The River -Flannery O'Connor and Grace and Justification

1987: “If I Baptize you,” the preacher said, “you’ll be able to go to the Kingdom of Christ. You’ll be washed in the river of suffering, son, and you’ll go by the deep river of life. Do you want that?”

Ø  Harry is baptized but does not understand the preacher’s metaphor of the river and later in the story tries to drown himself in order to get to the Kingdom of God and away from his home. The boy shows his faith in rejecting the unfaithful people in his home and trying to reach Christ in the river.

1988: He plunged under once and this time, the waiting current caught him like a long gentle hand and pulled him swiftly forward and down.

Ø  Harry by drowning himself in the accepting river understands his participation in faith as the river will lead him to the Kingdom of God, literally. He was more open than most who had come to the river looking for healing.

1989: Very slowly, his expression changed as if he were gradually seeing appear what he didn’t know he’d been looking for. Then all of the sudden he knew what he wanted to do.

Ø  Harry comes to a realization that from what he learned from the preacher and Mrs. Connin he wanted to get away from his home and get to the Kingdom.

1990: “I know from my own self-experience,” a woman’s mysterious voice called from a knot of people, “I know from it that this preacher can heal. My eyes have been opened! I testify to Jesus!”

Ø  Although she gives the preacher credit, the preacher mentions numerous times that it is not he who heals but those who have heard and understood his preaching have faith and are able to be healed.

1991: “If you ain’t come for Jesus, you ain’t come for me.”

Ø  The preacher is putting forth the idea that to be healed is to first accept God with faith and then other gifts such as healing will come.

1992: He saw the pale oval close to him in the dark. “He said I’m not the same now,” he muttered. “I count.”

Ø  Harry is baptized and then all of the sudden he counts and is able to receive the gifts from God.

1993: The river wouldn’t have him. He tried again and came up, choking. This was the way it had been when the preacher held him under—he had to fight with something that pushed him back in the face.

Ø  It takes cooperation on both parts for grace and freedom to occur.

1994: “This old red river is good to Baptize in, good to lay your faith in, good to lay your pain in, but it ain’t this muddy water here that saves you.”

Ø  The river flows and moves along and ‘passes away’ but those healed in it do not pass away.

1995: “You won’t be the same again,” the preacher said. “You’ll count.”

Ø  The boy will be sanctified and will count as part of the Church and its community.

1996: Mrs. Connin represents Harry’s grace because she helps him along the journey and takes him to the river where he is baptized.

1997: He intended not to fool with preachers any more but to Baptize himself and to keep on going this time until he found the Kingdom of Christ in the river.

Ø  Harry decides to participate in the journey to finding God.

1998: “If you just come to see can you leave your pain in the river, you ain’t come for Jesus.”

Ø  Only good faith and Jesus can reveal the nature of Jesus himself and healing power.

1999: In the story the preacher teaches that the river the thing that can carry everyone to the Kingdom of Christ but you cannot enter only expecting it to heal you. You enter with faith and baptism so that you can participate in the river.

2000: When Harry returns home he begins to change and then decides to abandon his home and follow the river to the Kingdom of Christ, keeping with the call from the preacher and the call he hears within himself.

2001: Before the boy goes to the river, Mrs. Connin teaches him about Jesus Christ and he takes the Bible with him to the river and home feeling more prepared for what is to come.

2002: The boy freely decides to be baptized and later to follow the river by drowning himself to reach the Kingdom of Christ.

2003: The same blood that makes the River red, made the leper clean, made that blind man stare, made that dead man leap!

Ø  Others have been healed in the river by following and being open to the idea of Christ. And these people have built up the community of Christ.

2004: The preacher finds his responsibility in preaching and explaining faith and what the message of Christ means. Mrs. Connin teaches Harry the fundamentals of Christ and follows her responsibility by teaching the boy this.

2005: For an instant he was overcome with surprise: then since he was moving quickly he knew that he was getting somewhere, all his fury and fear left him.

Ø  The boy is only four or five years old, but he follows what he interprets. He enters the river and gets what he was looking for whether it is grace or not.

