Oldal 292 [292]
OCR
KATALIN G. KÁLLAY feet that guide him, not thoughts or conviction. Flannery O’Connor herself found the role of gestures decisively important in her works. In Mystery and Manners,’ she says the following: I often ask myself what makes a story work, what makes it hold up as a story, and I have decided that it is probably some action, some gesture of a character that is unlike any other in the story, one which indicates where the real heart of the story lies. This would have to be an action or a gesture which was both totally right and totally unexpected; it would have to be one that was both in character and beyond character; it would have to suggest both the world and eternity. The action or gesture I’m talking about would have to be on the anagogical level, that is, the level which has to do with the Divine life and our participation in it. It would be a gesture that transcended any neat allegory that might have been intended or any pat moral categories a reader could make. It would be a gesture which somehow made contact with mystery.’ It is remarkable that in the first paragraph of “The River,” the father pushes the boy “toward a pale spotted hand that stuck through the half-open door,” Mrs. Connin is only later shown as a full (skeleton-like) figure. And when the child finally plunges under the water, “the waiting current caught him like a long gentle hand and pulled him swiftly forward and down.”'® These two gestures seem reliable in getting the child somewhere, making contact with both the world and eternity. In the text, hands are mentioned several times, and when the boy doesn’t speak, he communicates through the pressure of hands. His feet are equally important: the idea of returning to the river comes through feeling his still wet shoes, and it is his feet that will remember the way. Faces, however, seem to be obstacles on the journey: the face of the pig pushed towards his own, the eyes of an owl or a squirrel frightening him in the forest, the distorted face of Mr. Paradise. Before the river accepts him, it, too, “pushes him back in the face” several times. Does this mean that the story upholds something that is impossible to face? That the mystery into which the boy is initiated will never be shown face to face? In the conclusion of my paper, I would like to return to Ralph C. Wood’s implied imperative of either-or, referring to the hard edge of Flannery O’Connor’s stories and Jesus Christ’s parables. In this context, I examine the meaning of the word bevel. From the point that the child names himself this Flannery O’Connor, Mystery and Manners. Occasional Prose. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, New York, 1970. 16 Ibid., 111. 17 "The River, 157. 18 Ibid., 174. + 290 + Daréczi-Sepsi-Vassänyi_Initiation_155x240.indb 290 6 2020. 06.15. 11:04:24
