Both Greene's whiskey priest and O'Connor's preacher Asa Hawks have illegitmate daughters, recalling another famous literary minister with an illegitmate daughter--Arthur Dimmesdale in The Scarlet Letter. There seem to be many similarities between the realtionships of Dimmesdale and Pearl and the whiskey priest and his daughter Briggita. The whiskey priest wants to escape to a safe place so he can confess his sin to another priest, but he wonders what good is in confessing when you love the result of your sin. Dimmesdale experiences the same feelings of guilt and love for his child. Their feelings about their daughters really shape their actions for the entire story. While the whiskey priest is driven to confess, Dimmesdale resists confessing until the moment of his death. Dimmesdale gets to confess to everyone, while the whiskey priest dies without confessing. I think Hawthorne and Greene are both asking important questions about religion by using ministers set in a societyin which religion is very important. What is the effect of their sin on the men's eternal souls? Is there something about their love for their daughters that has a redemptive power? In Hawthorne, we see that although Dimmesdale dies, his confession changes his daughter, and she is able to live a happy life. We get no such assurance in Greene, who provides a less hopeful ending. The fate of the whiskey priest's soul is uncertain, and we are left to wonder if the love he had for his daughter left the same kind of redemptive mark for Brigitta. In contrast, Asa Hawks appears to not care about his illegitimate daughter at all, finally abandoning her in hopes that she will live with Hazel Motes. Asa Hawks' faith is ruined. His ability to believe, to be honest, to love is probably gone as well. It is interesting to think about how these Christian authors use the character of the illegitimate daughter to develop the character of the minister father.

Satan in Milton and Lewis

In the article we read by Dr. Stutz, he argues that Milton's Satan is not a grotesque, diabolical Satan, something that C.S. Lewis corrected in his retelling of Paradise Lost. A long-standing critique of Milton's Satan is that he is too heroic, too easy to sympathize with--he is to some an admirable rebel. Lewis found fault with this portrayal of the devil and fashioned his "Unman" accordingly. However, I would suggest that Milton's Satan, although he is eloquent and beautiful at first, does in fact undergo a slow transformation through the epic until he does end as the sort of grotesque monster that Stutz thinks is not really present in Milton. In the poem, Satan takes on the forms of different animals, and he feels degraded. By the end of the epic, Satan returns to Pandemonium to tell the demons about his victory, and instead of cheers, he hears a collective "hiss." All the demons, including Satan, have turned into snakes. While Stutz writes that Milton does not emply grotesque images of the diabolical, Milton chooses for Satan to end as a grotesque monster. If you look carefully for the slow transformation, you will see that the Satan of Paradise Lost is not so heroic after all.

Pretending to be an Athiest to Catch an Athiest who is not an Athiest

The men of the week are pretending to be someone they are not to catch someone they don't understand. The jist of what they are doing sounds pretty simple, going undercover to capture the criminal, but it is because they assume it's that simple that they do not understand the 'criminal', who is no criminal at all but the fulfiller of their purpose. So by having the someone they don't understand tell them to be someone they are not so they can catch the person they don't understand, they then finally find who they really are.

I love Random Characters named after days of the week...

In Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday, the characters are wonderful. I love how ridiculously the "anarchists" are described. They have such distorted features and some seem almost freakish looking. The men have crazy habits, nervous jitters and most appear to be in constant state paranoia. The group lacks any notion of sanity, and agrees to crazy plans. At one point the plan to blow up an important official, just because. The men are constantly suspicious that one of the group is a spy, but in reality, they are all spies... I love the irony that Chesterton uses in his work. The "mastermind", Sunday, keeps things in a constant state of confusion, and quite seems to enjoy his game. One of the funniest parts of this story is the scene in which Thursday is being followed by Friday. Isn't Chesterton great? Friday is described as a feeble old man that everyone is expecting to die any day, yet he follows and then chases Thursday all over the city. I truly think that this was my favorite piece of literature from this semester.

1420 in the Shire

To give a quick recap of the ending of The Return of the King, they return, find out Solomon has taken over, the hobbits form a little hobbit army and battle and kick him and his men out. However, Solomon has already done his damage by destroying all the trees and such. At this point, and this is what I want to talk about, Sam takes the soil that the Lady of the Woods had given him as a gift to restore the Shire back to its original state. Sam put a little here and a little there and tossed the rest into the air and let it do its work. He also planted the seed that was given to him of one of the elven trees to replace the big tree in the party field. The effect of this was astounding. Not only was the Shire restored, but was better, more beautiful than before with a gorgeous elven tree in the middle, which brough visitors to it from far away. It has given the Shire a beginning of a golden age, a new beginning, not only a restoration but better. This is the first visual sign that I can think of of the actual proof of the success and growth of the new ruling under man, but not just under man but under man with an alliance and friendship of the elves and dwarves and others. The whole thing just caps off the good ending with the notion that more good things and more growth and beauty will come with the defeat of Sauron and the King Aragorn.

Biblical Names in Wise Blood

Just two that I know of.

Enoch Emery - Enoch, father of Methuselah

Genesis 5:4 - Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.

Asa Hawks - King Asa of Judah

1 Kings 15:9 - In the twentieth year of Jeroboam king of Israel, Asa began to reign over Judah.

Creating His Own Wise Blood

Enoch Emery claims that he has wise blood, a sort of feeling or something that tells him or lets him know when something is about to happen and such. His wise blood tells him that he is going to find the person that day to who he can show the little mummy thing to. And sure enough, Hazel Motes comes on by and that is the answer that the wise blood was giving him. But it could simply be that Enoch wanted it to be that day and that anyone he recognized he would take to be that person, such as Haze. But we can't really say this or that about the wise blood at that point. However, there is one big problem with the wise blood of Enoch which is that it told him something huge, something big, something that would make him important would come out of him giving the little mummy thing to Haze for his new Jesus. The problem comes in when the mummy is just tossed around and thrown out. Nothing comes out of what the wise blood says, so is the wise blood really wise, is it dumb, or is it simply non-existent? But I guess, I'm just wondering why does he think he has wise blood? In the past there must have been things like the day at the zoo when Hazel Motes came to the zoo just when Enoch was expecting someone to come. But it doesn't have to be anything supernatural. It could be just that the other days when Enoch was really wanting to show somebody and nobody came, he just shrugged it off and forgot it. Or maybe he finally really wanted to show somebody because he finally had someone to show it to and it just so happened when he was itching to show it and had Hazel in his mind, that Hazel did come and credit was given to the wise blood. Similar things might have happened in the past. He subconsciously creates situations that are likely to happen, but he consciously doesn't realize it, and when the situations come to pass, credit is given to his wise blood. Enoch may have always thought, even if just as a small, reoccurring though, that if he was to give someone the mummy, that he would naturally be rewarded. This thought slowly grew in the back of his mind, getting bigger and bigger, and when he finally had someone to give it to, his subconscious thought came to his mind, he expected to recieve a reward, but by this time the reward had grown to an uplifting of himself to some great importance, not even directly by the man he gave it to, but by just happening, and again giving credit to the wise blood.

In Case You Were Wondering

Jewish population in North Carolina: 26,345

And in the words of the genius that is Walker Percy

"What? said the dog."

Will and Allie Sitting in a Tree

This may be obvious, but I figured I'd write about it anyway. It seems in most aspects if not all that Will Barrett and Allie compliment each other in a way that fits the context of marriage very well, but in a bizarre way. They even recognize these things and talk about them at the end of the book. They compliment each other in memory; he remembers minute details about the past that he normally would never think of again, she can't remember anything but the present, or not much anyway. He has the past, she the present, both the future. He has a tendency to fall down, she has the ability to hoist. He falls, she hoists. She can't seem to speak in a way that most people understand, but Will does, and he also says that she says more and what she says is said better than most people. The thing is though, that they only complete each other when both are 'mentally unstable.' The medicated Will would not continue to remember the small memories of the past, or fall down, or probably find her language understandable, and therefore is not perfect for her in his most 'healthy' state. But for them the unmedicated, the crazy state, is the healthy state because in that state they are perfect for each other, in that they fully complete each other.

Merry Christmas

On the first day of Christmas Tolkien gave to me --
A Dark Lord to rule over thee.

On the second day of Christmas Tolkien gave to me --
Two Graying Wizards, and a Dark Lord to rule over thee.

On the third day of Christmas Tolkien gave to me --
Three stone-cold trolls, two graying wizards, and a Dark Lord to rule over thee.

On the forth day of Christmas Tolkien gave to me --
Four happy hobbits, three stone cold trolls, two graying wizards, and a Dark Lord to rule over thee.

