Culture

Francis Marion Tarwater was born in the wreck of the car crash that killed his mother and grandmother and drove his father to suicide. Adopted by Rayber, his school-teacher uncle, baby Francis is oblivious to the devastation he was born into. But crazy great-uncle Tarwater decides he need someone to bury him when he dies, so kidnaps the baby and sets about raising him according to his warped fundamentalist Catholic beliefs, intending him to grow up into a great prophet who will burn all the sin out of the world. The old man and boy live in isolation, thriving on their hatred of women, luxury, schools, technology, Satan, and sex. Rayber comes to try to rescue the boy, and Old Tarwater shoots him in the leg and the ear.

Old Man Tarwater fails in his promise to roll to the door before he dies so that the boy can bury him. He dies at the breakfast table, with his spoon halfway to his mouth. Fourteen-year-old Tarwater starts digging his grave, ten feet deep as specified by the old man. But only a couple of feet down, Tarwater is exhausted. He hears a strangely familiar voice telling him to get drunk and forget the old man. The boy drinks himself asleep and wakes up changed, sets the house on fire with body inside, and sets off to find his uncle Rayber.

So begins the journey of young Tarwater to find his way in life. The boy is pulled between the old man’s religious extremism, his uncle’s secular rationality, and the increasingly influential stranger inside the boy’s head demanding darker things. Rayber is initially delighted to have his nephew back, until he realises that Tarwater is maladjusted, maybe beyond retrieval. He tries to make Tarwater reject his great-uncle’s brainwashing, saying, “he’s warped your whole life. You’re going to grow up to be a freak if you don’t let yourself be helped.” Surely the living man’s influence should be stronger than the dead?

Tarwater’s struggle is bound to the fate of Rayber’s severely mentally handicapped son, Bishop, who looks just like the dead old man. The old man insisted he should baptise the child; the stranger in his head thinks otherwise …

This book is a terrifying Southern-gothic freak-show. Twisted psychology blossoms out of poverty, alienation, bigotry, religion, and violence. None of the characters are particularly likeable – all are deeply flawed and none are particularly sane. I found it disgustingly funny when Tarwater pretends to have cerebral palsy to avoid going to school, and when he has “a hideous vision” of himself sitting for eternity with his great-uncle in heaven, gorged on the loaves and fishes that Jesus promised.

The weirdest thing about this book is that Flannery O’Connor was herself a fundamentalist Catholic, and wrote this as a warning about liberal religious middle-roads. But to the average reader it has to be read as the opposite – a terrifying look into sick minds created by ignorance, blind belief and lack of education and outside stimulus.