Beyond Belief: Faith and Escape in Literature of Mobility
© 2003, Timothy McGrath
In A Walker in the City and Wise Blood, Alfred Kazin and Flannery O'Connor present two strikingly
different American landscapes -- the culturally saturated urban village of Brownsville and the
increasingly desolate South of the migratory 1950s. Like the "choked streets" of his dense
neighborhood, Kazin finds himself suffocated by the richness of the immigrant culture and the role
forced on him by a religiously faithless Jewish tradition. Similarly, O'Connor's Taulkinham appears
so devoid of culture and faith that religious movements reject faith and belief in favor of the
culture of consumerism. Despite the superficial dissimilitude between the two landscapes, both
create an environment of oppressive religious confinement from which the protagonists struggle to
escape. The idea of escape in 1950s literature of mobility relies on the existence of what Kazin
terms the "beyond" -- a promising world outside the boundaries of the present landscape.
In response, both narratives employ images of movie houses as possible evidence of this theoretical
"beyond" in the face of faithless religious-based communities. Whereas Kazin affirms his
belief in the "beyond" by contrasting the personal imagination of the movie house with the
stagnancy of the synagogue -- O'Connor dissents by representing movie houses and religious movements
as mutually responsible for the propagation of a hollow and individualistic consumer culture.
In his description of the synagogue, Kazin represents the house of worship as noxiously reflective
of the social and religious parochialism of the Brownsville community. He writes, "The little
wooden synagogue was 'our' place" with "little twists and turns that were strictly
'ours'" (43). Kazin's complex relationship with Brownsville allows him to make this layered
statement, which praises the intimacy of the synagogue while criticizing its exclusiveness. By
linking, "There were scornful little references to the way outsiders did things" with a
reference to the Jewish criticism of the outsiders' accents, Kazin argues that ethnic hostility
within the urban village exacerbates the difficulty of acclimating to American life (43). Kazin
proposes that this tenuous adjustment to American culture facilitates a desperate return to, or
maintenance of, the culture of the old world -- in the case of Brownsville, the synagogue becomes a
comforting community center posing as a religious house of worship. This thinning of faith,
especially as it relates to the religious education of Jewish youth, troubles Kazin as much as the
synagogue's social elitism. Continuing with this line of thought, Kazin writes, "Whether I
agreed with its beliefs of not, I belonged…. This was understood in the very nature of things; I
was a Jew" (45). Apparently, any emphasis on religious piety vanishes within the synagogue, as
organized Jewish religion begins to represent an ethnicity rather than a belief system. By
continuing, "no one around me seemed to take God very seriously. We neither believed nor
disbelieved. He was our oldest habit," Kazin argues that his own faithlessness reflects an
unacknowledged trend of the entire community (46). This critique of religious life in the urban
village centers on the community's narrow scope of social and religious possibility. According to
Kazin, adherence to something strictly and traditionally Jewish within this new immigrant culture
strangles the potential of free conscious thought and imagination.
Kazin's direct contrast between the synagogue and the movie house highlights the boundlessness of
film as an example of what exists "beyond" the scope of life in Brownsville. Kazin begins
by describing the Stadium movie house as "the sanctuary every Saturday afternoon of my
childhood, the great dark place of all my dream life" (39). The statement functions on two
layers -- first by establishing the movie house as a type of refuge from daily life but also by
using religious imagery to present the Stadium as a replacement for the synagogue. Through this
image of a Sabbath day "sanctuary," the movie house acquires symbolic religious value.
Although Kazin later uses images of darkness and dampness to describe the synagogue, here darkness
refers to "dream life" -- the often subconscious "beyond" outside the reality of
daily life in Brownsville. For Kazin, the dream-like movie house projects mysticism, uncertainty and
endless personal possibility -- unlike the synagogue, which stifles free thought and expression in
favor of faithless dogmatism by an entire community. By saying, "Right and left hand: two
doorways to the East. But the first led to music I heard in the dark, to inwardness; the other to
ambiguity," Kazin criticizes the confused belief of the synagogue, but paradoxically, hails the
meaningful ambiguity of the movie house (40). "The East" refers literally to Israel, but
also to the mythological East -- the land of the unknown, which holds seemingly endless possibility
and meaning. In this regard, Kazin uses images of the far Eastern Orient, and describes
extraordinarily fantastical films as evidence of the movie house's magical properties. Therefore,
the sensational images and sounds within the movie house act as emissaries from the
"beyond" that Kazin hopes to find. In a young, introspective Kazin, this imaginative spark
feels unlike anything he has experienced through the community of the synagogue. Although the two
houses of worship appear similar in physical structure, the intense disparity between the
tradition-based ritual of the synagogue and the movie house's boundless landscape of uncertainty
leads Kazin to believe that his "mind [has] at last been encouraged to seek its proper
concerns" (41).
