fact they are tar or water, dark or clear, good or evil, saved or damned.

Young Tarwater is similar to Hamlet in that he is considering whether or not he should follow through on a task possibly even ordained for him by God. To be or not to be. To do or not to do. It is the classic dilemma of confirming and then executing upon a necessary task. It is an existential crisis of being and doing. Should he baptize Rayber’s special needs child? Is this his calling to fulfill his path of becoming a prophet and follow in the path and teachings that his Uncle Tarwater claimed for him and reared him up to become? Or is there a greater calling for him in the more accepted and rational and intellectual life of the estranged Rayber? This is the existential crisis for young Tarwater. And as he continues to either “wait and see what happens or to make something happen” as he so often states while living with Rayber and his special needs son, young Tarwater himself is cast out upon his own journey of awakening, baptism, burning, purging, and initiation.

Upon their visit to the lake, he first considers using the water to baptize the young boy, then once out on the water, he vomits in the lake, contaminating the water, then he jumps into the lake violently “smashing the glassy lake with his cupped fists as if he would like to make it sting and bleed.” The water is many things for young Tarwater. It is fungible, interchangeable, and malleable. It both literally and metaphorically reflects back whoever and whatever looks into it. For young Tarwater, the water is a reference point of the various dimensions and progressions of his own consciousness throughout the novel. He is whatever he is and the water reflects that back to him constantly.

Without revealing the major events that occur in the story, it is clear that the last quarter of the novel is a criticism and critique of the decisions young Tarwater has made. Much like Hamlet, he finally does act and make a decision. But unlike Hamlet, he does not die immediately thereafter. He lives on, forced to reconcile and suffer further consequences for the actions he has done. Clearly the boy goes through hardship, trauma, pain, and suffering. He pays for what he has done in spades it would seem. But does that mean he did the wrong thing or the right thing? Is suffering and conflict a sign of God or a sign of the devil? What is the relationship between violence, God, and the self?

The novel ends with a powerful twist of fate as young Tarwater finally receives a gift of prophecy in a revelation of literal fire. “The words were as silent as seeds opening one at a time in his blood.” In the world of this story, and perhaps arguably throughout the Bible as well, prophecy is accompanied with violence. It may or may not be associated with violence or itself be violent, but one way or another violence does find its way alongside prophecy and God. In this manner the novel closes with a clear direction and mission for young Tarwater, but even still it is ambiguous, perhaps even pessimistic and dark, as to whether this boy’s mission and ministry is one of goodness let alone holiness. “His singed eyes, black in their deep sockets, seemed already to envision the fate that awaited him, but he moved steadily on.” Young Tarwater appears to have been borne anew into some hybrid symbiosis of both his crazed prophetic Uncle Tarwater as well as his rational and socialized Rayber. The question remains regarding what exactly this symbiosis has created. What exactly is young Tarwater? Who is this young man and what is he actually doing and what motives do in fact drive him forward?

Regardless of the answers to these questions, the novel is extremely well written with beautiful language embedded into a clear and powerful storyline. Time is cyclical throughout the novel as the present shifts into the past and then back again all the while intersecting right through the characters as they attempt to fulfill their dreams, desires, and deep anxieties. Everyone in this novel is flawed and incomplete as well as gifted and perceptive in different respects. Perhaps we are all young Tarwaters in a sense. All of us attempting in our ways to resolve the convictions and precepts we grew up with, all that lives in our past and has shaped whoever we are, with whatever new innovations and revelations and discoveries we may be unraveling and realizing today. Rotating upon the fulcrum of this present moment, we are all twisted and diverse amalgamations, beautiful and terrifying, both the cause and the effect of ourselves and of all those around us.

In the spirit of the classic Modernist Tradition, The Violent Bear It Away emphasizes the near impossibility of ever resolving these discrepancies between time and space with ourselves and those around us. The bitterness of a gap never to be closed, a void never to be bridged. No matter where we go, no matter what we do, we shall always move forward, shouldering on all that we have done, all that has been done upon us. Freedom and Truth, a prophecy from God, are all glinting perhaps momentary flashes of goodness, grace, and beauty in the span of our dark lives. The novel closes with an image that seems to express best this frail and meek prospect, “The moon, riding low above the field beside him, appeared and disappeared, diamond-bright between patches of darkness. Intermittently the boy’s jagged shadow slanted across the road ahead of him as if it cleared a rough path toward his goal.” It is those “patches of darkness” between the moonlight, that cold and empty unknown, where the inventory and stock of faith, courage, and conviction is tried and tested for whatever mettle and worth it may indeed hold. Hopefully it is at least enough for us to walk the “rough path” to whatever lies beyond.