"It's Not Natural": Freud's "Uncanny" and O'Connor's "Wise Blood" Author(s): Jeffrey Gray Reviewed work(s): Source:

The Southern Literary Journal, Vol. 29, No. 1 (Fall, 1996), pp. 56-68 Published by: University of North Carolina Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20078169 . Accessed: 25/10/2012 21:20
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

University of North Carolina Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Southern Literary Journal.

http://www.jstor.org

"It's Not

Natural":

Freud's

and "Uncanny" s O'Connor Wise Blood

by Jeffrey Gray
As a writer with clear counted audience a friend an effort first ideas about the Flannery readership. complained O'Connor in the O'Connor "My to made case on and worried are the people Habit and religious over dimensions a certain God of her work, in her she once audience, letters, the and misprision is dead," such essays, note to an

who

think 92).

(O'Connor to delimit novel, Wise

Given

of her

contain?through an author's Blood, To misread O'Connor directives.

second to be Wise or at

edition?interpretations misread Blood, is, therefore, there to

of her work. struggle

as she needs As by regards ignoring

against

these

is one directive since

in particular provide we

that we may us with could not an

profit

least questioning, of reading O'Connor's Freud's may scious be, was as that

to do so will a supplement

important

supplement have. I refer to

for that novel, remarks an

otherwise

concerning

Freud. consistently O'Connor's anagogical on disparaged; true Other, terms record with in her indeed, Freud

approach Mellard to

O'Connor has suggested, her

James

the uncon

threatens

supplant opinion

psychoanalytic essay "Novelist

ones.1 We

have O'Connor's

of Freud

Carnes M. Mellard argues that Freud is "the seductive yet threatening demon of [O'Connor's] toMellard, O'Connor fears Freud because her thought and her stories and novels." According readers can easily convert her theological terms into psychoanalytic ones, can substitute the unconscious unconscious" is the of "spirit." In other words, "the Other of her unconscious (628, Mellard's emphasis). Mellard does not focus on Wise Blood, however; after the above remarks, he goes on to apply Lacanian theory to O'Connor's work in general. for the domain

FREUD AND O'CONNOR'S WISE BLOOD

57

and Believer," as a case that study

where

she speaks

of "the prejudice {Mystery many and Manners truths, but

that

sees

everything

strange concedes is not an

in the abnormal" brought to light

165). O'Connor his psychology encounter

"Freud

adequate

instrument

for understanding and Manners however,

the religious 165). provides of Wise

or the fiction

that describes Freud's but a essay

it" (Mystery

"The Uncanny," instrument he helps and

not Blood.

merely If Freud Wise

an

adequate avoids the

superlative

for an analysis us instead

"religious violence, genre. With

encounter," its troubling "The and

to understand subjectivities,

Blood's its

strange

disoriented Freud of which

and us an

indeterminate term found to to

Uncanny," both

also

offers

alternative herself 40).

"grotesque" be problematic

"gothic," and finally

categories (Mystery

O'Connor and Manners

unsatisfactory

I would
O'Connor if we do not

like briefly to give some idea of the specific resistance which

offers in the case of Wise this text Blood and to suggest I will the problems then show how that arise Freud's liberate typology its meaning from uncanny its teleology its author. open up

definition not of so much

and

ofthe or

the novel,

as its power

allowing to disturb,

us to sense the springs

its mystery. O'Connor's note to the the novel second to be edition read. of Wise Earlier Bloodleaves readers, she little doubt as to had

how

she wanted

complained,

misunderstood:

For them [the protagonist] Hazel Motes'

with such vigor to get rid ofthe ragged For to tree in the back of his mind.

integrity lies in his trying

figure who moves from tree lies Hazel's integrity

the author

in his not being able to. (5)

According century ity," critics figure, who to this reading, whose writes Hazel Motes would be one not of those "twentieth an eccentric O'Connor's is a spiritual those critics up

grotesques," as O'Connor have a kind generally

"fanaticism elsewhere this rising

is a reproach, (Mystery lead,

merely 44).