O'Connor's depiction of Onnie Jay Holy presents religion as similarly faithless and empty.
While Brownsville relies heavily on Jewish tradition in the community synagogue, the people of
Taulkinham seek meaning and personal salvation within the individual-based culture of consumerism.
In a town where salesmen sell potato peelers while "[standing] in front of altar[s], pointing
over at various people," the idea of religion as community quickly transforms into religion as
the exploitation of individual redemption (38). In keeping with this consumer culture, religion
mobilizes and preachers such as Holy actively market their religion. In saying to Haze, "I
never heard an idear before that had more in it than that one. All it would need is a little
promotion," Holy seems to value the Church Without Christ based on its marketability, rather
than any religious truth (157). To characters like Haze and Enoch, the idea of "a little
competition" within religious belief undermines two of the most important aspects of genuine
faith -- for Haze, the personal understanding of faith, with or without Jesus; and for Enoch, the
intimacy of community (159). Whereas Kazin's synagogue achieves the latter, religious movements in
O'Connor lack both. In fact, by saying, "I'm going to run you out of business. I can get my own
new jesus and I can get Prophets for peanuts," Holy suggests that even Christ symbolizes
nothing but an appealing marketing strategy (159). The complete faithlessness of Taulkinham
outweighs Brownsville's mere religious neglect. While Kazin's synagogue stalls his intellectual
growth, it still provides security for a community of outsiders living in an urban village. Holy,
and the other transient preachers of Taulkinham, abolish this sense of community in favor of
advertised, individual grants of salvation.
Like Kazin's struggle against an oppressive community environment, Enoch's subconscious revolt
against an equally disdainful individualist society drives him to the movie theater, however, the
disappointing appearance of Gonga, along with the equally seedy consumer culture of the movie house,
dismisses the possible existence of a tangible "beyond" within the world of Wise Blood. As
in Brownsville, the movie house and the house of prayer reside within the same space , however,
there no longer exists a decision between "right and left hand" and the crowd from the
movie becomes the preacher's congregation. With religious meaning drained from the preachers'
messages, the transition from film to sermon proceeds seamlessly as one show blends into the next.
However, the movie house still holds a self-professed promise of "beyond" by proclaiming
the arrival of "GONGA! Giant Jungle Monarch and a Great Star! Here in Person!!!" (177).
Meeting Gonga provides Enoch with the opportunity to step outside the world of Taulkinham and into
the glamorous Hollywood life -- a sentiment illustrated by a child's belief that "[Gonga's]
director [is] taking a plane from Hollywood" (179). Both Gonga's "paddy wagon" and
his manager -- whose "voice was barely a mumble in the rain" -- undermine the idealized
preconceptions of the children, as well as the enthusiasm of the heralding advertisement (179). Like
Holy and his false jesus, the manager and a rain-coated Gonga market products -- their film and the
notion of an imaginative world outside Taulkinham. Enoch's abandonment of his plan to insult Gonga
offers a last chance to redeem the "beyond" that Gonga potentially represents. The call to
"step up and shake [Gonga's] hand" resonates subliminally with Enoch's desire to connect
with a community and his attempt to do so suggests a certain redemptive opportunity (178). Although
Gonga's was "the first hand to be extended to Enoch since he had come to the city," the
gesture is a mirage -- as farcical as Holy's religion and the idea of intellectual or imaginative
possibility within the movie house (181). Whereas Kazin discovers intellectual growth and creativity
within the movie house, Enoch finds himself confronted with the same disappointment, false
advertising and lonely culture of consumerism promulgated by false messiahs and prophets worth
peanuts.
While Kazin entertains the nostalgic retrospection of reexamining his physical and spiritual escape
to the "beyond," O'Connor maintains a more darkly cynical view of upward mobility in the
1950s. Unlike Kazin, O'Connor suggests that certain landscapes withhold, from their inhabitants, any
potential for escape. While Kazin uses a movie theater and ultimately literature as his means to
create an identity apart from the synagogue and its surrounding urban village, O'Connor posits that
the confining landscape itself acts as the dominant factor in defining identity. In light of this,
she considers and ultimately denies the existence of any such mystical portals within a community
saturated by consumer culture. When reading O'Connor, Kazin's reflections function as spectacularly
idealized escapism. Predictably, the sentimental idealism of Kazin fails comically in Wise Blood.
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