On the fifth day of Christmas Tolkien gave to me --
Five Pippin blunders, four happy hobbits, three stone-cold trolls, two graying wizards, and a Dark Lord to rule over thee.

On the sixth day of Christmas Tolkien gave to me --
Six names for Strider, five Pippin blunders, four happy hobbits...

On the seventh day of Christmas Tolkien gave to me --
Seven swords a swiping, six names for Strider...

On the eighth day of Christmas Tolkien gave to me --
Eight Elven cloaks, seven swords a swiping...

On the ninth day of Christmas Tolkien gave to me --
Nine Ringwraiths riding, eight Elven cloaks...

On the tenth day of Christmas Tolkien gave to me --
Ten orcs to fight, nine Ringwraiths riding...

On the eleventh day of Christmas Tolkien gave to me --
Elven braids on Gimli, ten orcs to fight...

On the twelfth day of Christmas Tolkien gave to me --
Twelve Rohan Guards, elven braids on Gimli, ten orcs to fight, nine Ringwraiths riding, eight Elven cloaks, seven swords a swiping, six names for Strider, five Pippin blunders, four happy hobbits, three stone-cold trolls, two graying Wizards... and a Dark Lord to rule over thee!

Good to See

that I am not the only one waiting until the last minute for the blogs. Just sayin'.

Learn Tengwar (Elvish)

If you follow this link you will find information about Tolkien's elvish languages, that when written are known as Tengwar.

Here it is:

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/tengwar.htm

Tolkien's knowledge of languages never ceases to impress me!

Frodo = Jesus?

So everyone likes to talk about the fact that Aragorn is a Christ figure except Megan who would rather view Gandalf is a picture of Christ. Here is a curveball for you: Frodo is a Christ figure. Yep, I said it. The little hobbit of the Shire is a type of Christ. Personally, I find it to be a little obvious. Think about it. He bears the burden of evil for everyone else. The task of carrying the ring to Mordor is his. Granted, he does have friends to help him, but it is his specific assignment. The fate of Middle Earth hangs around his neck for the greater part of the trilogy. Just as Christ carries the guilt and punishment for evil and sin on behalf of the world, so did Frodo do for Middle Earth. Just as Christ defeated evil and conquered Satan, so Frodo unmade the ring and conquered Sauron.

In the Bible Christ describes himself as gentle and lowly in heart (Matthew 11:29). Let’s face it, in Middle Earth you don’t get more lowly that a Hobbit of the Shire. Christ is the unexpected redeemer (most Jews expected a conqueror upon His first coming). I’m willing to bet that if you told any human in Middle Earth that it would be the job of a hobbit to unmake the ring of power and destroy Sauron, he would have laughed hysterically. It is the unexpected things that so often benefit us the most.

A Different Take on Descent into Hell

So apparently there are other books floating out there with titles similar to that of Williams' novel. This one is called A Descent into Hell.

Here's the link:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0061230871/?tag=mh0b-20&hvadid=151219807&ref=pd_sl_6644pey66h_e

Maybe one of you would like to buy it. As for me, I've done enough descending into hell for one semester.

Fantastic Williams

I don’t think I can stress enough how painful it was for me to make my way through Charles Williams’ Descent into Hell. Granted, I was reading over Labor Day weekend and would have much preferred to relax rather than read anything. I still found the novel to be too slow-moving for me. In fact, I felt as though I was descending farther and farther into hell the closer I got to the end.

Because Williams so often swings back and forth from the mundane and everyday to the surreal and fantastic, I was having trouble keeping up. There were moments when I though I knew what was going on, only to have that shattered by some sudden change from normalcy to supernatural.

Interestingly enough however, I actually began to appreciate what Williams did once I read the article I was assigned to present in class. Once I read it, I discovered that the idea of the fantastic is exactly what Williams is driving at in the book. He wants his stories to seem believable like they could in fact happen to you or me.

This is quite different from the rest of his inkling counterparts, especially Tolkien who establishes a realm entirely different from our own that leaves us wanting to play a part but knowing ultimately that we can’t. Williams, on the other hand, leaves the possibility of the fantastic occurring in reality open. It makes his story seem more believable, whether the reader wants it to be or not.

Name Your Band after O'Connor Characters?

That's what these guys did. They call themselves "Hazel Motes". They have an interesting folk-gospel feel to them. Unfortunately, it seems like they abandoned their online presence almost a year ago...oh, well. Their music is still up at least. I recommend listening to their song "I Got Good Religion".

Follow this link:

http://www.myspace.com/hazelmotesband

Character Parallels in O'Connor

If there is one thing that I’ve noticed about Flannery O’Connor through reading Wise Blood, it’s that she does a great job of paralleling characters in her novels. Honestly, I’m not sure if it is intentional, but it seems to be at least.

Consider the two female characters that in a way bookend the novel. At the beginning of the novel, Mrs. Wally Bee Hitchcock is portrayed as a southerner of the old-school that doesn’t quite seem to be in tune with reality. Now compare Mrs. Hitchcock to Hazel’s landlady at the end of the novel who when met with the fact that Hazel is punishing himself, exclaims that no one does that these days and insists to him that there is only one kind of clean.

Then there is the cab driver in the second chapter of Wise Blood. Though a minor character in the story, he does point out something interesting about Hazel. When Hazel asserts that his hat does not mean that he is a preacher, the cab driver quickly retorts that it’s not so much the hat but the look in his face. When we flash forward towards the end of the novel, we see Hazel’s dialogue with the patrolman. When Hazel asks why he pulled him over, the only reason he gives is that he doesn’t like his face. Maybe this is a stretch, but I think O’Connor is saying something with these comments about Hazel’s face. It makes me wonder if the patrolman saw the same thing that the cab driver saw or if by that point in the novel something in Haze’s face had changed so that he wasn’t quite the preacher he was in the middle.

The more I think about it, the more I think that some sort of connection can be drawn between Mrs. Leora Watts and Lily Sabbath. Perhaps I’m reading too much into this relationship as well, but it is interesting that Hazel loses his virginity to Mrs. Watts and Lily desires to lose her virginity to Hazel.

Second Coming of Golf

Here is an article about a second coming of a world famous golfer. Something about Second Comings and Golf.

http://www.cybergolf.com/golf_news/the_second_coming

Golf Courses?

Why would you start a book with golf courses, that has nothing to do with golf and then spend thirty pages after talking about golf, when the book has nothing to do with golf. Ask Walker Percy, because I have no idea.

I really did not enjoy this book and have not spent a whole lot of time thinking about it, with it being the end of the semester and all that, but what would be the benefit of beginning a book called The Second Coming at a golf course?

The only thing that I have been able to come up with is that it is the perfect place to begin having flashbacks. Golf is a boring game, regardless of what my husband thinks, and there is nothing to do while golfing but think and trip over bunkers. Will Barrett has every right to trip over his own feet and have flashbacks, golf is something that is meant to be played by the individual. This book is so much a thing that takes place in the mind that it only makes sense that you would have this book begin at a golf course. When playing golf you are not even supposed to talk if anyone is about to swing to hit the ball. Of course! Golf is the perfect game to be playing at the beginning of this very individual centered book. It all makes perfect sense now...sort of.

Strawberries

I was just reading back over my post about O'Connor's Wise Blood and realized that I really liked it and I am not sure why. Apart from my affection for the child likeness Emery, the characters are really weird. Hazel Motes is basically a child molester who likes to walk on rocks, The preacher is a big fat liar, Emery is a creeper, The preacher's daughter is a child temptress....who knows.

Enoch Emery. Child in a Man's Body.

Now that I am getting farther through the blogs it is becoming much easier because O'Connor is definitely fresh in my mind. She was the second to last book that we read and she was also the author that I did my paper on. I love Flannery O'Connor. I had never actually read any thing by or about her before this class and I am very glad that we did read about her. She was a very interesting woman and a woman who I thought could have done some really great things if she had not died so young.

Wise Blood was a somewhat bizarre book but was such a fun read. The characters were strange, but not so terribly strange that you could not identify with them at least a little bit.

My favorite character in the book was definitely Enoch Emery. He was a strange little perverted man who possessed an almost lover-like devotion to Hazel Motes. It did not matter how mean Hazel was to him, even to the point of hitting Emery over the head with a rock and leaving him in a field. He just kept coming back, which I thought was an odd mix of pathetic and adorable.

He was not a good man by any stretch of the imagination. He was the creeper from the Sunday paper who peeks around the bushes at work watching women swimming in a pool. But even that is somehow written in a way that does not creep you out as much as makes you giggle a little bit at how very ridiculous a character he is. He is written in as what seems to be a child in a grown man's body. He sits with the rest of the kids waiting to see King Kong only to find out it is a man in an ape suit. He is not the main character in this book but I think he is one of the stars.