and Manners

followed saint to

arguing divine

that Hazel light. presence Even

of tortured hardest

toward

have

tried

shake

off O'Connor's

have

ended

reinscribing her reading ofWise Blood as religious allegory.2 In this way, it is

2 Lewis A. Lawson, for example, compares Hazel Motes to Saint Anthony: "Both are possessed sense of the importance of religious belief.... with an overpowering And both use self to express their realization of the gulf which separates the human from the abasement spiritual" (39). Gary M. Ciuba reads Wise Blood's end as apotheosis: "Haze ... has turned the God" facial vision often developed by the blind into the gaze of a soul which has turned its face to (79). Even Frederick Asals, in an otherwise more secular reading, writes that, at the end

58

SOUTHERN LITERARY JOURNAL

O'Connor But

herself

who

becomes them

the those

"ragged Catholics

figure" who

in the back often wrote still O'Connor of Hazel

of one's mind. to O'Connor, left with critics Motes the have as a

readers?among by the

disturbed discomfort been unable

unsavoriness this novel

of so often

her

characters?are and which readings

which

induces

to dispel lui. has ugliness,

through

anagogical

Christian The human scabs,

malgr? discomfort physical fever

some

obvious

sources: in the form blood;

the

frequent

description

of

particularly

of excrescences?pimples, the extremity character and apparent is critics,

blisters, of and, most

phlegm, the

and of course for which

gratuitousness indicated; the seeming title

violence,

little

motivation and

disturbing center

for the author's among key the

Catholic

readers

lack of moral of Wise Blood

characters. strangeness religious and other. while as well who other in this as

The to the turns

is the first In this

to the novel's ignorant

reader's to murder

uneasiness. and

story

of an

obsessive

self-mortification, depicted volitional, frequent the body, subject take as

the body?his, irretrievably and letters as outside, in relation "wise," of blood, is not

that of every "Blood," the

character bloody themselves, inhabits such

in the novel?is novel, the the body, is conscious, carriers and

characters not. Blood in

are plainly the

and yet does the we we soon

a universe,

stand the

subject. Where, to the If, following body? imbued with

Cartesian inhabited to be

convention, by spirit, an inside

body

to be material,

or

run afoul an

of contradictions. Indeed, Bodies and and the

Subject, violence objects

in fact, of the

seems novel them

neither

nor

outside.

transpires selves The the

virtually at each other novel's

without

subjects. in a vacuum of will willing dreamed

other

hurl

consciousness. also raises generic questions: of an

lack of believable whether

surface

violence,

subjects or lived?

including

the murder

and a living burial?is innocent man, multiple savage attacks, in a non-realist, almost horror exists of a novel whose component genre. Haze

the materialist supernatural,

ofWise Blood, "asEnoch plunges downward (24).

into bestiality,

rises upward

into a desperate

spirituality" Where they have nevertheless readings have not been anagogical, In The Eternal Crossroads: The Art of Flannery O'Connor, Leon V. Driskell

insisted on teleology. and Joan T. Brittain

to freedom, darkness to light. Ben read Wise Blood as a novel of passage, from confinement leave out in proposing what amounts to a New Critical approach that would Satterfield, author entirely and allow a non-anagogical reading, in effect keeps author at the center ofthe text: he regards O'Connor as a "failed propagandist" (48) but nevertheless assumes the same narrative inWise Blood as others have assumed.

FREUD

AND

O'CONNOR'S

WISE

BLOOD

59

I suggest without dressed denied,

that

these and with

questions?of

an

unmoored

subject,

of

violence be ad

agency, together, but

of generic the Wise help Blood

indeterminancy?may of that figure have whose served

conveniently influence

O'Connor of the

for whom

might

as the paradigm

uncanny?that To my

is, the figure knowledge, which (the argues strange

of Freud. O'Connor never (the familiar are embedded feelings and read Freud's essay and and "The the that The

Flannery that

Uncanny," unheimlich this mutual heimlich other, familiar From idea ers, ways. The

the heimlich

or "homelike") in each ofthe other,

and unfamiliar) is what

embeddedness

constitutes ... what

"uncanny."

