A Quest Romance

Flannery O'Connor(1925-1964)is considered as one of the best short story writers in the twentieth century. The Violent Bear It Away (1960) is O'Connor's second novel, with grotesque writing style, she created an unusual scene and distorted characters in the 1950's of the American society when people generally had lost their faith and belief. This thesis analyses The Violent Bear It Away a spiritual quest romance from the point of narrative structure and the archetypes of the characters by utilizing Frye's mythoi in his Archetypal criticism to reveal the theme of spirit redemption after people have lost their belief and the spiritual pursuit.The hero Francis Marion Tarwater is a stubborn and narrow-minded young man, and he refuses to accomplish the tasks given by the old man and God. However, after suffering both mental and physical violence in the real world with loss of faith he embarks on the spiritual quest, combats between the believers and the atheists, wins his rebirth with the grace of God ultimately, which is the accomplishment of his spiritual quest, and grows to be a prophet. His quest path is the representation of the first three phases of romance in Frye's mythos, especially the third phase. The third phase is central quest-theme of romance composed by the agon or conflict, the pathos or death-struggle, and the anagnorisis or discovery,among which the agon is the basis of romance and is the"violence"in the fiction. The violence has three meanings. Firstly, it refers to O'Connor's writing technique that is used to attract the readers'attention to think about the meaning of life. Secondly, it is the grace of God which is regarded as the only way of regaining the salvation. Lastly, it refers to conflicts among young Tarwater, Rayber and the old man, and it is chief factor to drive Tarwater to quest and the agon or conflict in the third phase.Frye points out that the characters of romance always tend to either for or against the quest. Among them the two chief characters are a protagonist or hero and an antagonist or enemy who is against the quest and represented as the atheist by Rayber. The other two characters are for the quest and play the guidance role in the Tarwater's quest process.Through the analysis of the mythos and archetypes in the fiction, The Violent Bear It Away is created to be a quest romance to describe the suffering that people have undergone when they lose their belief or doubts about the faith, and then uncover the theme of salvation in the emptiness of the spiritual world.In all, O'Connor thinks about the life from the light of religion, and utilizes grotesque writing style to create a spiritual quest romance with unusual scene to inspire people to think about the reality, recognize the influence caused by the faith loss and warn people to treat the value crisis and faith crisis correctly in the modern society.