Harry Potter is not Jesus

So when I was looking around for some examples of poorly done Christ figures in literature, one of the first things I found was claims that Harry Potter is written as a Christ figure. Check it out for yourself

http://www.beliefnet.com/Entertainment/Books/2002/11/Harry-Potter-Christ-Figure.aspx

Too many Chirst figures,

Aragorn as the returning king in Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien, is obviously a type of Christ figure. He saves his nation blah blah blah. I really like this book and the movie as well. I have very little to complain about and far too much to praise this book about so I am going to go off subject instead.

I think that far too many authors, secular and Christian, but Christian especially, write too many Christ characters into books. It seems like every book has some type of Christ that can be found within it's pages. I think it makes the books that do the Christ figures well, less powerful just by the sheer amount of people who find it useful for their purposes to throw Christ in some way onto their pages. The story of Christ is a good one, and it translates well into a lot of fiction, but sometimes, it does not.

I personally think that Descent into Hell was one of these books that tried the whole Christ thing and epically failed. Stanhope takes on the struggles of his friend selflessly and willingly, but it makes me ask, so what? Who cares if Stanhope takes this burden on? He even says that the burden is not so great because it has nothing to do with him except for that he is taking it from her. What sacrifice is it to take someone's burden when it does not burden you?

So as a warning, stop writing Christ into books if there really is not a place for Christ to fit into the story. Or else.

Pandemic Preperation, Perelandrian Style

Are you worried about the swine flu? Do you love Perelandra by C.S. Lewis? Then this is the site for you.

This is a swine flu preparedness page put together by a nature research site called Perelandra Ltd. Enjoy!
http://www.perelandra-ltd.com/Pandemic_Preparation_W1725.cfm

We are not in Narnia anymore.

When we were told that we were going to be reading Perelandra, I was so excited, mostly because I am a huge fan of The Chronicles of Narnia. It is such a huge group of stories that the world of Narnia comes alive whether you want it to or not. It is hard to not have your imagination captured by the sights and experiences of the characters within the books. This is something that as an adult I have enjoyed reading much more that I enjoyed reading as a child, something that I am still somewhat surprised by, simply because this is a book for children. It is a story for kids to use their imaginations and travel to Narnia, expertly guided by C.S. Lewis himself.

This is what I was expecting from Perelandra, and it definitely did not deliver. I realize that it was not written for the same reason as Narnia and is not the same type of story that Narnia is. I still had wrong expectations and they truly did get in the way of me enjoying this book.

It started off in an odd way and I think that also went in to making it a weird book. I mean a guy going to some other guys house only to be told that he has to help the other guy into a coffin and send him off into Outer Space with an alien that is in the house but he just cannot see it. Well, sorry Lewis, you lost me with the coffin into Outer Space.

One of the other things that really threw me off was the way of the Perelandrian lady. She was an adult, beautiful by Ransom's estimation, but so very childlike that it just was not believable.

Almost forgot. Ransom's race through the ocean on the back of turtles or whatever they were, not believable. Just saying. Could not suspend my disbelief for this book, probably to my detriment.

Adela 2.0

So, my fear of the coffee shop (mentioned in my earlier Williams post) was turned into somewhat of a success. I coined a term that has been used by Dr. Mitchell as well as some of my fellow classmates every once and a while for the rest of the semester. This term is Adela 2.0, which is probably the best way to describe Wentworth's obsession with his imaginary Adela Hunt. If anyone knows anything about technology, usually the idea of an upgrade, or moving from 1.0-2.0 is a good thing. You know that after a year or so of using your upgraded technology, when you look back at the original it is blank and bland. Go inform Wentworth of this, he cannot for the life of him figure out why he would want to turn his upgrade in for the original.

Descent into Hell isn't lying

So reminiscing back to Descent into Hell by Charles Williams, and looking back over the other blogs on the subject, I am reminded how much I did not like this book. Part of not liking this book probably stems from the fact that I absolutely did not understand a lick of it. I remember hearing that we were going to the coffee shop to talk about the book, I was terrified. I had not understood any of the things I had read, and I had pushed myself through reading it all. Now that I am a little more removed from the painful reading of the book and have sat through two discussions on the book I think I know why I did not like it. First of all, it is so totally removed from reality that I could not connect with any of the characters, which I think is important to really enjoy a book. Secondly, there were no characters that were likable. Now there are people I feel sorry for, like the lady who stares has this awful thing following her all the time but she gets help with that from Stanhope and then she is just as crazy and bizarre as the rest of this cast of characters. The most likable character for me in the book is the nameless ghost who committed suicide before the book ever started. That is not a good sign when there are no good living people.

Hold on, just had a little thought there. Of course there would not be many good people by any measure in an actual descending into hell. It would be ludicrous to have a bunch of saints sitting around talking about how great they are and how good God is if they are all descending into hell. Now I know that is most likely not what Charles Williams was thinking as he wrote it, but it certainly makes me feel better about hating all of his characters!

Now that I have had this personal discovery of why I think I hate all of the characters, my memory is fading from a red hot hate of this book to a much more gray neutral feeling. Charles Williams, I do not hate your book anymore, now we can be Facebook friends.

Want All Natural Ingredients?

Look no further than perelandranatural.com! Here you can find all of those amazing foods you read about in the novel.......err....or maybe just organic food in Brooklyn. Check it out:

http://www.perelandranatural.com

Two Reasons I Dislike Perelandra

There is a part of me that just doesn’t like Lewis’ Perelandra, and I’m not entirely sure why. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the imagination and creativity involved in portraying a utopia such as Perelandra. It’s just the idea of a book revolving around a utopia that gets me. The world is just too perfect and innocent, as personified by the Green Lady. It had a static nature to it that didn’t satisfy me. Yes, I know the book has a plot, but something inside me likes the idea of a fall followed by redemption rather than there be no fall at all. I want there to be a Christ figure. One could argue that Ransom is that figure, but he serves more as one to stop a fall rather than a redeemer from one.

Another reason for my dislike of the novel is my expectation before I read it. Since I had always heard the trilogy referred to as a space trilogy, I expected a story more reminiscent of Star Wars or Star Trek, complete with futuristic technology and intergalactic struggles. Instead, what Lewis gives in Perelandra is just the opposite, a primitive world with no struggle whatsoever. This did actually interest me at first. If anything I was caught off guard, but in the end I was still left wanting some sort of struggle that was more than just the end of the un-man.

Perhaps I want the inhabitants of Perelandra to experience and undergo what we as humans have had to experience as a result of our fall. Without a fall, we would not be able to fully grasp the greatness of God. Similarly, I think Perelandrians’ view of Maleldil is lacking since they lack a fall. Light is much brighter when viewed from a dark perspective. All in all I think my dislike for the story Perelandra is a good thing because the book made me appreciate the redemption found in reality.

Whiskey Priest Music

So apparently there is some guy in Oregon that read The Power and the Glory and liked it so much that he now calls himself "Whiskey Priest". You can check him out here:

http://www.myspace.com/whiskeypriest

A Glimmer of Hope

Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory was interesting to me. To be honest, it took me a while to get into it. It in a way had a post-apocalyptic feel to it as though the world, or at least the Christian world, is on the verge of extinction. Even the fact that it is set in Mexico made it feel strange to me (maybe because I kept thinking of the setting of the movie Nacho Libre, staring Jack Black). However, amid all of the bleakness and despair, hope of redemption remains alive in the last priest. He has compassion toward people that find themselves living in a wasteland in which their religion has all but been taken away. The priest provides this glimmer of redemption throughout the story, performing last rites and praying with people in an effort to give them hope while he is on the run from the authorities. Even after the priest’s martyrdom, the other characters, particularly the lieutenant, seem to realize that there must be satisfaction and hope somewhere.

The bottom line is: I liked The Power and the Glory. The idea of being the last glimmer of hope in a world of darkness really appealed to me. Though quite the imperfect type, I do think the priest can be viewed as a type of Christ, one who carries redemption with him.

Classically Greene

I went looking for pictures of Graham Greene so that I could put a face with the book and here you have it. If you Google Image his name you will see at least half a dozen pictures that look like they are in exactly the same position, he is just in different clothes. Apparently, this is the classic Greene pose. He definitely looks like a thinker!

The Power and The Priest's Evil Daughter

In the Power and the Glory by Graham Greene, there is a lot going on. If you aren't careful, like me you can quickly become confused by the different characters and what is going on. I did not enjoy this book as much as The Man Who Was Thursday simply for the character of the Priest's daughter.