means what and

"on the one hand is concealed frightening. and kept Freud

is familiar (Freud

agreeable, thus,

and on the it is both

out of sight" quotes

224-25);

from Grimm's

dictionary: the further of strang in many

the

idea of "homelike," of something concealed,

"belonging withdrawn and this

to the house," from idea the eyes is expanded

is developed something . . . (225)

secret;

un of unheimlich darkness, mind breaks

signals,

while

it denies, heimlich

repressed of all,

content, unfamiliar

the

intra to the

uterine conscious Freud ries: 1. Doubts often alive 2. The psychic 3. The first

which but

is the most

place

remembered phenomena

in the unconscious. in life and literature into several catego

uncanny

concerning by

the difference of dolls like

between

the animate figures

and which

the

inanimate, to be

evoked or

the presence who behave "evil a

or waxwork automata. belief that internal

appear

by people dread harm, double, ofthe

eye"?the

the

other's

gaze

can

inflict

always usually and

projection unrecognized

ofthe

critical

gaze.

of desire

later of anxiety, vantage linked

self, the construction by the conscious often a split ofthe self brought about by the point. by repetition (random recurrences, e.g. of

internalization 4. Groups numbers). 5. Control These locate Hazel over

of a critical of experiences

destiny,

presentiments general disturbances Beyond created

that

come

true. ofthe Bloods enable us to

categories, the sources Motes

and Freud's of psychic

description in Wise

uncanny, principal helps

characters, us identify of

and Enoch sense world,

Emory.

this, Freud's through

analysis

the reader's the physical

of uncanniness, particularly

the narrator's as Other.

treatment

of the human

body,

60

SOUTHERN LITERARY JOURNAL

The Wally and

body

is figured

as Other sitting

from across of a

the novel's from Hazel skull under mori and

Bee Hitchcock, notices that The "the

scene, when Mrs. opening on the train, studies his face his skin was plain at the end of the novel: burned eye (231). tunnel, and "The

outline recurs under

insistent"(10). outline seemed eyes Hazel's ness which is most indefinite Conventional suggests ible under that

of a skull to lead subject

phrase was plain the dark

as a memento his skin

the deep

sockets Hazel's with

into

tunnel

where to, and

he had disappeared" certainly the dark

are a

worth

returning

along

imputed Freud

"longing identified in these the definite

for home,"

is recognizable

as the primal of the womb. of the substitution under use of

uncanni But what of the his skin."

curious for

as the memory forgotten two passages is the power article dictate in "the outline

of a skull The

diction something

would

"the" or "his skull." could fact conceivably a skull the

"a skull" discern there case, but is

besides and

a skull that the

have should

been be

Hazel's novel. both The

skin

that over

somehow certainly belonging able

eerie

predominates result from an

comic view of

in this the by

elements subject,

implicit

to the

as,

in effect,

inanimate

or animated

as not body an unknow

non-subject.

The most highly developed figuring of the body asOther

leads us reflected itself. hit into the violence at the heart title. "secret Blood blood," As of the novel continually and which threatens in the novel's feels the his head

is the one which

is, as noted above, and spill has action

to emerge

Enoch on

"at the center his blood

of the city," awakens, the

after Hazel novel's

him

(99-100).

heightens. Driven by his blood, Enoch "finds himself doing this or that, like
a bird finds itself building a nest when it hasn't actually been planning to"

(129). His blood "wrote doom all through him" (129); "his blood was in secret
conference who not cleans going with up itself" the house up with (134); after any "his blood the company like was has rushing come" around (134); like a woman was ... was "his blood

to put

attitude

this"

(135);

"his mind

chasing around after his blood, like a boy with amop and a bucket" (135). And
his tongue, "which edges out every few minutes to test his fever blister, knew

more than he did" (129-30).

rules or are strict inner from and who body, time demands in this will imbued to time upon is the out

Blood
brook with to assess

is thus figured as a housekeeper whose

Blood awareness then retreats inhabits the outer to keep the body, lacks; its house it and

no disobedience. a power

peeks and We rupture

the world,

organize can, not

its vehicle. view the and gains "fallen" God a world but lucidity as one that subject preserves has suffered and body. a

context,

between as such, Wise

human Blood

between which

Understood

its mystery.

