Catherine Marshall’s Christy tells the story of a teenage girl pursuing adventure. While attending a Christian revival meeting, 19-year-old Christy Huddleston is mesmerized when she listens to the founder of an Appalachian mission program as he explains the work his mission is doing and the needs of the Cutter Gap community. Christy Huddleston, the daughter of an affluent family in Asheville, North Carolina, finds herself beguiled to the idea of volunteering for the mission to be a teacher to the destitute students of Cutter Gap, Tennessee. The young, innocent and inexperienced Christy finds herself bewildered in the ruthless and vindictive mountains of Cutter Gap. From her first day in the Appalachians, she is accosted by superstition, anomalous customs of the mountain people, feuding, primitive folk medicine, numerous teen marriages, and filthy conditions. These events ultimately challenge Christy’s faith in herself and God. Christy’s missionary adventure to teach the children of Cutter Gap is emblematic of her physical struggle to leave her ‘ivory tower’ which is represented in the human conditions of the death of mankind, love of friends, and hatred of fellow-man that ultimately challenge her spiritual belief.
First, Christy is confronted with the death of mankind, which is unfamiliar to her. When Christy first arrives in Cutter Gap she knows little about death and the tragedies that befall it. Ms. Alice stated, while she was in discussion with Christy, that “…it was God who was prying the little girl’s hands off her eyes. As if he were saying, ‘I can’t use ivory-tower followers. They’re plaster of paris, they crumble and fall apart in life’s press...’” (Marshall 128). Ms. Alice is basically stating that to do God's work Chri...
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...mankind’s hatred to one another.
Christy’s missionary adventure to teach the children of Cutter Gap is emblematic of her physical struggle to leave her ‘ivory tower’ which is represented in the human conditions of the death of mankind, love of friends, and hatred of fellow-man that ultimately challenge her spiritual belief. Christy matures greatly in her physical journey to Cutter Gap. She is constantly exposed to hatred, agony, death, and anguish. She strengthens in her faith and learns to accept God’s will. Christy is faced with every aspect of human condition. The young, innocent naive child learns to trust God and face the vindictive life on the mountains. Christy leaves her ivory tower hoping to find adventure, but instead matures in her faith and her understanding of life.
Works Cited
Marshall, Catherine. Christy. New York City: Avon Books, 1967. Print.
In “The Poisonwood Bible,” Barbara Kingsolver illuminates on how a rift from one’s homeland and family can simultaneously bring agonizing isolation and an eye opening perspective on life through Leah Price’s character development. As a child exiled away to a foreign country, Leah faces the dysfunction and selfishness of her family that not only separates them from the Congolese, but from each other while she also learns to objectify against tyrants and embrace a new culture.
Although, Chris McCandless may be seen as stupid and his ideals uncanny, he gave up everything to follow his heart he escaped the world that would have changed him, he wrote his own tale to feel free, and he left a conformist world to indulge in true happiness. How many people would just give up their lives, family, material goods, to escape into a world of perfect solitude and peace; not many and Chris was one of those that could and he became and inspiration. “The idea of free personality and the idea of life as sacrifice” (187).
Why I Left the Church” by Richard Garcia is a poem that explores the ongoing and conflicting relationship between a child’s fantasy and the Church. Although the majority of the text is told in present tense, readers are put through the lenses of a young boy who contemplates the legitimacy of the restricting and constricting nature of worship. It is a narrative that mixes a realist approach of storytelling with a fantasy twist that goes from literal metaphors to figurative metaphors in the description of why the narrator left the church. The poet presents the issue of childhood innocence and preset mindsets created by the Church using strong metaphors and imagery that appeal to all the senses.