No one likes to see a lonely little girl. Least of all, me. Not much from this book has stayed with me this long, but that surely has. The Whiskey Priest's poor daughter who did nothing to deserve what she was living, but because of her father's sins is paying a dear price. Knowing that her mother and father are both ashamed of her because of what she stemmed from is just painful to read.

So many times our actions leave behind things and people that may resemble the Priest's daughter. Greene probably did not pluck her character out of the clouds. His writing of the character of Brigitta is something that he likely saw on a daily basis, much the same way that we do.

To a certain extent, I think that Brigitta is taken as a somewhat humorous character, very silly in some of the things that she says and the actions that she does, but I think that she is also a character that is not a product of her choosing.

G.K. Chesterton's Quotable Moments

When trying to find something to add to the beautiful collection here on the blog about Chesterton, I found this link to some famous quotes from Chesterton's works. The first one on the page says;
"Misers get up early in the morning; and burglars, I am informed, get up the night before." - Tremendous Trifles.
http://chesterton.org/acs/quotes.htm
This is definitely a site to at least skim through. Some of them will give you a little smile here at finals week!

The Start of the End

As I begin my first blog on this site, I realize I have definitely started at the end of the semester. Our final is scheduled for tomorrow, that mystery of a final and I am about to begin my first blog of the semester. Better late than never. While strolling back through my notes and flipping through G.K. Chesterton's The Man Who was Thursday, I am reminded about how much I loved this book. It was my favorite book from the semester and was glad that it was the one that we started with. It was filled with twists and turns, totally a book to keep you on the edge of your seat. While reading the book and even now I think about one of the dominant ideas in the book, the overwhelming motion of the group mentality. One man can keep a whole group of policemen into thinking that all of the others are anarchists while keeping them to fearful to speak out.

So often we are just like these policemen, we make decisions that we think are appropriate to the group of people that we are in league with. Sometimes the decisions that we make are such that all they do is keep everyone socially comfortable Sometimes these decisions are similar to those within The Man Who was Thursday, in that they keep everyone locked up in fear and lies. Let's all think about this book the next time we go to make a decision that will only keep us and those around us from seeing what's really going on. I don't want to be a policeman anarchist.

Music and Wise Blood

I found out, there are a lot of songs that are based on the Book. Here are a few I found.

One I couldn't find was Gang of Four's "A Man With A Good Car." but here are the lyrics.

http://www.metrolyrics.com/a-man-with-a-good-car-lyrics-gang-of-four.html

"High Water for Charlie Patton" by Bob Dylan features the Lyrics "Well, the cuckoo is a pretty bird, she warbles as she flies/I'm preaching the Word of God, I'm putting out your eyes"

and finally, from what I found, U2's "Please" features the line "your sermon on the mount from the hood of your car."

Namarie

This is JRR Tolkien, reciting in one of his created languages, Quenya, an elven language, his poem "Namarie", Which sung by Galadrial in "The Lord of the Rings"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6de_SbVUVfA

I find it haunting and beautiful. Where did he come up with this stuff!

Wise Blood character Analysis . . . I hate most of them

While I enjoyed Wise Blood, I did find there was something interesting about the Characters. I didn't like any of them! Well, that's not entirely true, but one character in a book is hardly what one should have to become a fan of the book. I felt that the book itself was well written, and the story was interesting, but without characters I care about, characters who either change my life, or it effects me depending on what happens to them.

First off is main character Hazel Motes. The pastor of the Church of Christ without Christ. One who likes the idea of church, but not the idea of God and a Savior. It's an interesting concept, and probably one that, if it really became something, would probably draw a curious crowd. Hazel is zealous and fervent, but he's also stubborn, unreasonable, and blind to nearly everyone and everything around him at times. Only towards the end of the book, when he finds God and blinds and punishes himself, does he become a character you can actually hold feeling for. He becomes a quiet and contemplative person, however, I don't believe he went the best route of what he did. but he became someone who believes in something, and that is something many don't have in this culture.

The next characters are the Blind Preacher and his Daughter. The Blind preacher tries to be a holy man, but he has no faith in God, not really. Haze hates him, but admires him in a strange way, Haze being the opposite of a God Fearing Man. However, He didn't actually blind himself, as Hazel Motes discovers, and you immediately lose respect for him. His daughter, while she only wants a better life for herself, she uses Haze to meet her gains to find love where her father wouldn't give it to her. She is a harlot of sorts, throwing herself at Haze, and ultimately becoming a Mary figure with Haze's "New Jesus."

Hoover Shoats, the Evangelist, is the epitome of the everyday moneymaking Preacher. And he adapts Hazel's message to his own gains. He even hires a look-alike preacher to take over where Hazel refuses. The Look alike preacher is killed by Haze, and you don't really even care.

Mrs. Flood, the landlady, has a major, though disturbing change. Her character originally didn't care about Haze. She thought him mad after blinding himself, and plotted to marry him so they she could make money off of him and put him into a home. She however falls in love with him and tries to take care of him. She does get him in the end, when Haze's body is delivered to her house. She lets him know he can stay with her, free of charge.

The only character I really gave a pence about was Enoch Emery. He's a slightly crazy, perhaps manic young man who follows Haze around, trying to give him advice. He even explains to Hazel that he had the Wise Blood and he knows things. His blood tells him that Haze needs a new Jesus, so He steals a mummy from the Museum to give to Haze. The Last you see of Enoch is him stealing a Gorilla costume, running around, just trying to make friends apparently. But he only succeeds in scaring people off.

OK, I didn't like most characters. But perhaps that's the point. You don't like everyone you meet, and you never will. Maybe that's one of the many points that O'Connor was trying to convey. Not everyone is likable, and perhaps most aren't. But perhaps, even they have a story to tell.

Saruman the White,,, Pathetic

One of the most important parts in JRR Tolkien's The Return of the King was changed for the movie. While I understand the change of the death of Saruman for the change of the ending without the Battle for Hobbiton, I still feel as if the book shows you truly how far the once "White Wizard" falls.

It is found that mercy is seemingly what does him in, in the end. first is the kindness of Treebeard, who finding Saruman a pitiful creature, lets him go, allowing him to escape from the party for the first time.

However, this could not have done much for Saruman as the party meets him on the road with Wormtongue on the way to Elrond's home. They do not even recognize him at first, only seeing him as a poor decrepit beggar. Once again, mercy was extended to him. Gandalf and Galadriel offer a peace and their help to the fallen Wizard, but Saruman scorns them, his pride even at his pitiful, powerless state stopping anyone from helping him anymore. He cries out a curse to them that his demise will be the death of all of them. The party leaves him be to whither.

However, Saruman still had a role to play. In the latter battle for Hobbiton, Saruman is found to be the leader, Sharkey, and was trying to regain some power. His once great might, thousands of orcs under the leadership of the dark lord, all gone because of some Hobbits, that Saruman found not worth his time. That which he scorned as being unimportant was his downfall. And even in the end, he tries to stab Frodo in revenge, Declaring a curse that if any Hobbit kill him, a curse would befall Hobbiton. Even then, Frodo shows him mercy, and the other hobbits do not kill him. It shows just how far he has fallen that his servant, Wormtongue gets so angry with Saruman that he stabs his master, then dies shortly after. Even if their was a curse, Wormtongue saw that it would effect none in Hobbiton.

The Demise of the once powerful being shows just how far one can fall when relying on oneself and the power of others.

Dopplegangers are all around us

I will not be the first to say, if any think like me, that Charles Williams Descent into Hell confused me. I couldn't seem to latch onto too much out of the entire thing. However one thing kept playing out in my mind."I know it's Fantasy But how in the world is this happening?" I just couldn't understand. It seemed just like any other fiction novel that was modern day (well past) that was just telling a story. But the story was so out there, I couldn't grasp it.

The only thing that really connected with me was the intense spirituality of Battle Hill. This was a section of the world where the spiritual seeped into the reality with such force that the fantastic and the spiritual became living and breathing.

The past and present meld as characters from the past meet those of the present, and as these characters move around and through Heaven and Hell.

There are two stories that coincide through the stories that are the two opposite sides of those dealing with these cries of the past. The first is Pauline, who is terrified to meet her true self to find who she really is because of the doppleganger that haunts her. So as a real hero, Stanhope takes the burden upon himself, quoting Galatians 6:2, which reads to bear each others burdens so you can fulfill the will of Christ. While normally taken metaphorically, Stanhope takes it literally, Taking Pauline's fears so that she can face her fear, herself.

This seems to speak to a persons unwillingness to see themselves as they truly. It often takes an honest friend to get a person to take a good look at themselves. The taking of bible verses literally is probably how many need to approach the bible. All in the Word is not symbolic or metaphorical.

