 *SPOILERS AHEAD*
Here I am again, ready to attempt puzzling out O'Connor's second and final novel, The Violent Bear It Away. Because I don't wish to drive myself insane analyzing every nook and cranny of this packed story, I'm going to narrow my thoughts down to what I focused on the most during our class discussion concerning the main character's, young Tarwater, inability to eat or keep any food down later in the novel (the citations I use are from my version of the novel in my Library of America copy).I’m fascinated with many aspects of this book’s narrative structure, biblical allusions, and (I cannot stress enough) complex characters, but this physical inability to eat is especially weird and cool to me. I think the first indications of Tarwater’s predicament come with the descriptions of food he eats (or is given) while with Rayber. “[A] breakfast on a tray” is brought up for Tarwater by Rayber consisting of “a bowl of dry cereal and a glass of milk” (O’Connor 393). Tarwater ignores it, and there are more descriptions later on page 430 of the food Rayber offers being unappetizing. Later, when Rayber takes Tarwater and Bishop to an Italian restaurant in the city, Tarwater is described as “a finicky eater, pushing the food around on his plate before he ate it” (403) and generally acting as if he’s being poisoned. He also writes down his estimation of the meal’s cost to make sure he’s not in Rayber’s debt later on. I think it’s this detail, paired with Tarwater’s comparison of Bishop to a hog, that’s the most revealing of what the symbolism connected to food might be. Tarwater rejects earthly food offered to him while simultaneously rejecting the idea of the bread of life the late, old Tarwater pushed on him. A connection between sustenance for the physical body and rejection of sustenance for the spirit seems to lay behind the continued motif of Tarwater’s inability to fully eat or enjoy any of what he manages to consume. The narrative voice tells us that “[t]he city food only weakened him,” that “[s]ince the breakfast he had finished sitting in the presence of his uncle’s corpse, he had not been satisfied by food, and his hunger had become like an insistent silent force inside him…” (430). If Tarwater views the city as a hub of sin and otherness in comparison to the secluded life he led with old Tarwater, it would make sense for him to reject the food offered to him there. But the ever illusive stranger’s insistence that this hunger is not actually the prophetic sign Tarwater’s been waiting for complicates things further. What is this unavoidable ache he’s experiencing if not something from the Lord? Why does Tarwater later throw up his meal at the Cherokee Lodge (partially due to heavy alcohol consumption) and continue to reject any sort of food that crosses his path the closer he gets to his return to Powderhead despite being hungry? All of this could be meant to accentuate the alcohol he accepts from the embodiment of the stranger who picks him up. I’m still haunted by my first reading of this scene beginning on page 468 and the chills I got when I realized what terrible things might befall Tarwater in the presence of the purple-eyed stranger. The fact that this stranger, disembodied and present at all the right times in the beginning of the book, takes on a body and does what he does to this young man has haunted me like my own version of the stranger. Yeesh. I picked up on the attention given to the man’s physical description as well as his offerings of smoke and drink; we see all the way back on page 353 the exchange in which the stranger asks young Tarwater if he smokes. A few pages later, Tarwater is drinking his cares away. This earlier drinking makes me think of the irony of page 467 when Tarwater isn’t even able to buy a drink for his parched throat. The news of how he disrespected his uncle’s wishes had spread to others in the time he was gone. This could textually be read as a manifestation of Tarwater’s poor actions following him like the stranger does. These direct parallels make the significance of young Tarwater accepting the potentially poisoned alcohol all the more stark. The potential symbolism is related to that idea of physical versus spiritual sustenance, especially when Tarwater takes a swig of the drink and says: “It’s better than the Bread of Life!” (471). Tarwater’s fascination with the bread in the window of the city building seems to also bridge the image of actual bread with the religious idea of Jesus’ body, and makes Tarwater’s comment to the sleepy driver who picks him up before the stranger significant: “I ain’t hungry for the bread of life… I’m hungry for something to eat here and now. I threw up my dinner and I didn’t eat no supper” (459). If Tarwater can’t eat food that would satisfy his human hunger, the unshakeable ache of his deeper hunger seems related to his spurning of the bread of life. And the result of accepting the stranger’s alcohol is pretty catastrophic; it leads to a violent attack against Tarwater’s body and Tarwater’s violent attack against the forest around Powderhead with fire. The most curious part of all this is that it’s not like Tarwater runs like Jonah from his prophetic calling—though reluctant, he does go about baptizing Bishop in the twisted and terrible way that he does. The possibility that he failed to act, that it was actually Bishop who baptized Tarwater by climbing onto his back like we discussed in class, feels like a can of worms to open for another time… so I’ll stop that train of thought here. I’ll wrap up all of what I’ve been deliberating here by saying this: young Tarwater’s aversion to eating and being satisfied may still remain a convoluted subject, but a connection between physical sustenance and spiritual sustenance seems at work, especially