![]() Rayber, however, intended to raise Tarwater as an atheist, in a purely secular fashion, which did not sit well with Marion. Tarwater had been born following a car accident which claimed the lives of his unwed mother and grandparents, leaving Rayber the obvious choice for raising Tarwater. Rayber had originally been tasked with rearing Tarwater, but Marion, living with Rayber at the time, kidnapped the infant to raise him in the backwoods. Tarwater journeys to the city to escape his destiny, and to meet his estranged uncle, Rayber. While Tarwater is drunk, a local black man and friend of Marion’s, Buford Munson, has buried the old man in Christian fashion. ![]() ![]() Tarwater, who has lived his life doing exactly as he is told, gets drunk instead, and burns his uncle’s house to the ground, believing his uncle’s body to still be inside. But while Tarwater struggles to bury his uncle, a strange voice begins to speak to him in his head, telling him it would be easier to walk away from the expectations of his uncle, and of others, rather than to carry them out. Marion, an extraordinarily religious man who believed himself to be a prophet of God, and brought up Tarwater with the same belief –that he, too, is to be a prophet. ![]() When the novel opens, fourteen year-old Francis Marion Tarwater begins to bury his great-uncle, Marion, who has raised him in the backwoods. “The Violent Bear It Away” is a Southern Gothic novel by Flannery O’Connor, taking place in Tennessee in 1952. ![]()
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