Everywhere a Sign
Kids wear the darndest things
In my Introduction to Literature class, where we study Southern Gothic Fiction/Rural Noir, I’ve introduced my students to Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood, a post World War Two novel about a vet who returns from war to find that home and the family that used to dwell in it are gone. That vet — Hazel Motes — who has also suffered PTSD from his grandfather’s preaching and his father’s womanizing, decides in grand Protestant tradition to start his own church: the “Church of Christ Crucified Without Christ.” Everywhere in the rusty southern towns Motes preaches, he see signs of Jesus’ return: neon signs on tall buildings and painted rocks on lonely state roads. He just stares and stares, and when he can stare no more, he buys a bag of quick lime.
Before that, he also sees a sign in a bus station washroom: “Mrs. Leora Watts, the friendliest bed in town,” complete with address. He takes heed and follows his arrow.
We read of other signs in Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, a novel set in Mississippi back in the days before the Depression sunk us further down. Here, a family must bury its matriarch back in her hometown of Jefferson, almost a world away from their country home. The signs they encounter are portents, though, envisioning who will save whom through the water and the fire. And then there are those buzzards trailing…
