Thursday, November 20, 2008
Bevel & Innocence
I was interested in a comment that was made on Wednesday about the innocence of children in O'Connor's works and how the idea of their innocence is questioned. I agree that in literary works, the young are often portrayed as incapable of evil or of morally questionable thoughts. In some of her works, children's innocence is highlighed through their misunderstanding of certain religious or cultural concepts. However, I also was struck by some of Bevel's actions, such as outright lying about his name and stealing Mrs. Conin's prized family bible. O'Connor never attempts to tell us why he does these things. I think she is playing with the idea of his innocence because we do not get a "cute" explanation of a childish misunderstanding for his actions, the same as we do in other pieces.
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I agree I think it would be good to look at innocence and children more closely. Especially since innocence kind of contains in its definition guiltlessness, lack of sin, and harmlessness. It would probably be naive of us to think that O'Connor thinks that children are innocent because of original sin. I think they need an extraordinary circumstance, like Bishop, in order to be absolved of that.
Although I'm wondering how Baptisms and also Christenings fit into this and if they would affect childrens' innocence?
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