Moral Certainty in "The Man without a Face"

 

The Man without a Face is a movie that displays the relationship between an ostracized man and a young boy develops and strengthens even against societal stereotyping and ‘norms’. The movie starts with the young boy, Charles Norstadt and his ideal dream he has, everything for him is perfect except one thing, he always misses a face in the crowd. At the end of the movie we see his dream come true and this time he sees this missing face in the crowd. From this we gather that Charles comes to a moral certainty about the man without a face. He is able to come to this moral certainty in a journey with the man, Charles questions, reasons, and finally believes and trusts the man without a face, Mr. Jason McLeod.

            Norstadt’s dream includes graduating from the boarding school his father attended and he takes the first step in moral certainty when he goes to McLeod for tutoring so that he might pass the entry exam. Despite Norstadt’s fears about McLeod, fears generated by the town and those who ostracized him, Norstadt continues to work with McLeod. Norstadt begins to develop a relationship with McLeod, a relationship that reminds me of a father-son relationship. McLeod teaches the boy geometry, Latin, and reasoning skills. However when Norstadt finds out the truth about his father and goes to McLeod for consolation their relationship is severed.

            Additionally, Norstadt finds out about a story that McLeod molested a child before and the child was killed and so Norstadt begins to question McLeod’s character and credibility. The boy is confused because although he knows McLeod based upon their relationship he does not know the truth about the story. When he confronts McLeod, the man yells at the boy saying, “I didn’t spend all summer [teaching you] so you could cheat on this question”. The question is did the man really molest/kill his previous student. Norstadt is able to come to the conclusion or certainty that the man didn’t because of his experience over the summer. His experience and relationship with McLeod conveyed no violence or molestation. He does not come to certainty because anyone told him yes or no, rather he uses personal judgment and knowledge to choose a decision.

            Norstadt’s moral certainty was a process. All moral certainties are a process and a risk to make or come to because there is no object or compass that can filter out all lies and bad things. Norstadt can only make the decision because of his experience with McLeod despite the rumors and lies from the people in his town. McLeod illustrates a great teacher because of his ability to teach things such as math and Latin but also reasoning and skepticism. Whether Norstadt was right or wrong, McLeod commended his student for the journey and the decision he was able to make. McLeod says toward the end, “You can’t teach a thing without giving away your trust”. He is saying this regards to a man asking why he didn’t check with the boy’s mother before continuing to teach him. McLeod is saying that in order to teach you cannot have a final goal or trust a person to learn. If you trust, people will disappoint you. It is better to let go of trust and be gifted with a student who can reason and solve problems and make judgments for themselves with the information they are given.

            It is difficult to explain how or why Norstadt comes to this moral certainty about McLeod. In an argument McLeod has with men who are questioning him after finding Norstadt in his home, McLeod tries to tell them about his friendship with the boy. He says with regards to not being able to explain their friendship, “No I don’t think I can, and the tragedy of that is I don’t know why I can’t”. It is hard to explain something such as love or friendship in a way that makes sense because what makes up love or friendship is not empirical. There is no tangible or hard evidence to prove to anyone that McLeod and Norstadt are close friends. However, in themselves there is certainty about their friendship and trust for each other. Charles Norstadt is certain of McLeod’s friendship and honest appearance because inside of him he can reason and he can decide what to think and believe. McLeod gets his second chance in teaching and is able to succeed in Norstadt because of the boy’s ability to decide that one pivotal issue for himself with certainty.

Knowlege is?

          Knowledge is believing and justifying something true. It is often associated with logic and reason because these things are what make up facts or things that are true. For instance, we know that we did not make ourselves; this is a truth that adds to our knowledge and knowing things. Knowing things involves understanding and accepting things that we later reiterate in some fashion.

            However, knowing things and knowledge do not develop until after all things have been named. In Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” the prisoners name the objects on the wall and thus it is their truth. They “know” those objects until one prisoner is set free and climbs up into the light of the cave. He is blinded until he sees and begins to name the familiar objects that he sees with what he knows. What he knows, he comes to learn is false and he learns the actual names and meanings. Then Plato illustrates how we are stubborn with what we know because when the freedman re-enters the cave to gather his prisoners they attack and try to kill him.

            Knowledge is a varying term because when you know something and are proven wrong, you act stubbornly. You are stubborn because knowledge is belief and justification of something you didn’t know before. We learn truths, facts, logic, and skills that are all acquired into what we call knowledge. And our knowledge becomes our power because we can act superior to ignorant prisoners.