FREUD AND O'CONNOR'S WISE BLOOD

61

The people little

itself subject/body split reveals were automata. At one point,

repeatedly, Hazel's

as if bodies "heart began

were to grip

dolls him

or as if like a

the bars of its cage" (60). At another, Mrs. Flood ape clutching "thought of her own head as a switchbox where she controlled from" stolen (218). The homunculus, window, man which Hazel later smashes against noises. a door Gonga, who by Hoover dressed and hurls out a the a

to make is thought human by Enoch not only for Enoch is a figure inside but will be called) inside. The Hazel clone, named At is dead.

the ape with is a body out of with

for Hazel,

fractured might to

constructed "Solace,"

(what

a spare human

is a body end, these

up and made and Mrs. suggest Freud the saw

speak

a disconnected by tell whether between ofthe types

operator. Hazel

the novel's All and of the

the police instances which

Flood

cannot

indistinct as a central A second

boundary feature ofthe Freud's

the animate uncanny.

inanimate,

ofthe

uncanny

which

Freud novel,

discusses is full

is that ofthe

eye

or the gaze. visual

essay,

like O'Connor's

of references

to eyes:

loss of eyes (children's tales ofthe fears ofthe "Sandman," impairments, comes to tear them out), anecdotes who for example, about being lost in a fog or most in a dark to that visual references room, and, trapped importantly, on the part ofthe Other as the "evil known evil power eye." The dread ofthe eye, of a point of view with (240). the power to do psychic harm, projected the animals, but waiting is always outward. who both all day for look" stops, sees a

projection, At disgust and him"

says Freud

It is the "watching" ("They

internal contests don't

vantage with

the zoo, Enoch him and But

has daily his

excite he fears he spits

envy

do nothing

sit there

stink").

their

gaze:

"He saw the animals wolves, it gives him

evil-eyed evil

(93). After

on one ofthe the unwilling appears in one

"a slanted

(94). When transfixed, it wasn't

Enoch in front empty.

leads of what Over

Haze the zoo, Hazel through to be an empty cage. But Enoch ofthe floor ofthe that close open. cage

corner

there was like and a

an eye. The piece saw that directly "I AM Enoch's explain: things and of mop

eye was sitting

in the middle on an old was an owl . . . said

of something squinted one eye

looked to the wire

rag. He with

the mop at Hazel

It was

looking

Motes.

clean,"

Hazel

to the eye.

(95) by Hazel's; he moaned. Enoch 'You seen has to

pathetic "'That before'"

stupidity ain't nothing

is actually eclipsed but a ole hoot owl,' Enoch somebody,"

them

(95). At

that moment,

senses a

thinks,

"He's

done murdered

the depth of Hazel's guilt soon to be fulfilled. suspicion

62

SOUTHERN LITERARY JOURNAL

The

fear

of

the of

animal the

gaze human thing

is of gaze.

course When to the me

an Hazel "blind" so much

extension tracks man eye, who

of down

the

already Asa and

pathological Sabbath Hawks,

fear

the first

he says to give

opens

the door

is "I thought if your some of it," to which should and Hazel's gaze, have

girl wanted

seen him, later

Sabbath

flees He until

displeasure, in a panic: trained the his tips

"It was you the daughter replies, . . . looked me Hazel (108). When up and down" Papa to in the country, have an outing Sabbath much begins, to to avoid unable her Hazel, play peek-a-boo. finally

return her Imight me the eye. You give

eyes of their

into

her

neck. almost

Gradually touched voice. (123)

she but

lowered still

her

head look

noses said

he didn't

at her. "Git Hazel's that his himself

"I see you," away!" he said,

she

in a playful violently.

jumping

fear of the gaze own gaze, like that

is compounded, sees of a doll, Of the many

or at least nothing. pairs

complicated,

by

the fact blinds Hazel's looked at eyes

That of eyes yet they

is almost most looking.

redundant. often On

he ultimately inWise Blood, are always

are described rather "were also .... than

and most the shells train, and

thoroughly, observed set in deep and he's case clean at

by Mrs. sockets" tells

Hitchcock, (10). father, at but

Hazel's Sabbath

the color refers They

of pecan

Hawkes eyes on

to Hazel's don't (109).