However, the other character Wentworth descends into hell, as he makes a false representation of the woman he loves who doesn't love him back. Her image keeps him alive and at times seems almost more real than he. The fact that he makes her perfect and can't let go shows the true ego and that man cannot and should not have a kind of human perfection, for it is unattainable and leaves us wanting more of what we cannot have. We descend a silver rope into our own dark pit.

The Dark Tower (Book four in the Space Trilogy)

I was looking for some fun things with the Space trilogy and came across this. Apparently, there were to be more. Or at least, Lewis had more writings about Ransom. I found it looking stuff up on wikipedia. Apparently it was published posthumously and unfinished. It's called The Dark Tower. Check it out, it looks pretty interesting, I thought.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Tower_(1977_novel)

The Evil of Imagination

Perelandra will probably never cease to amaze me at the way that Lewis writes it. His intriguing story is only the smallest part of it. The best part for me are the characters.

My favorites being Ransom, the willing if somewhat initially inept hero, and the Evil Weston, who seems to be no longer human in his evil ways. He brings the evil into the world, the "Snake in the Garden" of Perelandra is nonetheless quite convincing in his arguments. He has one argument that stands out to me above all others in the book however, his trying to get the Green Lady to the fixed lands.

He uses the imagination as the gateway to opening the mind of the uncorrupted to the thought of sinning. It is a brilliant argument if i do say so myself. The Green Lady tries to explain to him that Maleldil has forbidden them from going over to the fixed lands, that the moving lands are theirs to keep.

But Weston responds Brilliantly:

"But he has never forbidden you to think about it. Might that not be one of the reasons why you are forbidden to do it - so that you may have a Might Be to think about, to make Story about as we call it?"

He makes it seem as if story telling itself is evil, which it might be. But that is not his point. His thought is to make the Lady think, which she is able to do. Why was she forbidden to go to the Fixed Lands? Was it because Maleldil wanted her to think about what was on the island while never actually going to it. He explains what making a story is to her. While it doesn't work, it plants in curiosity, making her wonder what was there in the fixed lands. Why couldn't she go? And in his mind, the more she thought and imagined, the more she would want to go, to discover for herself if her thoughts on the place was really how the fixed lands were.

GK Cherterton and Guinness

Found this interesting. This is a story on how the Father Brown Stories by GK Chesterton Changed someone's life. In

fact, it was late actor Sir Alec Guinness. Look how.

http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?id=6679&CFID=22235190&CFTOKEN=20746784

Revolt is Revolting

“There again,” said Syme irritably, “what is there poetical about being in revolt ? You might as well say that it is poetical to be sea-sick. Being sick is a revolt. Both being sick and being rebellious may be the wholesome thing on certain desperate occasions; but I’m hanged if I can see why they are poetical. Revolt in the abstract is—revolting. It’s mere vomiting.”

Quite possibly my favorite quote from the entire book. Allow me to explain it. This comes in at the very beginning of the book where Syme is talking to Gregory, the first (and honestly, only) real anarchist in the novel. Gregory was just explaining that as a poet he will always find fault in things and write about it. The new becomes the same and the same isn't as good as the new. Gregory flings this in Syme's face, trying to get him to admit that poetry is complaint.

However, in grand prose, Syme explains (apparently quite loudly) that being rebellious is the most unpoetic thing that one can do. He compares it to vomiting and being sick. He explains that while they both have their places in the world, they should be used sparingly, for as no one wants to see vomiting, no one wants a rebellious poet.

When said like that, I would say that he has the entire thing wrong. However, I thought of this example. If every poet is truely in revolt, finding the faults in life, and even in praising them, he becomes like every other poet, and other wise stagnant. Nothing new came come from writing about problems with no solutions. Like vomiting, it's been done once, and seeing it again is just unpleasant. Find something new for us to chew on. Whether or not we chew it or spit it out, at least it's not vomit in the same way of everyone else.

The Apology

Yeah, this is just a random post to say what I need to. All My posts are going up now. I've had most of them on my computer for a while. But I didn't have a computer for the first half of the class, and I didn't officially join the blog until about a week ago. So, yeah, here they all come.

The Good in Evil

The only other admirable character in Graham Greene's The Power and The Glory aside from the Whiskey Priest is the character who is trying to bring in the priest, the Lieutenant.

The Evil I am talking about is the establishment. No I'm not trying to be a hippy or anarchist, though both of those options have presented themselves to me as interesting alternatives. No, I mean the political movement that presents the lieutenant with the tools and the authority to go around, killing innocent people to round up people who may or may not be bad. It's the intense hatred of the catholic church that the lieutenant has that makes him the cold man whose entire purpose in life is to kill the last remaining priest in Mexico.

However, the biggest change in the novel comes not from the main character, but in a secondary character that is trying to kill him. He and the whiskey priest are nearly mirror images at the beginning of the novel, then they seem to almost switch roles. The Priest is cowardly and focused on nothing but himself. He seems to care not for the people that he meets and he constantly seeks a way to save himself. He is an almost disgusting human being towards the beginning of the novel. However, The Lieutenant is also revolting. With his maddening loyalty to a political party that he believes in without thinking, and with his near selflessness in that he wants to kill the Priest not for glory or fame, but for a better world for Mexico.

However, the change wrought in both almost (But not quite) Switches the characters. The Priest gets the Lieutenants selflessness and goes out of his way and at his own peril to help a man that he doesn't know. And even through his nervousness and his self preservation telling him to leave, he stays with the dying man. The Lieutenant does not become cowardly, but he loses his sense of unquestionable loyalty to his politics. He questions whether the whiskey priest was evil and what he should do now. He gains the Whiskey Priest's sense of loss and sense of direction. The fact that the Priest isn't a monster like he thought rocks his world, causing him to question perhaps other lies the politics he listened to told him to do an think. Perhaps the Lieutenant becomes the Whiskey Priests replacement, a continuation of the character lead off to his death at the end of the book.

Our Axis Tilted.

This is my last blog this semester. It's hard to believe we've come to the end; this class and the authors we read have impacted me in a powerful way. The last author I'm writing about is, strangely, the one with whom I am most familiar and whom I have loved the longest.

C.S. Lewis has been influential in my Christian growth from the time I was eight years old. I suppose that is why it has been so difficult for me to write on him, for his writing has helped shape me into who I am today. I learned something new about Lewis, however, when we were studying Perelandra. I will attempt, here in my last blog, to do justice to one of my favorite authors of all time. This new understanding in a way ties this whole semester together...

When I hear the title Perelandra, one instance - to me, one of the most amazing in the entire trilogy - that rings through my mind in found in the beginning. When Lewis, the self-named friend of Ransom, enters the house, he encounters the Supernatural. In the presence of something otherworldy and mysterious, someone totally outside of his understanding, his very perspective is altered.

What one actually felt at the moment was that the column of light was vertical but the floor was not horizontal - the whole room seemed to have heeled over as if it were on board ship. The impression, however produced, was that this creature had reference to some horizontal, to some whole system of directions, based outside the Earth, and that its mere presence imposed that alien system on me and abolished the terrestrial horizontal...it was...

...profoundly disturbing. It would not fit into our categories...

This is the realm the great Christian authors of the 20th Century beckon us to enter.

G.K. Chesterton did it through the Absurd.
Graham Greene finds Grace in Despair.
Charles Williams displayed the Fantastic.
C.S. Lewis shows us the horror of the Terrible Good.
J.R.R. Tolkien tells a Myth to call us to Truth.
Flannery O'Connor gives the Grotesque.
Walker Percy portrays the Mystery of the Unspeakable.

All used distortion; all show us our world, our society, our faith, and our own souls, through forcing us to enter into a completely new horizontal. They cause us to face the Divine and have our own perceptions destroyed. We are left disillusioned, unbalanced, and tilted off of our axis. We realize that it is we ourselves that are off-centered. In the face of the never-changing, unexplainable Truth, His vertical brings us to an entire new existence of being. We cannot be the same after encountering Him.

We cannot be the same after reading authors such as these.
They portray GOD in ways that do not fit into our categories.
We are left disturbed...exactly where we should be.

Excerpts from an Interview with Percy

These are a few of my favorite responses by Percy from his interview with Linda Whitney Hobson in 1985.

