Flannery O'Connor, Hermit Novelist

6. Acedia and Penthos

6 Acedia and Penthos The demon of acedia is the one that causes the most serious trouble of all He instills in the heart of the monk a hatred for the place, a hatred for his very life. -Evagrius Ponticus, Praktikos He who wishes to purify his faults purifies them with tears ... i for weeping is the way the Scriptures and our Fathers give us, when they say, "Weep!" Truly, there is no other way than this. -Poemen, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers BY WAY OF INTRODUCING the spiritual poetics that O'Connor develops in Everything That Rises Must Converge (1965), I want to reconsider two events in The Violent Bear It Away. One scene concerns George Rayber; the other centers on Francis Marion Tarwater. In both situations, the respective character is alone in a secluded spot. Though distant from each other, the two locales are places of death and decision. For Tarwater, the place is the Powderhead gravesite of his great-uncle Mason; for Rayber, it is the Cherokee Lodge murder scene of his son Bishop . Violence, gravity, and tenderness imbue the moral atmosphere of both burial grounds, for they are at once haunted by the devil and hallowed by God. In these separate encounters with the death of a loved relative, divine and satanic powers assert their claims on the young Tarwater and the older Rayber, forcing each in solitude to choose between his private will urged by the devil and the law laid down by God. Rayber succumbs to his demons, feels nothing, and collapses. Tarwater, conversely, in open 170 Acedia and Penthos 171 resistance to his demons throws himself to the ground in repentance for his previous sins. What is striking about these scenes is that something expected is missing: tears. Even in the O'Connor world, known more for its steely rather than emotive responses, a father's witnessing the slaying of his child cries out for tears; but George Rayber goes numb. The logismoi, the satanic thought-flows, which for years have planted thoughts of contempt in Rayber's mind for Bishop because he has Down's syndrome and have even incited his murder, have finally overtaken Rayber's heart to deprive him of the power to feel. At Bishop's murder and elsewhere in O'Connor 's fiction, the devil's victory proclaims itself in the drying up of the source of tears. A cold heart leads to dry eyes. Rayber's desiccation and insentience manifest the condition the ancient hermits called acedia. The Latin word acedia (in Greek, akedia) defies accurate translation into English (accidie). It is a monastic term that the late-fourth-century writer Evagrius called one of the eight basic categories of evil. Acedia is a state of the soul that is invariably linked to solitude , and so it follows that hermits have a deep understanding of the condition. The Sayings and Lives show indolence, tedium, disgust, despondency , and bitterness as some of the features of acedia. Most simply described , the solitary no longer finds life meaningful. Evagrius, who offers the fullest development of the concept, warns that the demon of acedia "causes the most serious trouble of all" (12 [18]). This demon can take over one's entire being and in particular darken the mind by driving away thoughts of peace and God. It "weighs down" the soul through "faintheartedness " and "also attacks your body through sickness, debility, weakening of the knees, and all the members" (Sayings, Theodora 3 [83]). Acedia was not taken lightly by the desert-dwellers; nor can one dismiss the workings of the demon as safely confined to superstitious antiquity. O'Connor saw in the modern world the terrible ravages caused by the demon of acedia and depicted such devastations in her solitaries. For O'Connor, acedia is an extreme affliction of the heart. This sickness sinks the victim into desolation and lifts the servants of Satan with delight. Because Rayber can neither mourn for his sins nor weep for his son, his demons can dwell over his crumbled body with malicious satisfaction. Satan has nothing to gloat over, however, in the graveyard scene with Tarwater. At the end of The Violent Bear It Away, Tarwater too lies on the ground but not from caving in to the forcefullogismoi that have been attacking him. Rather, on returning to Powderhead with the ache of sexual assault still in his body, the prodigal boy reacts to his rapist-deman's 172 Flannery O'Connor, Hermit...