A Dream is a Wish

Williams 1

A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes, Says Freud or The Existential Crisis of Hazel Motes as Seen in the Dreamsphere

O’Connor’s novel, Wise Blood, places Haze Motes in the throes of an existential crisis which has haunted him from his childhood. While it can be argued that O’Connor herself is not an existentialist, her work rings clear of this theme. Haze’s existential crisis lives within his dreams, manifesting itself in the unconscious mind, while seeping into his daily actions as well. The passages referring to Haze’s dreams hold the seeds of Freudian theory, which ultimately convey his fears and repressions as they relate to his existential crisis. Without a psychoanalytic approach to understanding Haze’s dreams, their significance in his waking life might well be lost in translation. Existentialism is a philosophy most often attributed to atheist philosophers and theologians, but it has its exceptions as it pertains to Christianity; philosophers such as Gabriel Marcel and Paul Tillich vouch for the coexistence of religion and existentialist principles. The existentialist principles that inform Christian existentialism include the need for an “ultimate concern,” the authenticity of a free individual, and the situational crisis of living in alienation. A woman of “Christian orthodoxy,” O’Connor herself rejected the stereotypical atheistic existentialism that was characteristic of Sartre (HOB 147). Although she was indeed not an existentialist, she incorporated the themes of Christian existentialism, imbuing the main character of her novel Wise Blood with alienation, loneliness, demand for authenticity, and a burning ultimate concern. Author and critic Farrell O’Gordon explains how existentialism could mesh so well with O’Connor’s thinking:

Williams 2 But insofar as it suggested the loneliness of the individual in contemporary mass society--where he was necessarily detached from any sort of meaningful religious tradition--yet emphasized his radical freedom to choose an authentic or inauthentic life, existentialism was compatible with a Christian vision, precisely because it emphasized the bleakness of such a society. (Peculiar Crossroads 82) O’Gordon suggests that O’Connor was drawn to Christian existentialism to offset the bleakness of her world. This bleakness of society is something O’Connor was surrounded with--not only in the despair of her own illness, but in the disenchantment and faithlessness of the South at that time. Of the novelist, O’Connor states, “He begins to see in the depths of himself, and it seems to me that his position there rests on what must certainly be the bedrock of all human experience-the experience of limitation…” (M&M 132). With racism rampant, and the world faced with a massive decision of whether they could trudge on with faith after the atrocities of World War II, O’Connor was ushering in a style of writing that required the reader to examine his or her own beliefs by exposing them to the existential novel. In the midst ‘of all human experience,’ this is the existentialism that O’Connor found in Marcel’s work, and it undeniably informs her writing of Wise Blood. The ‘ultimate concern,’ a component of existential thought, plagues the main character of O’Connor’s Wise Blood. O’Connor’s ideas regarding the ‘ultimate concern’ have their roots in the work of Tillich; in a letter to Cecil Dawkins, O’Connor writes, “The only concern, so far as I can see it, is what Tillich calls the ‘ultimate concern.’ It is what makes the stories spare and what gives them any permanent quality they may have” (Habit of Being 221). The ‘ultimate concern’

Williams 3 is the prime concern, out of many that we have in our daily lives; it is what defines our existence, and gives our life guidance and purpose. Irreligiously, an ultimate concern could be one’s children, pets, a necessitated desire to save the planet, etc. In the context of religion, the ultimate concern is what consumes Haze. Everything he does in the novel, especially in the final chapters, is determined by this ultimate concern that was brutally knocked into him by his past experiences and the religious tenacity of his mother; as O’Connor puts it, “...anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days” (M&M 84). Haze’s ‘ultimate concern’ is his immortality and the avoidance of temptation which leads to sin, and ultimately, death. Thus, Haze’s life is a truly existential one, wrought with crisis and weak defeat in the face of his ‘ultimate concern.’ He is, as existentialists would say, “thrown into this world,” with no freedom to choose his own spiritual path, as it is instead heaped upon him by harsh means. Haze, without a choice, is thrown into a situation he cannot bear; “Christ died to redeem you,” his mother scolded, to which he replied, “I never ast him” (Wise Blood, 59). The price of sin, bloodshed, has been paid for Haze, which he cannot pay reparations for, and never requested in the first place. The guilt that is heaped upon him in response to this situation creates for him an existential crisis, and it defines him and his entire life. He is haunted by his mother, her religion, and primarily, by Jesus. Because Haze’s dreams are a manifestation of repression, the events of his early life must be examined prior to any analysis of his dreams. The first chapter of the novel acts as a lens of Haze’s childhood, a flashback to a time when Haze was first faced with the reality of death and was forced to examine his predicament. In this instance, they were shutting his grandfather’s coffin; “Haze had watched from a distance, thinking: he ain’t going to let them shut it on him…” (WB 14). Haze sees the coffin as something more than a resting place for the dead; coffins to