Q: Why especially [the peculiar predicament of the late twentieth-century man] in the South?
A: Well, in writing The Second Coming, I found the South, and particularly North Carolina, a valuable setting because of the peculiar confluence of two things that have happened in the South in the past ten or twenty years: number one, what's been called the power shift--the shift of power and money to the South. For the first time since the Civil War, the South is getting rich. And the other thing is the tremendous re-Christianization of the South--high-powered evangelical Christianity. Thus, it's of value to me to take a man like Will Barrett and set him down in the South: he finds himself in what the psychiatrists call a "double bind"--a no-win situation. From the beginning, and all through his life he has experienced a loss of sovereignty which has occurred in the lives of most of us as well, even though we appear to be freer, to have more, to be more individualistic, to have access to more than any people on earth. Despite this, a loss of sovereignty has occurred so that we are more subject to invisible authority--scientists and so forth. We now think of what one should do in a certain situation, not what I should do. Will Barrett is a man who, whatever his faults, has reclaimed sovereignty; he demands to know what it's all about--and he always has.

Q: As long as we're discussing dramatic conflict, let's discuss the conflict between you and classical psychiatry. The relationship between Will and Allie in The Second Coming seems to belie what psychologists and psychiatrists counsel people to do these days. They tell people to sit down and come to know and approve of themselves by themselves, and there's a fallacy in that kind of solitary pep talk.
A: Yes. You have to define that self through ordeal, which the psychologists don't tell people. And God knows, it takes an awful lot of ordeal--Will has to almost shoot himself and Allie has to go crazy--and what I'm saying is that it takes an awful lot these days to come to a sense of self. It doesn't do any good to be told how to live, and it doesn't do any good to tell yourself how to live. You have to learn it yourself, through ordeal. And the language fails, unless you do it by ordeal.

Return the Unutterable

Walker Percy uses imagery in describing Alli's greenhouse that seems to build a cathedral in its glory, not an overgrown, abandoned garden.

"The sun behind him was reflected from a bank of windows...
A steep copper hood, verdigrised green-brown, shaded the front door like a cathedral porch...
Iron spoikes and fleurs-de-lis sprouted from the roof peek..."

Inside the greenhouse, Percy is depicting a moment of holiness that breaks away from the game of golf and pretending to enjoy spending time with people Will Barrett really cannot stand. Hidden away from the clean-cut, manicured, controlled environment of Will's world, he stumbles upon Allie's home: a place of wildness, growth, and words that do not seem to make sense. The truest things said in The Second Coming are the words of the girl who has forgotten everything, does not understand much, and cannot speak well. In Allie's forgetfulness, Will finds remembrance...and so should we.

Percy's Christianity is hearkening back to the days of the Medieval; of cathedrals, wildness, mystery, and fewer words found in the awe of the Supernatural. Explanations are not given, for they are not always necessary. Crossing the bridge backwards from the Enlightenment to the Medieval, we discover something that we have lost.

Allie's eyes see things differently. "Her gaze was steady and unfocused. Either she was not seeing him...or else she was seeing all of him because all at once he became aware of himself..."
Allie speaks differently. "She spoke slowly and carefully as if she were reading the words on his face..."
Allie lives differently.
Allie is different. She is the opposite of the Enlightenment - of Modernity. When she speaks, her words are neither expected nor always completely understood; they are mysterious, but they are sincere. They are true. Near the end of the novel, Will discovers his deep love for her. He also discovers that she has a beautiful voice, and he asks her why she has not sung before. I didn't feel like it. I stopped...because I thought I had to sing. Will then asks her if she will sing in the future. Yes...because I don't have to.
Allie is not rational. She is wild, and she continues to confound Will every minute he is with her. He cannot comprehend her; but he understands what she says. He translates her to the world. She holds him tight and lifts him up.
In the cathedral of the greenhouse, Will encounters the mystery of Allie. He cannot explain her, but he does not need to. In his unanswered questions lies his love for her. In awe of who she is - without rational reasons of why she is so - Will is saved from the society that was suffocating him. He remembers...his modernity is succeeded by her simplicity and complexity. They are "concealed" - held safe by each other. Allie "hoists" Will as he continues to fall; Will interprets Allie when no one understands her. They are "revealed" - they find love as they bare their hearts to each other.

In the cathedral, we remember the days when we entered in, not with demands for explanations, but with a heart overwhelmed by a Power so much greater than us. In the inexplicable we found peace, comfort, and purpose. In the mysterious, we found Truth. We embraced Love. We surrendered. We believed that words would never be enough...we relied on the "groanings that cannot be uttered." We were dependent on a relationship that could not exist by our lives alone, but on the life of Another in communion with our own. When we fell, He lifted us. When we could not speak, He interceded for us. Why do we not return?

Green House Effect

Allie seeks refuge with a green house. The green house is constantly used to grow things and to cultivate life. The green house is defined by the color green, the word house, and the life that it gives.

The color green is the color that is traditionaly used to represent life. Allie seeks refuge in the place of life. This ruined house is now being used to cultivate new life in the place of the ruined life of Allie. Though she was once imprisoned in an assylum, she is now free, living in the remains of what once held life. The life of the plants destroyed the walls of the house. Now, in the abundant life of nature, the life of Allie is able to be cultivated and allowed to explode upon the world.

Without the word house, we would not be able to understand that the green house was actually a house. If we just called it green there would be no definition to it. It is a house of life. It is meant to hold and to cultivate life. Though the house is broken, it is still able to cause life. It does not actually cultivate and contain anymore, but it establishes. In the establishment of new life, one can grow. The fact that it is broken indicates that life has no bounds. One can do almost anything and there are no boundaries or rules to living.

This new life is extravagent. Life is now free and wild, left to do as it pleases. The laws and rules of society are virtualy inexistant within the confines of the broken green house. Now, within the shattered walls of the life house, Allie is allowed to live with no restriction and with joy. She is able to have fun and love what she does. She thinks as she wants and speaks in a way that she understands.

Let's all go live in the wildness of nature.

Hazel Motes

Hazel Motes exibits the signs of one who has been tainted by religion, marked by sin, and saved by Christ.

His grandfather constantly berrated him and badgered him. He threatened him with the name of Jesus. Instead of being the Savior, Jesus was to Motes a monster in the closet, someone hunting him through the trees in the his imagination. Motes lives his life hiding and running from the scary Jesus which his mother used as a punishment, his grandfather used as a threat, and culture used as a restraining rod.

Sin marks Motes throughout his entire life. He was hurt in the war because of his cowardice. He was scorned by Mrs. Watts because of his desire to experience sexual pleasure. He was scorned by Onnie Jay Holie because of his unerring desire to run from Jesus. Even the sin of his car marked him. He believed that the car was his ultimate escape. In essence, he is a modern day Jonah. Though his whale was his car, it eventually spit him up.

He ended up losing his car and being saved by the Jesus he was running from. The patrolman shoved his car off the cliff and allowed him to see God coming toward him in the horizon. This sight caused him to blind himself; for, as he was face-to-face with the Almighty, all he saw was his sin. What can you see other than all your evil when you are in the presence of holiness? He blinds himself so that he doesn't have to look at what he has done and so that he can examine his internal desires to be with Jesus. He is also able to focus on the pain that his sin has caused as he does his penance.

He is definitely tainted by religion but saved by Jesus

Scouring the Shire

The Lord of the Rings may be one of the most amazing works of fiction the Tolkien ever wrote. Or it may not be. Either way, it's up to you to decide; however, the makers of the movie left out one of the scenes that would have made the movie into the phenomenon that the book was. By leaving out the Scouring of the Shire, they caused the change in the hobbits to go by unnoticed, the extension of Sauron's evil is not fully understood, nor is the extent of Aragorn's power.

In the book, the hobbits swoop into the Shire and save the day. Frodo is seen as the leader. He returns to his home far older than his years. He restrains the hobbits from killing the men who had overrun the village. He also takes part in the fight, not to mention that he is the voice of the hobbits. He makes every demand and is the headman for the hobbits. The rest of the hobbits fight with courage and bravery. They each have a special task to perform and perform it with excellence.

By leaving out this chapter, the movie producers failed to show the extension of evil. Sin is an all encompassing and all corrupting entity. Tolkien wanted to show that even the precious Shire is sussptible to evil. Evil can overcome everyone, no matter how pure you may be. The wickedness of Sauron has tainted all of Middle Earth. The Hobbits of the Shire are no exclusion.

By leaving out this scene, the producers also avoided showing the purging power of the King. Aragorn's power has extended all throughout Middle Earth. The Hobbits are living and breathing representations of the changed lives that the King has enstilled. His arm will eventually begin to reclaim the area surrounding the Shire, and the Hobbits have been marked by him. Aragorn and his power are not going to be stopped, but he is going to purge the evil of Sauron from the world.

The movie people should have left the scene in the movie.

From Chesterton to Percy: Christianity and Literature

Clearly, the main task of apologetics for the novelist is the defense of man and not the defense of God.

God is completely able to handle himself.

