Flannery O’Connor Takes Us For A Ride

The percentage of people who say they believe in God, pray, go to religious services, embrace religious practices or find their faith meaningful has declined over the last 50 years. A growing group of Americans do not believe in God or any organized faith whatsoever. In many communities, unbelief is even considered smart: religious conviction is perceived as strange, burdensome and outdated.

This is the context in which American Southern Gothic writer Flannery O’Connor penned her fictional books and short stories, many of which are set in the 1950s and 1960s rural South. O’Connor wrote about the human condition and the state of the weak and the faithless. She wrote about unbelievers, lukewarm souls, narcissists and the spiritually illiterate. She wrote about racists, white trash, busybodies, snobs, fake intellectuals, poor folks, and beaten down and marginalized African Americans. Above all, O’Connor wrote about the unraveling of faith in America.  

O’Connor’s works reveal that she believed America, particularly the South, was haunted by religion, but that its people were experiencing spiritual mediocrity, cynicism and emptiness – a rough-and-tumble nihilism. She argues that people might attend services or preach that their faith matters, but that many are just lying to their neighbors and to themselves. To her, they are just checking the box with a faith bordering on the tepid or the pathetic. God is deemed irrelevant. She suspects that many people would not recognize a theophany, or sign from God, if it slapped them in the face, and that countless souls are existentially lost and fumbling in the dark.

Through her works, O’Connor tries to show people what the world would look like without faith and religion. Nothing would be of real consequence – beauty, truth, sacrifice, love, history, death, honor and sex wouldn’t matter in the least. O’Connor was also determined to show the results of that prevailing attitude in the faces of the despairing, the fallen, the pretenders, the depraved and the lost.

Flannery O’Connor’s method of accomplishing this is not subtle; she knocks her readers over the head and tries to open them up to the frozen depths of their lethargy through comedy, tragedy and sometimes even violence. She writes: “To the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you have to draw large and startling figures.” Throughout her life, O’Connor was bent on making her readers understand the importance of faith by shocking them with outlandish characters, striking scenes and painful revelations, as in her book Wise Blood.

She populates this work with an over-the-top cast of characters: peculiar loners, false preachers, rudderless souls, unabashed skeptics, spiritual zombies, men in gorilla suits, killers, zookeepers, sex addicts, mummified dwarfs, prostitutes and con men – the grotesque, the ignorant, the humorous, the marginalized and the saved, sometimes one and the same. Reading Wise Blood is akin to watching a Mad Hatter with Southern, fundamentalist tendencies hold a revival, or an Alice stand-in slither down the rabbit hole while running an illegal moonshine operation. Her characters are bigger than life, sometimes amusing, sometimes violent, and downright biblical in their ability to fail over and over again in a multitude of ways. Her characters are more than memorable; they are unforgettable.

In Wise Blood, as in all her writing, O’Connor asks her readers to pay attention to their intentions. At the time, religious understanding and conviction were already on the decline and indifference abounded. But O’Connor was staunch in her belief that apathy and nihilism wouldn’t give a person any hope, just a bucket of despair. Wise Blood and the rest of her works were her literary offering to those who found themselves like Dante: “In the middle of the journey of our life I found myself astray in a dark wood where the straight road had been lost sight of” (Dante’s Inferno).

Not much has changed since O’Connor passed away in 1964. Religious practices and church attendance are still on the decline. Perhaps there is also now a more virulent strain of atheism or disdain for the demands of belief flowing through American culture. Reading Flannery O’Connor, however, is still wildly popular. She tapped into something, then and now, of the American dissatisfaction with what the culture and the cultural elites have failed to offer – the mysteries and revelation of faith. She remains the “voice crying out in the wilderness.”

“Alexander Hamilton and the Perils of Posterity”

On the evening of Sunday, September 18, AHI Charter Fellow and Hamilton College history professor, Douglas Ambrose spoke on “Alexander Hamilton and the Perils of Posterity.” With incredible eloquence, wit and energy, he delivered a generous assessment of Alexander Hamilton’s brilliance and integrity in public life.

Alexander Hamilton wanted to appear trustworthy to the common people. Statesmen like Hamilton gave no thought to the idea of Heaven or a beatific vision at the end of their lives in which they would meet their maker. The Enlightenment led them to concentrate instead on establishing a system and personal legacy that focused on human fulfillment and happiness. Those in power sought to establish a society where true happiness was attainable for the common people.

From a young age, he was full of ambition and a desire to go beyond the cards Fate had dealt him. He believed Fate could be overcome and should not just be accepted. His station made such a transition difficult: born out of wedlock in the West Indies and then orphaned at a young age, he seemed to have a bleak future. In a letter to his friend Ned, he wrote of his castle in the clouds, which drove him to attempt to transcend his current situation. He wished for a war so he could prove himself on merit alone. He would be named a hero. The most essential part of this letter was not his showing of such intense ambition at a young age, but rather his stating he would never sacrifice his public character for power. Hamilton manifested this Enlightenment ideal of achieving an honorable legacy when just a boy.

