I am pretty sure that re-reading this about 15 years after first reading it, I definitely thought I understood it more than I definitely actually understood it.
This novel is a few things: Southern, dark, crass, and Religious.
Flannery O’Connor does not like fakers. Not at all. There’s obviously the Yeats quote that gets thrown around a lot about…well, here:
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Well ok, but there are no best. Flannery O’Connor’s writing does not care who is best and who is not. Instead, they care about those with real conviction or not.
So a faker with real conviction is dangerous, true, but a charlatan is much much worse, because it’s a fundamental breakdown of the world.
But sinners are like math students. If they show their work, they get partial credit. That’s why the Misfit in “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is not worse than the grandma, who is a hypocrite. He gets partial credit for earnest behavior while she doesn’t for lying and faking virtue.
In this novel, we have a definitely faker. Hazel Moats decides he’s going to preach a bs gospel he will call “The Church without Christ” and it’s a sort of catch-all for all experiences short of accepting a doctrine of faith. There’s a kind of false feeling among the non-religious who think that Christianity doesn’t care about faithful and charitable works. Instead, there’s a tension when the charitable works do not also allow for faith and acceptance.
Also this novel is really funny. And I am not even religious.
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