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INITIATION AND ITS TRAVESTY IN THE RIVER BY FLANNERY O’CONNOR O’Connor despised. She likened sentimentality in both morality and religion to pornography in art: itis a cheap andeasy way of _— achieving a bogus effect. Yet neither does O’Connor encourage any quick and conveniently Christian verdict.* The drastic either-or seems to suggest a division between religious or secular interpretations: one either believes that the young boy is truly baptized and in his case the long human search for the kingdom of Christ is radically hastened, i.e. “short-circuited,” or one sees the case as a tragedy, as the outcome of human irresponsibility on the part of the parents, the babysitter, and the preacher. If Harry’s case is shown up against a culture in which “death is the ultimate enemy and remaining alive at all costs is the ultimate good,” as Wood argues, then to die a “meaningless” death “in devotion to a nonexistent kingdom” must be “the ultimate lie.”* But it is also debatable to what extent a religious reading might allow a positive interpretation and whether any responsible religious adult can rejoice in the drastic conclusion. So perhaps the either-or refers to the division between the perspective of the adult and the perspective of the child: Flannery O’Connor seems to focalize almost entirely on the child’s perspective. All the more so because the adult characters, especially the parents, are shown to be more like children in their irresponsibility. As Richard Giannone points out,° Where parents are children—as are the Ashfields—their children must parent themselves, for children’s basic inner needs cannot be grasped or answered by the parents. O’Connor points up the spiritual chasm by having the narrator call Harry “the little boy” (155) to remind us of his neediness, whereas Harry’s father calls his son “old man” (166) to hasten the child’s independence. The paternal endearment is accurate. In Harry’s need to be taken seriously, the four-or-five-yearold is more mature than his parents. Harry hears no call from the pulpit, [...] since church is not part of the Ashfields’ social faith. But the call to flee nevertheless comes to Harry. Before he hears the words, he feels the need to count—which is the need for God without using the word God." From the adults perspective, Harrys weakness, abandonment, and vulnerability is shown by the narrator and felt by the reader, making the reading experience almost impossible to bear. Harry is introduced half asleep, with a runny nose and runny eyes, his arms stuck in the sleeves of his # Ibid. 190. # Ibid. Richard Giannone, Flannery O’Connor, Hermit Novelist. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000. 5 Ibid. 93. + 287 ¢ Daréczi-Sepsi-Vassänyi_Initiation_155x240.indb 287 6 2020. 06.15. 11:04:24
