Unit I: Modernism and the Religion Question (Novel

Week 2, Lesson 1: Recap of Modernism, Questions of Modernism: Religion, Flannery O’Connor’s Wise
Blood, and John Green’s Looking for Alaska.

Bell-Work

 Posted via PowerPoint before students enter classroom.

 Bell-Work is recorded every-day in the students’ literary journals and should be completed
before the bell rings to start class. A Bell-Work Grade of 5 points is awarded each day based on
general discussion (the literary journals are not graded on grammar or on containing the “right”
answer as far as Bell-Work is concerned. Participation, critical thinking, and general discussion of
the daily topic).
 Today’s question “What were some of the points of Modernism that we discussed as being
different than the literary periods we’ve previously learned? (Such as Romanticism,
Transcendentalism, Naturalism, etc.) What are some of the particularly controversial ideas
associated with Modernism?”

Today we will be recapping Modernism and looking over some of the questions Modernism raises and
how authors have treated these questions. Specifically, we will be looking at Flannery O’Connor and her
novel Wise Blood, as well as supplementing it with a modern novel that you guys will just love.

Now let’s talk about bell work. Would any of you like to share your bell work? If not, let’s do a quick
recap.

Recap of Modernism

 Importance of Aesthetic “art for art’s sake”

 Abstraction, innovation, self-referential (an expression)
 Emphasis on the Arts (film, drama, visual art, architecture)
 The Great Depression – disillusionment on the “American Dream,” Freud as a symbol of the
“arising self” or self-awareness
 Time of Jazz and unbound expression
 Questioning Religion – is it as important? Is there a need for God? Is there a God at all? Highly
atheistic.
 Modernists were concerned with the fact of societal fragmentation, which means there was a
certain disillusionment with how war, hunger, and human behavior defined life.
 Feminism and Gender Questions

What are some common questions we have high school? And by questions, I mean questions about life.
Such as, where will I go to college? What do I want out of life? What does life have in store for me?
Many of these questions are questions that Modernists raised. They were curious as to the effects of
materialism on society. This was a period that opened everything up to question. If TIME was likened
until the span of life we are in, Modernism would be the mode of thinking we have in high school. Here
are some questions that Modernism Raises.

Specific Questions that Modernism Raises

 The American Dream – which we talked about last week with F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby
 Self-Expression – the need to express oneself to the world and how one fits into society
 What about the “Other”? – questions of African American, Native American, and other mixed-
race Americans and their literature. Finding their place in the “canon” of American Literature.
We’ll discuss such authors as Jean Toomer, Langston Hughes, and others. Race is dealt with in
much of the Modern authors, such as Falkner, Hemingway, and others. It’s a common theme
and question in this period.
 Religion – highly questioning, highly atheistic.

In this Unit, I already told you that we would be reading a lot of poetry and that we’d be reading some
novels as well. I don’t want to overwhelm you with novels, but we are going to read bits and pieces of
some here in class and summaries will be given to you so that you will be able to tell me much about the
novel without having read most of it. Just because we aren’t reading the whole novel in class, that
doesn’t mean you should neglect it for extra reading. Remember that part of your term grade is for
reading 3 novels outside of class.

For the next two days, we will be focusing on one author in particular: Flannery O’Connor

O'Connor was born on March 25, 1925, in Savannah, Georgia, the only child of Edward F. O'Connor and
Regina Cline. She described herself as "pigeon-toed child with a receding chin and a you-leave-me-alone-
or-I'll-bite-you complex." When O'Connor was six, she experienced her first brush with celebrity. The
Pathé News people filmed "Little Mary O'Connor" with her trained chicken, and showed the film around
the country. She said, "When I was six I had a chicken that walked backward and was in the Pathé News.
I was in it too with the chicken. I was just there to assist the chicken but it was the high point in my life.
Everything since has been anticlimax.”

O'Connor attended the Peabody Laboratory School, from which she graduated in 1942. She entered
Georgia State College for Women (now Georgia College & State University), in an accelerated three-year
program, and graduated in June 1945 with a Social Sciences degree. In 1946, she was accepted into the
prestigious Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa, where she first went to study journalism.