in relation to the prophetic calling that finds and follows Tarwater throughout the entire book. Summary: I've only scratched the surface of the weird stuff in this book. It be wild. Some of my favorite quotes from The Violent Bear It Away: "He kept himself upright on a very narrow line between madness and emptiness and when the time came for him to lose his balance he intended to lurch toward emptiness and fall on the side of his choice." "It was love without reason, love for something futureless, love that appeared to exist only to be itself, imperious and all demanding, the kind that would cause him to make a fool of himself in an instant." "Its face was like the face she had seen in some medieval paintings where the martyr’s limbs are being sawed off and his expression says he is being deprived of nothing essential." (like are you kidding me? that's a killer line)
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 This series has slowly but surely become one of my favorites, like slowly falling in love with a wonderful thing made up of many wonderful things. I not only stand by my statement that it’s one of the best academic rivals to lovers series I’ve ever read (though undoubtedly there’s more of that trope in the first book), but its narrative style is just so creative and captivating. Emily Wilde herself is already a fascinating character — incredibly intelligent, grumpy dryadologist and Cambridge professor that she is — but reading her misadventures through her journal entries only makes her unique character traits all the more interesting. She has such a calculable brain, dry sense of humor, and impeccable memory. I can’t get enough of her endearingly witty descriptions (ultimately a testament to the skill of author Fawcett!) of dialogue, social interactions, observations of Fae and humans alike, and feelings for Wendell. I was excited to see another instance of Wendell hijacking the journal to leave his own entry, thus giving us his equally witty if not more aloof voice as a character I majorly love. I adore their romance and its importance to the story without being the entire story. At its heart, this series is about Emily’s innate passion for knowing and understanding as much as she can about Faerie, particularly what she can do to help the exiled Irish Fae king she has come to love after years of denial and charming ignorance. I truly have yet to find a book with more exquisite banter than this one. I’ve kicked my feet and giggled on multiple airplanes reading both the first and second installments. Among the beautiful (and often terrifying) descriptions of the Folk and reappearance of sweet little Poe, I liked the small host of new characters we got to meet. Rose, though traditional to a close fault, hypocritical, and a nuisance more than once, had character development I didn’t anticipate on liking as much as I did. I also loved Ariadne’s curiosity and moments of quiet fire — the evolution of her and Emily’s estranged relationship was also something I really enjoyed reading. I think the presently existing books in this series both follow a similar narrative pattern that feels productive more than repetitive: a certain kind of researched quest must be fulfilled, the company of characters travels to said place for what ends up being shenanigans they didn’t but probably should’ve expected, and Emily ends up venturing into depths of Faerie she shouldn’t be able to escape, saving the day in unconventional but admirable ways. I really admire how she possesses the intellect and bravery to get herself out of nearly every situation, acting as the hero and savior for her charmingly superficial lover. The series of events propelling the first book forward bled into this book’s plot very well. I pulled out my pen on one of the last pages and wrote “there better be a third book.” Turning the last page to see the message “The story of Emily Wilde and Wendell Bambleby will continue in Book 3.” brought me no small amount of joy. Now it’s just a matter of waiting, considering I drove to my nearest Barnes and Noble the day this book came out and promptly bought it. Knowing I’ve found a series I anticipate nearly as much as I did ACOTAR makes the wait more than worth it. :)
Some of my favorite quotes from Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands: “There is nothing trivial about good coffee.” “I don’t like to hold his gaze for long; not because I find it intimidating, but because a part of me worries that if I do, I will never wish to look away.” “‘I think you just want to hold hands,’ I muttered, though I did not mind. ‘That wouldn’t be very gentlemanly.’ ‘You aren’t a gentleman.’ ‘In fact, plenty of Folk are gentlemen. And plenty of mortal men are not.’” “‘Is there anything I can do?’ ‘Yes,’ he murmured. ‘Say that you’ll marry me.’ ‘God.’ So he was well enough to tease me, at least—that was some relief.” “‘You made a castle,’ I said faintly. ‘An abomination of a castle.’” “‘If your precious hills and forests unleash their monsters upon me, I shall become the most gruesome of ghosts and haunt you for eternity.’” “‘You will show me,’ I murmured to the cloak. “You will show me all, when you are well again.’ It was both a promise and a prayer.” “Em, I must confess—I am in awe of you. I believe I am also a little frightened.” “How I missed you. ‘It was only a day!’ I can hear you reply. Well, a day is far too long.” “‘I will be with you,’ I said quietly. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’” |
AuthorHey, everyone! I'm a writing and literature student at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, California. When I'm not reading or writing, I'm probably watching movies, surfing, singing, or listening to Tchaikovsky and Laufey. Archives
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