Flannery O’Connor believed in the power of religion to give new purpose to life. She saw the fall of the old world, felt the force and presence of God, and her allegorical fictions often portray characters who discover themselves transforming to the Catholic mind. Though her literature does not preach, she uses subtle, thematic undertones and it is apparent that as her characters struggle through violence and pain, divine grace is thrown at them. In her story “Revelation,” the protagonist, Mrs. Turpin, acts sanctimoniously, but ironically the virtue that gives her eminence is what brings about her downfall. Mrs. Turpin’s veneer of so called good behavior fails to fill the void that would bring her to heaven. Grace hits her with force and their illusions, causing a traumatic collapse exposing the emptiness of her philosophy. As Flannery O’Connor said, “In Good Fiction, certain of the details will tend to accumulate meaning from the action of the story itself, and when this happens they become symbolic in the way they work.” (487). The significance is not in the plot or the actual events, but rather the meaning is between the lines.
There has been much written about Isabella Lucy Bird being a unique individual, bold traveler, talented descriptive writer, and great example to women. These are all great ways to describe the well known traveler, however, there have been few efforts to proclaim her as the luminary of Christian faith that she is. In A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains Bird paints an awe inspiring picture of the harsh life and beautiful landscape of the Rocky Mountains in the early 19th century. Throughout her book, Bird gives grand descriptions of the breathtaking natural scenes she experiences along her travels in Lake Tahoe, Estes Park, Colorado City, Denver, Boulder and other areas within the great mountain range. Bird also recounts the hard way of life
In “Out of the Dust,” a story told by 14-year-old Billie Jo, she describes her grief and feelings of lost hope including guilt from the accidental death of her mother and her mother’s unborn child. The accident crushed Billie Jo’s hope and her spirit, as well her father’s. It is a story of remarkable struggle where Billie Jo tries to find inner strength. She seeks the light through the Oklahoma “dust”. The “dust” is symbolic as it signifies a lack of life, dreams, and hope. Billie Jo takes the reader through her emotional of the journey that evokes compassion and empathy. The reader becomes part of the story and part of Billie Jo’s persona. Her journey embraces whom we are in the most profound sense of sadness and loss of her beloved mother. The story also guides us through the powerful enlightenment that defines the clearest explanation of the human spirit. In “Out of the Dust” Billie Jo demonstrates the power of forgiveness in herself and her father. These acts of forgiveness allowed her to move past the darkness and into the light. Her story gives the reader details on how the human spirit is philanthropic by nature and a lifelong process. “Out of the Dust” captures the essence of forgiveness including the transformations that occur during the process.
In the Flannery O’Connor’s great book, “Wise blood”, Hazel motes, the main character of the literature, is a hero struggling against his prophetic vocation, yet turning out to be a Christian martyr at the end of his long and futile ordeals. The development of the literature centers around the protagonist’s struggle to run away from Jesus, who poses Jesus as “something awful,” and his final return to him. Hazel’s movement throughout the literature, therefore, may be seen as a journey: a modern man’s progress from rebellion against God, to penance, and to return to him through the painful recognition of his sinful and fallen nature. The shrill thesis of the literature is stressed by its circular journey pattern of escape from and return to God.
In James Baldwin’s 1952 novel “Go Tell It On The Mountain” the characters in the novel each embark on a spiritual journey. Baldwin has dedicated a chapter to each member of the Grimes family, detailing their trails and tribulations, hopes and aspirations, as each one’s quest to get closer to God becomes a battle. I have chosen the character John because I admire the fierce struggle he endured to find his spirituality. I will examine how he’s embarked on his quest and prove that he has done it with integrity and dignity.
Literature has been a medium for getting messages across for centuries. Various authors from Aesop to Shakespeare have used writing as a vehicle to get a message across to their audiences. All of these authors are widely respected and admired for their works. One author who transcends her peers and breaks away from traditional secular teaching is Flannery O’Connor. She is widely known for her usage of Christian themes to get across a message of our worlds need for a savior in Jesus Christ. Her style of writing is unique in that she conveys spiritual messages in everyday, fun-to-read stories. This is important as it creates a medium in which she can spread the gospel in a clever manner. Image books stated, “Her expert craftsmanship, her uncanny ability for characterization, the depth and intensity of her morality-combined in strict discipline-make her one of this generation’s most respected authors” (Books, Image 1). Flannery O’Connor uses various themes to get across a religious message, but the two that have a large impact are grace and suffering. The themes of grace and suffering can be seen in her short stories, “A Good Man Is Hard To Find”, “The River”, and “The Lame Shall Enter First”. The themes of grace and suffering in Flannery O’Connor’s short stories are used to represent Jesus Christ dying on the cross for our sins.