"pee-can look like

eyes" (169) see what they the "like glass two

her

"I like his they while (98). Toward Hazel, keep

looking

looking" studies novel's "thinking

Peering eyes Flood

into are paces

the museum, holes"

Enoch the and of

him, end,

Hazel's Mrs.

bullet

back any

and bottom

forth

worrying and

about of

of his

eyes without

in them

the blindness

death" (229). At both the beginning

bookend tunnels. lines about "a" skull scene, under the In the train leading the his eyes

and the end of the novel?like

skin?Hazel's that Mrs. into eyes they are described seemed

the
as

are set "so deep (10). to try Flood, tunnel Indeed, to see Hazel's where the

... almost leans across last eye (231).

like passages the space

somewhere" train seats of Mrs. the dark

Hitchcock them.

between under seemed whose

In the novel's "burned

paragraph, sockets Mrs.

the gaze to lead point into

now

sightless

he had disappeared" last twenty pages

Flood,

of view shapes

commands our critical

of the novel,

and whose

commentary

perception

of the novel,

an act of empathy, her own by closing anything, she

relinquishes eyes. After

the gaze scrutinizing

she has directed his face very

in finally, at the blind Hazel and not seeing

closely

FREUD AND O'CONNOR'S WISE BLOOD 63

shut

her

eyes

and

saw

the pin

point

of light

but

so far away

that

she

could not hold it steady in her mind. She felt as if shewere blocked
at the entrance of something. She sat staring with her eyes shut, into

his eyes, and felt as if she had finally got

something farther away, she couldn't farther and begin, farther and into

to the beginning
farther he was until

of
and the

she saw him moving the darkness

pin point of light. (231-32)

This is one of those But the passages transcendence Hazel's death, that have led critics to read Hazel's Mrs. Hazel death who, as an in and

ascension.

is, of course, moves from

entirely exploiting

Flood's, to

the last days

before

adoring

mystifying
whatever insight? her power closing of

him ("this head big enough to include the sky and planets and
was or had been {getting] eyes, and or would be" [218]). Her moment of sight with and ever or of "finally of her inability to the beginning of O'Connor's It earlier is doubtful he proposes of something"? theme of comes the virtue Motes

emblematic non-mastery. though

that Hazel

experiences of blindness

that moment, when he

tells Mrs.

Flood,

"If there's

a theory about no bottom in your

the merit eyes, they

hold more" (222).

The character, Rank's facet and of the uncanny that may which of the most double. pervades For who by Wise Freud, looks telepathy; and the Blood?as drawing like oneself theme?is the double processes of a division plot, on Otto or shares may ego, case with, of

work,

be a character to oneself the critical especially Here on the

one's mental be a the effect sort of

or is linked between conscience, (235). eye, and,

or the double the rest ofthe

agency "in

exteriorized of being

pathological double

delusions on (e.g.

watched" the evil character

idea ofthe

the one hand, of features, are

the other,

the uncanniness to be discussed

overlaps of recurrence below. look-alike kill

traits, and deadly

or crimes),

Doubles grandfather other, while

famous

in the O'Connor ofthe That

oeuvre. The literally

and granddaughter the encounter black,

of "A View in "Everything

Woods" Must

each ofthe

Rises

two women?one

one white,

wearing

the same

hat?leaves

Converge" at least one

of them dead. In like fashion, Hazel Motes murders

Layfield, and who "You and aman he does not know but who wears the same to a without resembles him Hazel Haze physically. replies, In response apparently

his double,
spectator's relevance,

Solace

suit and hat as Hazel question "If you

twins?"

don't hunt it down and kill it, it'll hunt you down and kill you" (168). Just
moments conscience before Solace's and appearance, that Haze best had get been it out preaching in the open that and "your bunt is a trick," "you had

64

SOUTHERN LITERARY JOURNAL

it down shadow Solace?his dirt road,

and kill behind

it, because you" (166).