This value stayed with him into his adult life. It showed true in his Publius Letters of 1778. One in particular spoke to Hamilton’s view of honor in the life of a public official. Hamilton launched an attack on Samuel Chase of Maryland, whom he saw as the antithesis of everything a member of Congress ought to be. For an honorable official, the trust of the republic was paramount; with such fortune of position, a man must promote human happiness and do good to all people in all circumstances. Personal connections should not divert a man from this course. Union and harmony of conscience were of great importance. Chase’s love of money and power repulsed Hamilton. He cried out for Chase to shed his mask and appear as his true self. However, Hamilton outright stated that others should consider his faults only in a public capacity; he made the distinction between the defects of private character and public character.

This distinction was one Hamilton made especially in his own life. After his affair with Maria Reynolds, he stood between a rock and a hard place. Maria’s husband discovered the affair and demanded money from Hamilton. People began to notice the cash flow and the public asked, ‘Was the Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton, abusing his power?’ At this point, not only was his public character at risk, but also his private life. Against all advice of close friends, Hamilton released the Reynolds Pamphlet, an account of his sex scandal, to the press. So clever a move couldn't have been predicted. He would not let others “transmit his name with dishonor to posterity.” He admitted his real crime, the affair with Maria Reynolds, and explained that the payments were for her husband’s silence, not graft. At the same time, however, he personally betrayed and publicly humiliated his wife Eliza, who probably had no idea of the affair. Hamilton made a difficult decision, but given his views on the great importance of maintaining a reputation for honorable public conduct, it was the only option.

Hamilton wrote his last epistle to his wife on the eve of his duel with Aaron Burr, a contest that resulted from years of tension between the two men, which boiled over during the 1804 New York gubernatorial race. If he lived, she would never receive it. If he died, it would be his last comfort to her. He writes, “If it had been possible for me to have avoided the [duel], my love for you and my precious children would have been alone a decisive motive. But it was not possible, without sacrifices which would have rendered me unworthy of your esteem.” Eliza stood as “posterity’s conscience.” Hamilton undoubtedly would have thought of her when thinking of his reputation among future generations, even if he didn’t directly mention it. He always considered Eliza’s perspective. She was no passive figure ¾ she was his best defender. She was his flesh and blood, his bone. He was the love of her life. She held him to a high standard, and even if he failed, he always tried to respond with honor. He may have failed in marital fidelity, but she insisted that, as a public man entrusted with great responsibility, he merited posterity's profound and unqualified praise and gratitude. She demanded that posterity forgive him. That is her triumphant legacy and his. 

Michel de Montaigne and Thoughts on his Essay Of Experience

A French nobleman, Michel de Montaigne, shut himself up in his castle tower in 1571 and wrote a series of essays for his family and friends over the course of more than twenty years. One essay in particular, Of Experience, explores his thoughts and feelings on life with an uncommon intelligence, wit, bluntness, and masterful insight. 

Montaigne’s essays are of himself, and by himself. He is an accidental philosopher in the sense that his purpose in writing is private and without a clear end. Montaigne, in fact, calls himself such. His fundamental assertion in his collection of essays is to tell of his own being and way of life. He turns away from deliberate philosophy because he sees too much presumption in human thinking and instead seeks to re-understand concepts and ideas that he is already familiar with. 

To read his essay Of Experience is like revisiting an old, well-loved friend. For those reading it again, it is like sitting in a comfortable chair and savoring a steaming cup of coffee or tea. His topics in Of Experience are mainly his health, the value of experience, how life is to be lived, fatherhood, the importance of family, food, and moving forward even if you have to crawl. “When I dance, I dance; when I sleep, I sleep; yes, and when I walk alone in the beautiful orchard, if my thoughts have been welling on extraneous incidents for some part of the time, for some other part I bring them back to the walk, in the orchard, to the sweetness of this solitude, and to me.” (p. 850) To read this section is a gift; it is to be content.

Even though this essay was written in the 16th century, Montaigne speaks to the modern world because of his honesty, common sense, and direct language. He does not hide his human frailty or his imperfections: “My mind is quick and firm; and I know not which of the two, my mind or my body I have had more difficulty in keeping in one place. I have never succeeded in keeping some part of me from always wandering…” (p. 848) He writes of his likes and dislikes, his health, his past illnesses–in other words, personal experiences. He is a philosopher and writer living in the real world, not just the world of the musings of the mind. 

For Montaigne, living appropriately and finding contentment takes resolve. Even in the face of ill health, an unhappy marriage, and old age, happiness should be pursued and never postponed. Death awaits us all. Life’s moments of joy are to be savored, in all the messiness and suffering of human existence. The pursuit of peace and serenity are much preferred to pondering life’s miseries or planning revenge: “I hold this temperature of my soul has many a time lifted up my body from its falls. My body is often depressed; whereas if my soul is not jolly, it is at least tranquil and at rest.” (p., 842) For Montaigne, spiritual balance is important; his remains unflustered despite setbacks and life’s travails. 

Montaigne’s essays are not an attempt at an autobiography, but a conversation with the reader about his life experiences, his thoughts, his judgments, his ideas and his deeply held beliefs. For him, living well meant asking who he was and writing about it. Living well meant one should face life with humor and an honest assessment despite its curveballs. He felt one needed to be hardy, broad-minded, balanced, open to learning new things, and content to keep moving forward. Sometimes the ideas that are most familiar are the most astonishing.