I have thoroughly enjoyed our class this semester. The books we have read have all (save for Perelandra) brought major issues and questions that modern man must wrestle with in order to be able to see clearly the Gospel and man's need for God. Whether its Chesterton's crazy anarchists, Greene's whiskey priest, Williams' Stanhope the poet, Tolkien's triumphant King, O'Connor's Haze Motes, or Percy's crazy greenhouse Allie, there has been a constant stream of good literature (interrupted by the ridiculous Perelandra) that has served to defend man and to defend him well.

So, in my final blog for the class; I wanted to go through each book (even Perelandra) and give some brief thoughts.

GK Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday

This book was perhaps one of most bizzare books/plots I have ever read up until Charles Williams' Descent into Hell (more on that later). What I gathered mostly from this book is that things are rarely as they seem and that sometimes we need a real rockin' party at the end of the novel to help us to be reconnected with God. Even though it is hard to draw alot from it, this book was a very decent story in its own right.


Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory

This was my second favorite novel and one that I think spoke powerfully and clearly. The whiskey priest is not a very admirable individual until the end of the book when he is brought to the light of salvation and he finally accepts the destiny he has of being the last priest and the last fireworks of God in an age of a triumphant secular humanism. Greene goes right for our complacency and our comfort by teaching us that if we really believe something to be true, then to be authentic we must be willing to pay the price, to step forward and die for it. He also shows us how God uses pathetic, broken human beings to make a statement about grace to the entire world. At the same time, Greene reveals the heart of corrupt; work-less religion that takes stipend for the government to save its own skin and no longer is a prophetic voice against madness and oppression. Magnificent book.


Charles Williams' Descent into Hell

I like some of ideas Williams expresses in the novel, but the plot of the novel is so bizzare that I simply cannot connect with it. This was the second worst novel in the whole bunch. I did like the idea of sharing one another's burdens in the literal sense and what Williams did with that. I also like how Williams commentated on authenticity over facade; how withdrawing from the real will doom one to an increasingly hellish, idealistic existence, while embracing the real (and even somewhat strange and creepy) will be the way to life and true human existence. I liked those themes but the book was too hard to read.


CS Lewis' Perelandra

Horrible, simply wretched like every other attempt Lewis at fiction. This novel was not just bizzare, it was utterly ridiculous with space travel being achieved through Medieval thought rather than Eistenian physics; which is just plain stupid. The novel was obvious and the character rather incredible. It seems rather idiotic to me to devote so much of one's time to rebuking Milton for his satan and for literally having Ransom (I wonder what his name means...) fight the "Un-man." This book was so blatantly obvious and CS Lewis tries to describe God and just starts babbling incoherently to the point where one wants to hurl their book at the window to escape the abyss that has formed around one's mind.


Tolkien's The Return of the The King

Tolkien is the opposite of Lewis; which is probably why I like him. Tolkien, as Dr. Mitchell pointed out, shows God as a pinpoint of light in a very seemingly hopeless and often turmoiled world. Good and evil clash in an epic battle for the fate of Middle Earth. Hope while apparent always hangs by a thread; a constant reminder that were it not for divine help all hope would perish. Tolkien creates a truly fantastic, and immersive world; something that Lewis fails miserably at with Narnia.


Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood

O'Connor delivers with the grotesque and how grace is somehow dirty and not clean cut. Haze Motes is haunted by Jesus Christ the entire novel until he is forced into the recognition that despite his attempt at having a "Church without Christ," that he is unclean. O'Connor's grace is not sentimental and we are allowed to see evil as it really is and the way out. Good book.


Walker Percy The Second Coming

To be honest, I have not finished reading this, but I have been doing a paper on Walker Percy and Dr. Mitchell is right, I am alot like him. Time has robbed me of full enjoyment of his novel, but I like Percy the most because he speaks to our condition the best. O'Connor can truly bring out grotesque evil, but Percy brings out our lostness and our need to find our way home. He also has the amazing ability to point out the absurd and to point out that perhaps we, not the "crazies," are the insane ones.

I couldn't think of anything fun to look for. I looked up luger and both of the cars, but I decided to to step away from what I usually do. I found these quotes on answers.com.

"Since grief only aggravates your loss, grieve not for what is past."

"You live in a deranged age, more deranged that usual, because in spite of great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing."

"The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair."

I think I like the third one best. We do tend to get stuck in our ways and want to search for something, but then we get complacent.

Perception

Perception is very skewed in The Second Coming. Allie’s parents are convinced that she is a mental case because she does not know how to interact “correctly” in the world, and Allie thinks that she has to be nice to everyone so as to not make them feel uncomfortable (Percy 85). She does not act like everyone else does, and because of this, her parents put her in a mental institution. She does say funny things like “a circle of knees is more interesting than a circle of faces,” but this could be true (Percy 27). Most of the time, people judge what they see based on people’s faces or appearance. Allie was tired of everyone judging her (which is kind of funny considering that she is in a mental institution), so she stares at their knees instead. Her parents have tried everything in their power to prove that she is crazy, so when she makes the discovery that she can act and think for herself, she escapes. The world is not what she thinks it will be, however, because people do not mean what they say. Allie’s inability to speak the same way that others do only hinders her more because she views words differently than others do. She observes that “people don’t mean what they say. Words often mean their opposites” (Percy 82). Her perception of phrases like “I hate to tell you this, but…” proves that she does see through people, but as she cannot figure out to express that, she is confined to her own thoughts. That changes, however, when she meets Will.
When Will was a boy, he and his father went hunting and an “accident” took place. Will’s father was supposed to be shooting at quail, but he tells Will that he’ll have to “trust him” and he hugs him; something he never does (Percy 53-54). Will is put off by this, but he does not go home. He is “accidentally” shot by his father, but it is later in life that Will discovers that his father tried to kill him. He asks himself whether or not it was possible that he had known all along and did not realize until he was an adult what had happened (Percy 147). Is it really possible to put your own reality into motion because of a traumatic event? I think that Will ignored all of the warning signs that happened before he got shot because he did not want to admit that something was wrong with his father. When he meets Allie, he is the only one who can understand what she is saying. They understand each other because they have their own perceptions of the world. Allie and Will are a good match, not just because she can hoist him when he falls down or because he can interpret her supposed crazy speech, but because they have a better perception of what the world looks like and they can live there together.

Peacocks and Portraits

Flannery O'Connor loved peacocks. I find this, for some reason, fascinating. She owned several of them, and she always sent peacock feathers to her friends and correspondents. When Robert Lowell had a was sick (had a "spell"), she sent him a five-feet-long feather. Unimpressed, he said, “That’s all I need, a peacock feather.”

O'Connor painted a little during her last years of life. She painted a self-portrait and included - of course - a peacock. This is incredible to me, because she was very ill when she painted the very truthful portrayal of herself. She said:

“I very much like the look of the pheasant cock. He has horns and a face like the Devil. The self-portrait was made . . . after a very acute siege. . . . I was taking cortisone which gives you what they call a moon face and my hair had fallen out to a large extent due to the high fever, so I looked pretty much like the portrait. When I painted it, I didn’t look either at myself in the mirror or at the bird. I knew what we both looked like.”

These may appear to be interesting, but random facts about the life of the strange, but profound O'Connor. But they have made a connection for me - a peacock and a self-portrait has helped me understand why the writing of Flannery O'Connor penetrates through the "neatness" of Christianity. She focuses on the grotesque: the terrible, aweful, disturbing images that I at first believed could not really point to God. But she does. In dwelling in the darkness of the gutters of the earth, O'Connor makes her readers look up to heaven in desperation for the Light that she knew - that she intended - they would find.

O'Connor's said her favorite animal, a bird that is meant to symbolize the immortal soul, reminded her of the Devil. This reminds me of Wise Blood; it is a Christian novel lacks joy, peace, love, and hope, but contains despair, defeat, and death. Yet it is still Christian and portrays Truth. How?.....this is what makes her writing powerful, because it is confounding.

The peacock, a beautiful bird representing eternity, made O'Connor think of the opposite of heaven. And she liked it. She was tired of living in the society of simple, clean-cut, seemingly perfect Christianity. It is false, and she portrays it so. Real Christian faith must include the darkness, the Devil, the dirt, filth, and suffering that comes in living in opposition to the world. It's what we were promised; why do we pretend otherwise?

O'Connor graps this like no other author I have ever read before. Suffering was not just an idea to her; it was a reality; it was her life. Her lupus caused her immense pain and hardship throughout her short life, yet she did not run from it or even claim that it was unfair. The statement she made about her self-portrait is shockingly blunt and accepting. She knew she was sick; she knew what she looked like and why. She didn't have to use a mirror, and she didn't try to depict herself differently than she truly was. She did not mind being remembered for her pain, her sickness, her suffering. Neither did Hazel Motes...