Williams 4 Haze symbolize the possibility of premature, or live, burial. This symbolism is a warped conception of death and sin perpetuated by a guilty conscience. The nature of his Christ-haunted childhood, and the accumulation of guilt during that period, contribute to both his conscious and unconscious dealings with existential anguish as he tries to avoid sin. He views Jesus as a “wild ragged figure motioning him to turn around and come off into the dark where he was not sure of this footing, where he might be walking on the water and not know it and then suddenly know it and drown” (WB 16). Jesus is a tempter who chases the sinful into damnation. His guilt then pushes him to reject Jesus and the risk of damnation, so he resists Jesus. This is how he deals with this anguish, and reestablishes his freedom, as “the only way to avoid Jesus was to avoid sin” (16). As Jesus is the source of his guilt and anxiety, he must avoid him, and he will also go to great lengths in his mind to avoid the shame of sin that haunts him from his childhood, because the mental bruising that his family leaves on him creates so much guilt that it is much easier for him to avoid Jesus altogether. So in dealing with his guilt, the fear of sin, and Jesus’ damning life in death, the image of the coffin plays a crucial role in his life. In being forced to deal with his immortality, Haze realizes that eternal life in Christ means life in death, and his young mind warps this concept into a fear of live burial. If one lives even in death, immortalized, he must also still be alive when placed in the coffin, as Haze’s logic posits. His grandfather was a preacher, and presumably the rest of his family had been very religious as well, which consequently leads him to imagine all of their burials as live burials. His father was also ‘buried alive,’ and when they shut the top, he “flattened out like anybody else” (WB 14). Mirroring plays an important role in Haze’s theory as well, as when the coffin was shut on his brother; “...and when they shut it, Haze ran and opened it up again. They said it was because he was heartbroken to part with his brother, but it was not;

Williams 5 it was because he had thought, what if he had been in it and they had shut it on him” (WB 14). Haze imagines himself as his brother, being buried alive in the coffin. As this fear of live burial presents itself in Haze’s life, it also presents itself in his dreams. As Haze is sleeping in the berth of the train in the first chapter of the novel, he dreams of his father’s burial, and then his mother’s. As they shut the lid on her, he wakes, startled, imagining the lid being closed upon him. He sees the porter and shouts, “I’m sick! I can’t be closed up in this thing! Get me out!” He isn’t dead, he claims, just sick. To him, the porter resembles the white ragged figure of Jesus, and he says to him, “Jesus, Jesus” (WB 21). Deep down, Haze wants to believe in the saving power of Jesus, and he wants Jesus to save him from his existential crisis. This is one of the only instances in the novel where Haze quasi-admits his need for Jesus, the other instance being his search for a ‘new Jesus’ for his Church Without Christ, and it is something that psychoanalysts would call a ‘Freudian slip,’ wherein his unconscious mind spews forth a repressed notion that one’s ego would not otherwise permit. Psychoanalytic criticism of this novel is necessary in analyzing Haze’s dreams, which in turn helps one understand his waking plight. According to Johanna Smith, dreams “may need to be interpreted before...truth can be grasped” (Psychoanalytic Criticism 262). The truth behind Haze’s existential crisis, and the fact that he is having an existential crisis at all, rather than just bad dreams and disdain for his family, becomes more apparent as the reader interprets O’Connor’s work with this Freudian eye. It is arguable that his existential anxiety is even nearly impossible to grasp without the passages detailing his dreams. As the reader nears the end of the novel, the final dream that Haze has is in his Essex. He dreamed “he was not dead but only buried. He was not waiting on the Judgment because there was no Judgment, he was waiting on nothing” (WB 160). As seen earlier, Haze continues to be

Williams 6 plagued with the fear of being buried alive, to be immortalized in decay. There is no freedom, no way out, nothing for him but eternal anguish. O’Connor again uses the image of the coffin, but this time it is the Essex. Some may argue that there is no need for a psychoanalytic reading of Haze’s dreams in order to interpret the nature and source of his crisis. These critics lose sight of Freud’s insight, and must know that they are missing the full picture. Waking episodes do not disclose to the reader Haze’s obsession with coffins and his fear of live burial, which give way to his existential woes. These motifs are only seen in the dreams. His waking moments provide no evidence of existential fear or anguish, only paranoia and rebellion. O’Connor is such a writer who will “regularly cloak or mystify ideas in figures that make sense only when interpreted,” and her ideas are embedded in the dreams and Haze’s childhood, which feed directly into each other (Psychoanalytic Criticism 265). Posterior to a psychoanalytic reading of Haze’s childhood and his subsequent dreams as an adult is the reader able to understand Haze’s plight. In taking into account his childhood experiences regarding coffins and the burials of his religious family, there is no doubt that within his dreams his existential crisis is rooted as repression and brought to light.

Williams 7 Works Cited

O'Connor, Flannery. Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose. Ed. Sally and Robert Fitzgerald. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1969.

O'Connor, Flannery. The Habit of Being: Letters. Ed. Sally Fitzgerald. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1998.

O’Connor, Flannery. Wise Blood. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007. Print. O’Gorman, Farrell. Peculiar Crossroads: Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, and Catholic Vision in Postwar Southern Fiction. Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press, ©2004. Print. Smith, M. Johanna. Psychoanalytic Criticism and Frankenstein. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Cane Studies Edition. Ed. Johanna Smith. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2000. Print.