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INITIATION AND ITS TRAVESTY IN THE RIVER BY FLANNERY O’CONNOR
way, the narrator calls him Bevel, although it has been stated that his real
name was Harry. Perhaps the either-or refers to this seemingly insignificant
distinction, i.e. whether he is to be seen as Harry or as Bevel.
According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary,” bevel is a slanted surface
or edge ona piece of wood or glass. A bevel is typically used to soften the edge
of a piece for the sake of safety, wear resistance, or aesthetics; or to facilitate
mating with another piece.
Would this definition soften the hard edge of the parable? Or does it
perhaps make it even harder to accept? It seems that by definition a bevel
facilitates the mating of two surfaces, perhaps turning the imperative of the
either-or to an acceptance of both, conjoined. In my interpretation, both the
travesty and the mystery are to be taken seriously: one cannot exist without
the other in this story, and it is precisely the unconsciously or jokingly chosen
name, Bevel, that connects them. Can we then call the boy’s experience a true
revelation? I think this cannot be stated from an earthly dimension, and it
must be kept in mind that all responses to the story are inevitably from an
earthly dimension! I would suggest the word “Bevelation” instead: which
would be true to the individual story, the child’s own, unique, unrepeatable
case, which cannot under any circumstances be universalized, only to the
extent to which each and every human being might experience the surprising,
shocking, unique, and unrepeatable case of his or her own.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
O’CONNOR, Flannery, The Complete Stories, New York, Farrar, Strauss and
Giroux, 1971, Forty-first printing, 1996.
O’CONNOR, Flannery, Mystery and Manners. Occasional Prose, New York,
Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1970.
GIANNONE, Richard, Flannery O’Connor, Hermit Novelist, Urbana and
Chicago, University of Illinois Press, 2000 (paperback edition 2010).
Woop, Ralph C., The Scandalous Baptism of Harry Ashfield in Flannery
O’Connor’s “The River’ in Joanne Halleran McMullen - Jon Parrish Peede
(eds.), Inside the Church of Flannery O’Connor: Sacrament, Sacramental
and the Sacred in Her Fiction. Macon, GA, Mercer University Press, 2007.
1% https://www.merriam-webster.com/
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