The Violent Bear It Away | The Symbolic Vision of Flannery O’Connor: Patterns of Imagery in The Violent Bear It Away
In the following essay excerpt, Trowbridge examines how O’Connor used symbolism and allusions in The Violent Bear It Away to convey the idea that man’s desire for the spiritual is answered only through faith in Jesus Christ.
The difficulty, yet at the same time the beauty and power, of The Violent Bear It Away derives from the fact that so much of its meaning is communicated through its imagery as contained in its figurative language. For Flannery O’Connor, symbols, figures of speech in general, were not simply ways of saying things. Rather, they were tools of language to penetrate into the heart of mystery. She took them so seriously that she would have us take them literally. They were used to make a work not more suggestive but more explicit. As Robert Fitzgerald wrote in his introduction to...
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