it's no more The conscience

than

your is the

face

in the mirror refers

is or your to, but it is

"it" Haze Haze

"face forces

in the mirror"?whom

he kills.

runs Solace's

car off the of their his car. if his and

him

resemblance, He backs

and

to strip off the clothes, are the chief feature which as Solace him down with tries to escape, knocks then, the body for good measure, leans over Solace's head, which seems and to be a dying revulsion: (205). breathing, then walks lies back

the car over is dead. He

to see of blood,

victim hears

fragments a combination closer

of what of interest

confession,

in a puddle to which

he reacts with his the

"You He

shut up," Haze strikes wipes Solace the blood

head back, and

to hear he

the confession" is no longer

said, leaning once more on off his

determines drives back

bumper,

to town. Haze for Jesus. before is the too hunts down too and longs kills, O'Connor ("You alone Haze Solace suggests, believe not is his in Jesus," sentence

The

"it" which

repressed longing accuses him Haze him to death. content replica, Haze's It

Solace

for Jesus but that

murdering fact close that for

him), Solace

would which

resembles Moreover,

repressed constructed gests,

comfort.

the brings is a deliberately Asals sug

whose

conscious

reflects

unconscious true and one

impersonation, to create attempt what us also

as Frederick a false self

(Asals

27). He

is "aman The

that ain't

that mocks returns

is" (204),

idea of a simulacrum that uncertainty and

of a man

to Haze. according to the first of the uncanny between animate and

categories, inanimate, The

concerning

the difference

human

non-human. start early in Wise Blood. Haze had wanted because to mock the two of who to be a face (22). boys to him the true"

murderous

doubles

in fact disliked who like his grandfather, preacher was in the child's and almost exactly repeated of two mirroring is the recurrent There appearance at the pool, the two the attendants two identical, of the at the parking blonde, the two obese

Haze seemed

"his own him" little listeners find

figures: lot,

the pairs

Haze's dying. former and But Enoch secular necessary. images with

sermons, And there

policemen men, Haze

is the double "truly" what developed country and blind, is." double

"blind"

and Asa, "that ain't

becoming

latter,

like Solace,

aman

"that mocks the most are

of Haze in the neither of a split

is Enoch

Emory.

Both

Haze Both of God

and are as by

friendless

boys

humanists But they

utilitarians;

longing city, sees the self. While

for home. hypothesis Haze

are two parts (most zoo where

is surrounded is associated disguise

of mechanisms animals, at the

prominently, he works

the Essex), and also in his

Enoch final

as a

FREUD AND O'CONNOR'S WISE BLOOD

65

gorilla. Haze's

It is Enoch intellectualism. Iwant"

who

all of you at him, (99). The the Haze's to know, subdue wisdom. The doubles. the split extreme

[58])

later by pushing violence

the "wise blood," the instinctivism, opposite either verbally abuses Enoch, ("I seen repeatedly a stack of once tracts or physically, by hurling religious a rock at his head him onto the ground and throwing claims Haze repression ofthe physical by the mental down and prefigures killing of

of this

and premeditated his so the of "twin" subject the

violence Solace. As

in the hunting

"conscience," its other, the autonomy

or refuses cannot know, the subject as exterior cannot cannot its interior, know "blood" or "conscience" or instinct/

interior

uncanniness But Self. motif, to cite "both there

of

repetition,

in one forms

are numerous Blood,

the sense, replays of recurrence beyond repetition often

uncanniness the doubling operates of as

of of a

In Wise

coincidental realistic instances, boots and

descriptive canny. Thus,

creating, one had

within

of many on

description, the two policemen new were and

a sense who

the un

find Haze they

in the ditch both had

tall new sideburns,

and

policemen's both fat

clothes; ..." (230).

yellow discusses uncanny.

hair with such We

Freud become ticket number, the

incidental no

they recurrences

attach

with but

the number

sixty-two

importance, or to finding

he says, that

at which the point they a cloakroom to receiving our ship cabin bears that

impression close times has

is altered together?if in a single

if two we day,

such come

events, across begin hotel

each the

in itself number that

indifferent, sixty-two everything in to

happen several which railway

or ifwe

to notice rooms, one.

