Pigs in "The River"

Given the spotlight pigs enjoy in both "The River" and "Revelation," I thought I would try to explore their role in one story to better understand the other.

In Mrs. Connin's "The Life of Jesus Christ for Readers Under Twelve," Bevel marvels at the pictures, especially "one of the carpenter driving a crowd of pigs out of a man" (160). A little bit of googling ("jesus, pigs") leads me to believe that this is in reference to Matthew 8.28-34. Briefly, Jesus comes across two possessed men; they ask Him if he intends to torture them before their time. Looking to a herd of pigs in the distance, "the devils besought him, saying, If thou cast us out, suffer us to go away into the herd of swine. And he said unto them, Go. And when they were come out, they went into the herd of swine: and, behold, the whole herd of swine ran violently down a steep place into the sea, and perished in the waters." Biblical text from here.

Speaking of pigs: the shoat that Bevel releases from the pen is established to look like Mr. Paradise, the pig "long-legged and hump-backed and part of one of his ears . . . bitten off" (159), and Mr Paradise "a huge old man who sat like a humped stone," his hat turned up "to expose a purple bulge on his left temple" (163), what Mrs. Connin tells us is ear cancer (159). But the pig doesn't just look like Mr. Paradise - to Bevel, Mr. Paradise (in his rush to save Bevel from the river) is "something like a giant pig bounding after him" (171).

To draw a direct parallel between "The River" and the story in Matthew, Mr. Paradise seems to be representative of the pigs driven of the possessed men who scare the swine herd into the sea, causing their deaths, and Bevel himself representative of the herd. I think there's merit to the interpretation; the demons of Matthew are distant from God by virtue of their nature, and Mr. Paradise puts no stock in the words of Reverend Bevel Summers. According to Mrs. Connin, "'He always comes [to the river] to show he ain't been healed" (159).

However, the parallel connection seems a little too prosaic for O'Connor, and under a microscope it doesn't hold up. Who was the Jesus that drove Mr. Paradise to the river? What man was Mr. Paradise cast off from? I don't have a more satisfying interpretation, only a lot more questions, the first of which is, with whom do we sympathize in this story? Bevel's a liar and a thief, though only four or five; his parents shirk him so that they can have a good time; the Reverend is perhaps a hack. Maybe you sympathize with Mrs. Connin, but I like Mr. Paradise. Does that make him the Jesus of Matthew 8.28-34, or is O'Connor asking for a reinterpretation of that story to understand her own? I think that it's probably the second, but I haven't been able to figure out just how to justify that yet.