Out of Sight

"His face seemed to reflect the entire distance across the clearing and on beyond,
the entire distance that extended from his eyes to the blank gray sky
that went on, depth after depth, into space" (118).
Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood (1952)

Points for Reflection

The Bible: Mark 8:22-25

1. In Mark 8:22-25, why does the man gifted with new vision initially fail to recognize the humans around him as . . . humans? Has Jesus made an error?

The Bible: Acts 9:1-19

1. Who speaks to Saul on the road to Damascus (v.5), and why does he target Saul, of all people (v.13-16)?
2. Why might Saul not eat or drink for three days following this encounter?
3. Why a loss of sight, as opposed to some other temporary disability? Conceivably, Saul could have been made deaf or mobility impaired, instead of blind . . .
4. What else is gained along with Saul's sight, when Ananias places his hands on Saul?
   

Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood (1952), chps 13-14

1. Why did Haze want to seduce Sabbath Lily Hawks, originally, and what has made him change his mind?
4. chp. 10 & chp. 13 / Why does Haze react so . . . intensely to the new Prophet hired by Hoover Shoats (94-95, 114-15)
5. chp. 13 / Why does Hazel attempt to abandon blasphemy as a root to "salvation" (as he defines salvation) (116)?
6. Why is Hazel's landlady so uncomfortable thinking about blindness?
7. What is Hazel's landlady after--why does she stick so closely to Haze? Does her motivation change over time?
8. By what kind of life philosophy does Hazel's landlady live?
9. What act of penance does Haze take, an act which resembles what he did as a kid after attending a carnival peep show?
10. What does Hazel Motes mean when he maintains that the barbed wire's current location is "natural" (127)?
11. The landlady imagines the inside of Hazel’s head as radically different from her own, and laughs at what she is able to conjure concerning his cranium’s interior (123). Why?
12. Why does Hazel wish to be blind once he’s dead, and what does he mean by the cryptic observation that, “‘If there’s no bottom in your eyes, they hold more’” (125-26).
13. What does Hazel mean when he tells his landlady that she’s “better” than those who believe in Jesus (124-25)?

Robert Browning's "Abt Vogler" (1864), PDF

1. What is Abt Vogler's hope for his organ music, and why does he compare it to King Solomon's creation of a palace?
2. How large is the architectural structure envisioned by Vogler, and why is an imporant feature of the metaphorical conceit he's elaborating to describe his musical achievement?
3. Does Vogler's notion of closing the gap between earth and heaven (l.32) sound heretical? Does Vogler employ"heaven" (l.27, l.32) to denote God's dwelling place, the utmost reaches of the galaxy, or both?
4. What kind of impact does Vogler wish his music to have on those who hear it? What impact does he imagine it having on the dead?
5. What virtues does the narrator of "Abt Vogler" attribute to impromptu music which distinguish it from other art forms?
6. As Vogler's music changes and fades to silence, why does he turn to God, "the ineffable Name" (l.65)? In what belief does Vogler take hope as he laments the fading of his music?
7. How does Vogler rationalize the problem of pain? According to this musician, why does humanity's Creator allow so much suffering?
8. Is Vogler beginning to play again at the poem's end, or slipping into unconsciousness?
9. Trace Abt Vogler's changing mood, and try to pinpoint the reflections which cause this shift.

Paranoic Critical Solitude (1935)
Salvador Dalí

Dr. Paul Marchbanks
pmarchba@calpoly.edu