Yet while she painted herself as sick, as literally dying, beside her she painted the symbol of the immortal, incorruptible soul. She shows us her uncertain, wavering life next to the certain promise of eternity. She puts ugliness by beauty, suffering by hope. She gives us a glimmer of light beyond the blind eyes, a desire for life behind the outline of the skull.

Flannery O'Connor, instead of being unimpressed, might sincerely say: "That's all I need, a peacock feather."

Percy and the Absurd

I love Walker Percy.

Some may get offended by his language, his flippancy, and maybe even his ranting arrogance to some extent; but Dr. Mitchell was right, I think a lot like Walker Percy.

One of the things I love about Percy is his use of absurd irony. When we read the description of Christians and non-believers I had to keep from laughing at loud, because (cleaning up the language a bit) I think the same way most of the time. Walker Percy loves to point out and poke fun at the absurd (I think if he did not, he would go nuts...like perhaps I going) and to really make us confront how farcical our lives really are. The suck of self is evident in all individuals trapped in our modernistic, materialistic, consumerist world; people who as Dr. Mitchell pointed out, are nothing but corpses walking around.

I made a comment to Evel and Jared on the way home from Satori that I wished we lived in the Middle Ages, because life was not boring back then. People were having to grow their own food, fight in brutal wars, and died of many illnesses...but they certainly were not purposeless and bored. We live in an absurd age, as Percy masterfully points out, and for all our science, technology, and success we live boring, pathetic, and meaningless lives. We have no one to blame but ourselves and of course Renee Descartes.

Who would write a deep, wrenching spiritual novel based on a golf course of all places? Why are all these rednecks driving around all these sophisticated automobiles and living in fancy houses? Why are pro golfers trying to be poets and reading Dante for structure? Why has our world devolved into madness that threatens to suck us into the oblivion of our self consciousness or as Evel has put it, "eats our souls?"

Pointimg out the absurd is a way of pointing out the solution: community. We need each other; we are just as pathetic, fallen, and in need as the barbarians who roamed and pillaged Europe during the early Middle Ages. As Percy show us, you take away the Jews (a sign of Judeo-Christian worldview), and we are left as Gentile savages. We have become so absurd we think we are normal and when someone like Allison comes a long, we call them crazy(when in fact, they might be more in touch with reality than we are).

How absurd is it for a young female mental patient to be the only sane one in the whole novel? Yet, we must think this is absurd to realize that it is actually the opposite: it is we who are absurd. Percy does this marvelously and his critique and powerful insight into modernity (Christian and non-Christian) is something I believe every consumerist, modern Christian should have to read.

O'Connor: Revelation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxq6S_xjCOE

Here is a six minute video on O'Connor's life and a discussion on her short story Revelation that Dr. Mitchell mentioned in class. Enjoy!

Filth is the Path to Clean

I am a sucker for people who are willing to get down and be dirty in their writing. The world is not clean no matter how much we and Haze Motes wishes to deny it. It does not matter how we try to be clean, whether that is in our "good" deeds of atonement or whether we try to eliminate the concepts of "good" and "evil" altogether (Nietzsche); the fact remains that we are not clean.

The Puritans knew this. The Puritans believed that one had to go through the muck of one's soul (thus their heavy preaching on sin and damnation) in order to be able to appreciate the grace of God that Christ was to clothe you with. This process was known as "justification" (not in the sense that is used today) and was a personal Odyssey to discover one's sinfulness in order to embrace God's forgiveness.

Only the filthy can be made clean. Haze Motes believed that he could be clean and never deal with his filth. Not surprisingly, O'Connor uses the images of mud and pigs (Prodigal Son in the pig trough anyone?) to emphasize just how messy the situation really is. Haze Motes knows he is not clean but dealing with his filth is too much for him; he would rather A) deny it or B) attempt to atone for it. What is sad is that Haze Motes will never be clean following either method; he will forever be in denial or seek to atone for his sin. He does not ever accept grace.

Grace cannot be accepted without the acknowledgment of sin, of filth. Otherwise, the human heart never bows to reality of what it has fallen from: the imago dei, the image of God. In the image of God is the contemplation, adoration, and communion with God. Haze Motes, like so many of us, do not want to have anything to do with God relationally; we want what he offers and his benefits...but we do not want him. Haze wants to be clean, but aside from restore communion with I AM, he will never be clean. His statement; "I AM clean!" is not just an adamant declaration but indirect revelation of truth: I AM clean; or I AM is clean.

Since Haze refuses to bow and seek grace from I AM clean, he will never be clean. God's grace through restored communion with the Trinity is the only way to be clean; the imputed and undisputed righteousness of the God-man Jesus Christ, Son of Man, Son of David, Son of God. Haze's attempt to have "The Church without Christ" is fundamentally flawed: there is not reason for the Church to exist without Christ. The failure of modernist, liberal Christianity is that it removed Jesus Christ from the Church and attempted to pronounce everyone clean by denying that anyone was dirty. Haze incapsulizes modernist, liberal Christianity except that unlike most "soft-hearted" liberals, Haze is in your face and not allowing you to escape the absurdity of what he is saying. It is almost as if in his pronouncements of cleanliness that he is daring someone to stand up and say, "No, you are wrong! There is good, there is evil; we are all unclean!" If he could find this one prophet left who had the same amount of passion for Christ as he had against Christ; he might believe.

But he would have to be convinced he was unclean.

Then, when he comes to grips with the fact that he is unclean; he does not seek out grace and restoration with God. Instead he goes about the task of atoning for his sin and basically keeping God off of his back. Throughout the novel, God is seeking Haze even in the midst of Haze's denials: first of sin and then of grace. Once he recognizes that he is unclean, he does what Judas did when he betrayed Christ...the straight-laced, upstanding man who "believed" in Christ goes and hangs himself. Haze Motes would never just kill himself, but instead he goes about acts of horrific mortification in order to become clean...Judas thought that he would be clean by hanging himself with remorse, Haze thinks he will be clean by blinding himself, filling his shoes with rocks, and wrapping barbed wire around his body.

You can't just acknowledge you are dirty, you also have to acknowledge that you can't make yourself clean.

Only Christ can make us clean. Our filth is a reminder of our need for God; to make the world a place governed by fake goodness and morality, robs us of the reminders that we are fallen, broken, and that what we most desperately need is the grace of God. We must beware of making the Gospel a strictly moral affair about becoming a better person; instead we must emphasize the grace of in spite of our brokeness and our uncleanness.

So, bring on the pig sty; bring on the mud; bring on the filth.

Christ will make us all clean who trust and love him.

Which actor plays Grima Wormtongue in Lord of the Rings? No ideas? His name is Brad Dourif, and I bring him up because he also played Haze in Wise Blood the movie. Check out the link if you want to see him. He hasn't changed that much.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qt_nSL1Hw1s

Why do people think they can hide in Wise Blood? Asa has a secret. Sabbath has a secret. Even Enoch has a secret (though he doesn’t really try to hide it). For that matter, no one really tries to hide their secret. I don’t want to take the easy approach and say that O’Connor made her characters have secrets that could not be hidden to show our inability to keep secrets from God. I think that they have secrets because they want to hold onto something that will impress someone who does not know them.
Asa keeps his fake blindness to himself until he realizes that no one cares about the sad blind preacher. What does that say about people? Does it say that we care about people and are interested in what they have to say until we decide that they can’t do anything for us? Asa had some sort of magical power over Haze until Haze found out that he was not blind. After that, Asa gave up on his preaching and turned to a life of begging on the street sans Sabbath. By the way, why does he give her up so easily? I have a sneaking suspicion that she’s not really his daughter, but that’s another story.
Sabbath’s “secret” that she is a “bastard” has a pretty major impact on Haze. He wanted to believe that Asa was a good preacher, but that attitude changed when he found out that Asa could not live up to his expectations of perfection. I don’t think that Sabbath tells her secret to too many people, but she probably told Haze to impress him. It didn’t really work because he was still pretty disgusted by her need to be a sex-crazed girl, and I can’t really say as I blame him. But, back to the secret thing, her secret is not one that remains hidden.
Enoch has a few secrets that are pretty ridiculous. He “hides” from the woman who bathes and he “hides” the shrunken man, but he doesn’t care if he gets caught. The woman knew that he was spying on her, and I think that she liked it because she wanted to be looked at. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have gone to the pool every day. I want to know why he was so impressed by the shrunken man. Maybe it was because it looked like something from another world. Foreign things impress most people, but Haze proves that everything can be destroyed. Maybe that is the purpose of the story. No matter how sturdy something seems (faith, shrunken men, relationships, and even people) everything can go away with the decision of one person. Nothing, not even a secret, can remain forever.