a number?addresses, has 237?38) this where the

trains?invariably (Freud world, The soda

same

compartments . . We . do feel this

be uncanny. In Enoch's disturbing. "blood,"

particularly, fountain

sort Enoch,

of

repetition and

is rampant driven by crosses

and his the

sits down animate

for a moment, and

presents

agitated a color scheme its colors

which

line between looks: The

inanimate,

repeating

everywhere

Enoch

fountain

color was a red-headed She had her

pink

and green

marble

linoleum

and behind uniform and a a

it there was pink picture apron.

waitress eyes set

in a lime-colored in pink Surprise. and

green

behind

of a Lime-Cherry

they . . . (136)

resembled

66

SOUTHERN LITERARY JOURNAL

The stresses places inWise Haze.

latter the one

are

fundamentally of

instances temporal

of repetition recurrence, spite

in space,

but of

Freud

also

uncanniness to?as

returns

in d?j? vu?in coffin-like this in the space train

of efforts

particularly to get away. so fascinates memories members

locations, That place

Blood We first

is the confined, encounter dream alive. He out

space which by way berth, of Haze's the

and disturbs and dreams about bat, dart closing to be from all and after have

of coffins. interred

In his are still fly

family

sees his mother, but takes it was her cannot stall, reveal

"terrible, falling dark

like a huge on coffin,

the closing, the wakes another: time" up

of there, then

top of her, sees

(27); Haze screaming. train berth, and what of a motif

place

in the

But Haze lavatory they

help narrow

returning room,

to one

it closing, narrow box these boxes

car. What takes us

in common, repetition "To uncanny memory, "abysses" recurrent on the

to us of Haze, uncanny buried (244). at all, This of

beyond

the mere discussion. is the most of the The

to the principal the idea of being Freud

element alive

in Freud's by mistake

some

people

thing

of all," writes not

fantasy intra-uterine than they

is the vestige existence.

originally are perhaps coffin

terrifying

less explicit

in O'Connor tent floor

are in Poe, Haze

but Haze's looks down

dreams, the

the carnival swimming his pool room,

where

young the valley within

sex and death, sudden drop

in the park, and something their his

of the museum, him "yawning Haze's that box, option he is "he for the

outside

beneath obsessive confined, had the

him"

(186)?all

frighten is undercut

with by

uncanny

familiarity. realization

restlessness that sense there

growing in his car,

is nowhere not

to go. gaining

Even

itself

moving that and Flood

that he was when

ground" pulls his from

(207); Haze

indeed, over Mrs.

mobility Essex predicts, O'Connor any Haze of what never

is blocked before his

the policeman Haze (228). takes Far

destroys

eyes. When be have back"

last walk, ascending

"He'll critics he

spiritually,

accurately as many

considers

emerges ideas,

himself (see note 1), or transforming through suggested to be his the absence of "truth," regarding insights than his His from his limitations. fears, more revealing all inform world. an uncanny?feature o?Wise Blood is the fact seems that all of him that he is inescapably contained, buried

far from alive A

novel

in an alien curious?indeed,

physical

this uncanniness the constituency

has

its critic within readers

the novel, who

a critic who expressed Mrs. Flood

to represent at the

of Catholic animate says

have stories.

revulsion speaks

"maimed readers natural"

souls" who when and she

O'Connor's regarding (224).

for those "It's not and

to Haze,

his morbid before

behavior,

"it's not

normal"

Earlier,

she begins

to know

FREUD AND O'CONNOR'S WISE BLOOD

67

become person

fascinated have

for wanting

a sane reason could she queries, "What possible by Haze, . . ?" (211). to not enjoy himself. Haze's Protesting she becomes specific, and the ensuing dialogue may be read

self-mortification, as one between "It's quit she

reader

and writer: it's something that people have stories, a saint or in oil or being up cats," boiling walling no reason for it. it." have quit doing People gory it as long up cats" as I'm doing Flood letters, it," he said. (224) of Poe, Frederick an

like one doing?like said.

