4th Annual WML Academic Symposium

Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood and James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain were both published in 1952, during the decade of supposed conformity and post-war utopia: tight-knit family structures and neighborhood upon neighborhood of uniform houses. These authors, however, viewed the 1950s in a vastly different light. O’Connor portrays her post-war protagonist, Hazel Motes, as anything but prosperous and conformist. And Although Baldwin set John Grimes’s story in the 1930’s, the themes of independence in the novel imply the author’s disdain for his conformist culture. These anticipatory novels address the concerns that were simmering below the surface of the seemingly peaceful 1950s. In many ways, they foreshadowed the upcoming swirl of non-conformist societal action in the 1960s. The struggle to discover individual reality, rather than a manufactured one constructed by the religious authority that has governed their entire lives, drives the journeys of both Hazel and John. In spite of the fervor of their spiritual searches, however, neither character ever exemplifies a perspective completely independent from their oppressive upbringing. The result of their quests are unresolved convictions and pluralistic worldviews.