The Violent Bear It Away (Cyclopedia of Literary Characters)
At a glance:
- Author: Flannery O’Connor
- First Published: 1960
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Psychological realism
- Time of Work: 1952
- Setting: Tennessee
- Genres: Long fiction, Gothic fiction
- Subjects: 1950’s, Teenagers, South or Southerners, Religion, Alienation, Prophecy or prophets, Arson, Fanaticism, Baptism
- Locales: Tennessee
Characters Discussed
Francis Marion Tarwater, a backwoods teenager who is perversely proud to have been born at the site of a car wreck in which his unmarried mother died. His father was a divinity student who later committed suicide. Kidnapped by his great uncle Mason Tarwater and taught to be a prophet, he struggles to reject his indoctrination, creating internal voices to express his own doubts and even equating strangers he meets—especially his rapist—with these voices. As much as Tarwater rejects Old Tarwater, he equally rejects the citified and superficially rational...
[The entire page is 1043 words long]
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