of them

"There's

"They The reference

ain't

quit

doing

to "walling O'Connor

shows Mrs. in her

to be a reader but one which

antecedent

which

repudiated

Asals has followed up in some detail (Asals 24-29). Mrs. Flood's objection to
the anachronism keep on "doing of the uncanny it." following because Augustine, it is Other; is, for the physical, for the the however reader, deformed as for by the It is, is answered by the resolve of the author to

For O'Connor, the moral, characters however,

is mystical of Wise Blood,

as much

the physical in that

same once

reason, sameness,

repulsive.

also uncanny

its otherness

was

its strangeness

disguising
If we rather Freud's also the

its primordial familiarity.

the moral question of what Wise Blood's strangeness its But fairy Much means strangeness, Freud's tales, essay Freud is but (psycho) question analytical answers the question in another uncanniness that Freud crucial way. of how it derives well.

ask not

"The Uncanny" helpful between

rather

proves

In discussing and in reality.

distinguishes not uncanny be uncanny the world

in fiction speak, say,

of what

in fiction?dolls in "reality,"

in supernatural

tales?would

says. However, as the writer he can even pretends increase to move his effect in the and

situation

is altered

as soon ...

of common

reality

multiply
about he

it far beyond what could happen in reality, by bringing

which never or us rarely to the ever happen in fact. In doing we this have us the betraying superstitiousness us by promising it. (Freud regarding O'Connor (Mystery which

events

is in a sense

ostensibly sober Thus, Freud truth,

surmounted; and then

he deceives after

to give 250-51)

all overstepping question

helps

us with

a central

the work herself

of Flannery identified 44),

O'Connor?that with what she

is, the question called the

of her

"realism."

"realist[s]

of distances"

and Manners

68

SOUTHERN LITERARY JOURNAL

associating that

that designation

with

prophetic

vision. not, the split in this vital

Freud,

the writing

is just realistic events

enough; Blood

if itwere form

itwould

would say perhaps, not be uncanny. component mind literary of uncanny in a passage and of the body, as

Indeed, novel; are what much

the violent the roots gives

of Wise

"realist" between case?of

ofthat

violence,

the uncanny

it its horror.

Indeterminacy

genre effects. which

as of subjectivity a last I quote Freud describe the writer our

of characters?is time, substituting operandi means at the us

to the success she,

the pronoun of Flannery

could

the modus has one more and can

O'Connor: can use in order [her] time to avoid of the

which same in the time

[she] to

recalcitrance [She] nature

success. precise about definite

keep

dark

improve for a long

chances about

is based,

on which the world of the presuppositions [she] writes or [she] can avoid and ingeniously any cunningly to the last. (Freud 251) on the information point

Works
Asals,

Cited

Frederick. Flannery O'Connor: The Imagination ofExtremity. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1982. to the Value of Faces: Wise Blood and the Limits of Ciuba, Gary M. "From Face Value Literalism." Modern Language Studies 19-3 (Summer 1989): 72-80. Leon V., 1971. and Joan T. Brittain. The Art of Flannery O'Connor. Lexington: UP of Kentucky,

Driskell,

"The 'Uncanny.'" The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Freud, Sigmund. Sigmund Freud vol. xvii (An Infantile Neurosis and OtherWorks). Trans. James Strachey. London: 1917-1919- 219-252. Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psychoanalysis, Wise Blood." Modern Critical Views: Flannery Lawson, Lewis. A. "The Perfect Deformity: O'Connor. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 1986. 30-41. American Mellard, James M. "Flannery O'Connor's Others: Freud, Lacan, and the Unconscious." Literature 61.4 O'Connor, York: -. (December 1989): 625-643 Flannery. The Habit ofBeing: Letters ofFlannery O'Connor. Ed. Sally Fitzgerald. 1979 Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, New

Mystery and Manners: Occasional F rose. Ed. Sally and Robert Fitzgerald. New York: Farrar, 1970. Straus, Giroux, ?-. Wise Blood. New York: Noonday, 1962. of O'Connor Criticism." Satterfield, Ben. "Wise Blood, Artistic Anemia, and the Hemorrhaging Studies in American Fiction 17 (Spring 1989): 33-50.