A Christian, when faced with the challenge of writing, finds himself in a dilemma: how is he to complete the task? Should he create an allegory? Should he try to teach a lesson reflecting God’s glory? Or should he follow secular trends and current desires in literature? To this, many Christians would say, “Certainly not!” Dorothy L. Sayers and Flannery O’Connor both aim to answer the first question of any Christian writer: How do I write a story with my beliefs?
Catharine Sedgwick’s novel, A New-England Tale, tells the story of an orphan, Jane Elton, who “fights to preserve her honesty and her dignity in a household where religion is much talked about but little practiced” (Back Cover). The story take place in the 1820s, a time when many children were suffering in silence due to the fact that there was really no way to get people to understand exactly how bad things were for them. The only way anyone could ever really get a true understanding of the lives of the children in these households would be by knowing what took place in their homes. Outside of the home these women seemed perfectly normal and there was not reason to suspect any crookedness. The author herself was raised by a woman of Calvinist religion and realized how unjust things were for her and how her upbringing had ultimately play at role on her outcome. Sedgwick uses her novel, A New-England Tale to express to her readers how dreadful life was being raised by women of Calvinist religion and it’s affect by depicting their customary domestic life. She takes her readers on an in deep journey through what a typical household in the 1820s would be like providing them with vivid descriptions and reenactments of the domestic life during this period.
Into the wild is a non-fiction book which expanded from the nine-thousand-word article by Jon Krakauer. This article ran in the January 1993 issue of the magazine Outside. Jon Krakauer was very much drawn toward the tale of McCandless and decided to write his story. He spent more than a year tracking down the details of the boy’s tramp. Then he used matter-of-fact tones to narrate what he chased on the path about the boy. The framework presented in this book can be separated into three parts: (1) retracing, including the interview with most of the important people who once kept company with Chris; (2) wildness, presenting mails generated from readers and several idealists that were in the similar situation with Chris; (3) affection, including the memory of parents, sister and friends.
In this analysis, we will be looking at just how Flannery O'Connor accomplished this seemingly impossible task, non-didactic Christian fiction, by examining elements of faith, elements of style, and thematic elements in her writing. While secondary sources are included for perspective, I have focused primarily upon Miss O'Connor's own essays and speeches in my examination of the writer's motivations, attitudes, and technique, most of which are contained in the posthumous collection Mystery and Manners. Unlike some more cryptic writers, O'Connor was happy to discuss the conceptual and philosophical underpinnings of her stories, and this candor is a godsend for the researcher that seeks to know what "makes the writer tick."
“Into The Wild” by John Krakauer is a non-fiction biographical novel which is based on the life of a young man, Christopher McCandless. Many readers view Christopher’s journey as an escape from his family and his old life. The setting of a book often has a significant impact on the story itself. The various settings in the book contribute to the main characters’ actions and to the theme as a whole. This can be proven by examining the impact the setting has on the theme of young manhood, the theme of survival and the theme of independent happiness.
Throughout time, readers have learned many different lessons from their favourite books. In The Chrysalids, John Wyndam used his story to teach his readers valuable, lifelong lessons. He makes it evident to his readers that prejudging certain people is not right. Also, he relates how change is possible, but hard to achieve. More specifically, religion often influences one’s point of view. John Wyndam’s, The Chrysalids was written with a purpose that teaches his readers about discrimination, about how change is possible, and how religion often influences one’s point of view.