Here Dr. White makes passing reference to O’Connor’s affection for the films of W.C. Fields, as he segues into a discussion of “Everything That Rises Must Converge.” White characterizes this story as frightening, and one in which O’Connor presents an empty, dead world wherein she deals with intellectual pride and the racism of the deep South in a bygone era.
Here Dr. White makes passing reference to O’Connor’s affection for the films of W.C. Fields, as he segues into a discussion of “Everything That Rises Must Converge.” White characterizes this story as frightening, and one in which O’Connor presents an empty, dead world wherein she deals with intellectual pride and the racism of the deep South in a bygone era.
Dr. White describes “The Temple of the Holy Ghost” as a gentle piece of work punctuated, however, with grotesque elements. He characterizes O’Connor as a great Catholic artist of our own time and extols this story as one of her few, if not only, openly Catholic works. The title, according to White, speaks to the essence of “matter” and “spirit.”
In this sweeping introduction to O’Neill’s work as an American dramatist, Dr. White argues the relevance and even necessity of understanding literature, history, and Catholicism in order to appreciate the significance of O’Neill’s play. Explaining that O’Neill was the creator of a genuine American drama, White also suggests that he could not have done so without his Catholicism, nor, the doctor provocatively maintains, without losing it. This introduction to O’Neill is consequently a tour de force review of the history of the interaction between Americanism, Modernism, and Catholicism on the cultural, literary, and artistic battlefields of the beleaguered nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Following upon his introduction to O’Neill in his first lecture, Dr. White examines the nature of O’Neill’s play and discusses both its elements and O’Neill’s approach from a number of angles. As an American with a Catholic sense but, in effect, without the Catholic faith, O’Neill’s essentially auto-biographical play reveals all the contradictions, conflicts, and essential despair characteristic of O’Neill’s personal life and his existence as an American. On the plus side, he knows renaissance drama and the “unities” – one setting, one action, one day’s time – are apparent in his work. At the same time, his play partakes of the inherent tragedy of American political and religious life. Hounded by the Faith, O’Neill spends his life running from it. In an interesting sideline, Dr. White discusses the famous American Catholic Dorothy Day and her understanding of O’Neill: “He portrayed more than any other what life with God is like.” Though he knew from memory, and could recite with energy and drama, Thompson’s Hound of Heaven, he never let God’s pursuit come to fruition. As always, Dr. White’s explication of this particular work of literature carries with it many insightful aphorisms gleaned from his sweeping and expansive knowledge of the panorama of American and Western literature as a whole. “Dead children haunt American drama”; O’Neill’s work, like so many other American productions, is full of people almost literally dying to go to confession; America, as revealed by her greatest artists, is a failed nation that compromised with materialism, as did many of the artists themselves. Still, the Catholic sense seeps through, such that, to cite just one example, O’Neill’s work is obsessed with the past, and in this respect is eminently traditional rather than modern or progressive.
The first part of the book takes place in 1864 when the antihero is 40 years old. He is a government worker with a pathetic lonely life filled with images of his own false superiority. It keeps him aloof from all human contact. Now, the story goes back to 1848 when he is 24 years old. The 1840’s fostered egoism and the dream world of universal idealism. It is the natural extension of romanticism, which created a happy world while ignoring basic moral obligations. It is a false vision. There is this overwhelming sense of love of all humanity. It is easier to love humanity in the abstract rather than do actual works to help. The antihero is filled with egoism. He has to look down on others, but he also needs their attention and approval. How can he know he is wonderful unless others tell him? He loathes them because he needs them. This vanity destroys capacity for social union because he is much better than them. He has the chance to open himself up possibly for the first time in his life to a prostitute, it frightens him, and re runs back to his insanity to remain safely there.