In 1951, she was diagnosed with disseminated lupus, and subsequently returned to her ancestral farm,
Andalusia, in Milledgeville, Georgia. Although expected to live only five more years, she managed
fourteen. At Andalusia, she raised and nurtured some 100 peafowl. Fascinated by birds of all kinds, she
raised ducks, hens, geese, and any sort of exotic bird she could obtain, while incorporating images of
peacocks into her books. She describes her peacocks in an essay entitled "The King of Birds." Despite her
sheltered life, her writing reveals an uncanny grasp of the nuances of human behavior. She was a devout
Catholic living in the "Bible Belt," the Protestant South. She collected books on Catholic theology and at
times gave lectures on faith and literature, traveling quite far despite her frail health. She also
maintained a wide correspondence, including such famous writers as Robert Lowell and Elizabeth
Bishop. She never married, relying for companionship on her correspondence and on her close
relationship with her mother, Regina Cline O'Connor.

O'Connor completed more than two dozen short stories and two novels while battling lupus. She died
on August 3, 1964, at the age of 39, of complications from lupus, at Baldwin County Hospital and was
buried in Milledgeville, Georgia, at Memory Hill Cemetery.

Flannery O’Connor – Wise Blood

O’Connor wrote works that were subtly allegorical. Do we remember what allegory means? Allegory is a
story written using symbolism to convey a meaning. In its most general sense is an extended metaphor;
a visual symbolic representation.Think of when we read about F. Scott Fitzgerald and the metaphors
looked at with East Egg/West Egg and New Money/Old Money. In her allegorical works, she uses
symbolic names of characters and significant events to give the sense of a characters physical journey
through a religious problem (if that makes sense). This transformation or journey is often painful,
violent, and as we’ll see in Wise Blood, very much filled with ludicrous behavior as the characters sort
out their souls. She forces her characters to question their spirituality: both atheistically and in the sense
of drawing toward a sort of Christian spirituality.

We’ll be reading excerpts from Wise Blood and you will see how Hazel Motes, the protagonist of the
novel, defines his own morality and spirituality. All the while, we will be drawing on allusions (do you
know what allusions are? They’re pictures that point to other pictures. An allusion I drew for you was
referencing F Scott Fitzgerald whom we discussed last week) from modern thought and seeing how this
novel fits into the mix.

Supplement: John Green – Looking for Alaska

However, Wise Blood is a pretty heavy novel, hence the reason we will only read excerpts in class. So,
most of you have read or have heard of John Green. He writes characters that are your age, in high
school, searching for the meaning of life – essentially. John Green is from Birmingham, Alabama. He
graduated Keyon College with a double major degree in English and Religious studies. Looking for Alaska
is his first book. Honestly, his books have much the same feel as Looking for Alaska. They are terribly
intriguing and question so many things about adolescent life.

Unattached Miles “Pudge” looks forward to a new life at Culver Creek where he may be able to make
friends and find his “Great Perhaps.” In his crazy, speed-of-light adventures with friends who smoke,
drink, and date all kinds of people, he finds that there is something more to the mundane life he was
previously living. And that thing is Alaska Young. Beautiful. Crazy. Outspoken. Alaska Young. Oh, and
she’s dating a fellow named Jake. And they’re in love. Despite this, Miles becomes attached to this new
group of friends and is then completely devastated when something tragic happens to the group. He
and Colonel desperately try to find out the cause of the tragedy, and in turn they discover a little bit
about themselves in death, in life, and in the Great Perhaps.
So you see, Pudge is searching for something and throughout the novel that “something” will be
defined. This is directly correlated to how Hazel Motes will navigate through his own “great perhaps.”

Your homework assignment will be to read this novel by the end of the week. A write up will be required
of what you read (just a summary) as is usual with a novel I require you to read. Enjoy this book. It is a
fantastical journey.

So let’s recap on Modernism.

Today we looked at modernism, questions it raised, and we will be looking at the question of religion
throughout this week as we read Wise Blood in class and you read Looking for Alaska on your own.
Tomorrow we will read some Robert Frost poetry to look at more questions that are raised by
modernists. I already gave you your assignment, and there is the bell. Enjoy your day!