The Violent Bear It Away
First edition
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| Author | Flannery O'Connor |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Southern Gothic |
| Publisher | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
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Publication date
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1960 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 243 |
| OCLC | 170140 |
The Violent Bear It Away is a novel published in 1960 by American author Flannery O'Connor. It is the second and final novel that she published. The first chapter of the novel was published as the story "You Can't Be Any Poorer Than Dead" in the journal New World Writing. It is the story of Francis Tarwater, a fourteen-year-old boy who is trying to escape his destiny: the life of a prophet. Like most of O'Connor's stories, the novel is filled with Catholic themes and dark images, making it a classic example of Southern Gothic literature.
The novel begins when old Mason Tarwater dies. Prior to his death, he had asked his great-nephew, the teen-aged protagonist Francis Tarwater, to give him a proper Christian burial with a cross marking the grave so that his body would be resurrected on Judgment Day. Young Tarwater starts to dig the grave but suddenly hears a "Voice" in his head telling to him to forget about the old man. Tarwater obeys and gets drunk instead. When he returns from drinking, he sets the house that he and his uncle had lived in on fire, with his great-uncle's body still inside. He leaves for the city and gets a ride from a salesman, who drops him off at his uncle Rayber's door.
Rayber is amazed to see young Tarwater, whom he had given up on a long time ago after the young boy had essentially been "kidnapped" by the boy's great uncle to live in the country and be brought up a Christian. Tarwater is also greeted at the door by Rayber's young son Bishop, who (it is implied) has Down syndrome and low intelligence. Bishop was the child that Rayber had with Bernice Bishop, a meddlesome social worker known as "the welfare woman." Mr. Mason previously told young Francis Tarwater that the welfare woman was much older than Rayber and only able to give him one disabled child, and that God had mercy on the child by making him "dim-witted," which was the only choice he had to protect him from the evil parents. Old Mason Tarwater (the great uncle) had commissioned the young Tarwater to baptize Bishop at some point, in order to save the little boy's soul.
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