"Cathedral" by Raymond Carver

Summary:

Cathedral is a story told from the point of view of a man whose wife has a blind friend come for a visit. This man in the beginning is very close-minded toward the idea of a blind man visiting because he does not know about him or about blindness. The seeing man’s wife had met the blind man while looking for work, she read to him and they became good friends. She left but kept in contact with the blind man by sending tapes to him and receiving them from him. The blind man comes to visit and he and the other man’s wife are consumed in conversation. Finally the wife falls asleep and the blind man and other man get to know each other. They share dope, drinks, conversation, and finally depicting a cathedral because of the television program. The blind man does not know a cathedral and the other man cannot describe it. Therefore, the blind man asks the other man to draw it with their hands linked. At the end of the story the blind man asks the other man to look at the picture and how it looks, the other man keeps his eyes closed though and says it looks fine.

Question Responses:

(1) Why was the narrator not looking forward to the visit of the blind man? What do his feelings reveal about his character?

 The narrator did not show exuberance for the visit of the blind man because he was close-minded. He had misconceptions about blind people from movies and was insecure because he did not know about this man other than from his wife who kept her and the blind man’s relationship mostly to herself. These feelings reveal his opportunity to either change and learn or remain ignorant and not gain anything from this story.

 (2) Is it possible to read the experience the narrator’s wife had of Robert touching her face as an experience of being “seen” by him? How is her writing of poetry related to her desire to be seen? How does her attempted suicide also relate to her desire to be seen?

 It is possible to read the experience of Robert touching the narrator’s wife’s face as an experience of being “seen” by Robert because of the way it made her feel. Additionally, later in the story we see Robert holding the narrator’s hand as he draws in order to help him visualize or “see” the cathedral. Thus, both persons were “seen” and “seeing”. When the narrator’s wife would write poetry, she was expressing the way being “seen” or touched made her feel. She enjoyed sharing a deeper connection than physical appearance with the blind man. After being “seen” by the blind man she and he stay in touch with tapes and she attempts suicide. This is connected with her desire to be seen because she felt lonely and not seen with her first husband. He was in the Air Force and always travelling and she rarely felt seen by him like she had with the blind man.

 (3) What does it mean to receive another’s friend? Consider: “‘If you love me,’ she said, ‘you can do this for me. If you don’t love me, okay. But if you had a friend, any friend, and the friend came to visit, I’d make him feel comfortable’” (359).

 To receive another’s friend is to be open and non-judging without tangible evidence or knowledge of this friend. It is more than just tolerating the person until they are gone, but actually making the person feel comfortable and making yourself approachable.

 (4) Consider page 360. Contrary to the narrator’s response of pity and disgust, do you think that Robert “saw” Beulah? What does it mean, more deeply, to see and be seen?

 Robert did “see” his wife Beulah in a deeper way than just physical attributes. To see deeply and be seen is to be understood and not judged or influenced by the way you look. Getting to know a person is just remembering what he or she looks like but rather knowing hobbies and values that he or she hold high in life.

 (5) Why do the characters smoke pot? What does it reveal of their desire?

 Just before the narrator offers pot to the blind man he comments that he doesn’t want to be left alone with the blind man. I think he brings the pot out in order to ease his nerves and facilitate conversation. The narrator’s desire is to be comfortable because he cannot avoid this situation. The blind man and narrator’s wife partake just to partake and be part of this occurrence.  

 (6) “In the olden days, God was an important part of everyone’s life. You could tell this from their cathedral-building” (372). What do churches reveal about what the culture thinks about God? Why?

 Churches, particularly cathedrals, reveal a desire to build something big and ornate enough for God as if he wants the biggest and best of everything. The culture is trying to match the size of their God and create a home big enough for Him. They see God as so big because he is intangible, he is a mystery and therefore has the illusion of being bigger than anything they can compare to.

 (7) Why does the narrator have difficulty describing a cathedral? What does he see with his eyes closed at the close of the story? Why?

 The narrator has difficulty describing a story near the end of the story because he does not know what images the blind man can visualize or in what way to describe it whether he be specific or broad in describing it. Then, after drawing the picture with the blind man, the narrator sees with his eyes closed. It is a new sight he experiences, the kind of sight the blind man has mastered. It is not just the physical appearance but all the components that make up an object or person. All that the blind man understands is left in the drawing and the narrator finally sees a piece of “sight”.