The Enduring Chill

Written in the fall of 1957, “The Enduring Chill” is the fourth story in Flannery O’Connor’s posthumous second collection, Everything That Rises Must Converge. The story’s main character, Asbury, mirrors O’Connor’s artist and intellectual friend, Maryat Lee, who, like Asbury, was a playwright living in New York City. The story also reflects O’Connor’s experience coming home by train after spending Christmas in 1950 with her literary friends Sally and Robert Fitzgerald in Connecticut. O’Connor had been complaining of joint pain leading up to the holiday, so she visited the Fitzgeralds’ family physician, who explained her symptoms as rheumatoid arthritis. Upon the physician’s recommendation, O’Connor sought a second opinion at her local hospital in Georgia once she arrived home. On the train, however, O’Connor fell severely ill. Several days later, Mrs. O’Connor called the Fitzgeralds to inform them that O’Connor had been diagnosed with lupus. Asbury’s dreadful train ride home from New York City, therefore, at least partially derives from O’Connor’s fateful trip home in 1950. Although, as biographer Brad Gooch points out, “the difference is that Asbury’s dread disease turns out to be undulant fever, heightened by self-dramatizing and hypochondria. Flannery would be a longer time coming to understand the true nature of her illness and its more serious significance” (190). Shortly after O’Connor finished the story, Harper’s Bazaar published “The Enduring Chill” in its July 1958 issue. In the spring of 1958, O’Connor read the story aloud at one of the weekly literary and theological meetings held at Andalusia. The weekly group began in the fall of 1957 and lasted until 1960, comprised of a small number of local professors and other members of the community who gathered to read and discuss theology in literature. Ultimately, when O’Connor’s friend Maryat Lee read “The Enduring Chill” for the first time, she positively commented to O’Connor that “this is the closest I have seen you come to your mind’s passion” (294).

Asbury’s insufferable, arrogant, and self-righteous character demonstrates his need for spiritual correction and focus, which leads to the Holy Spirit’s intervention in the story’s conclusion. Most dramatically, Asbury disrespects his mother, Mrs. Fox, by believing her to be stupid and by blaming her for his own inadequacies and mistakes, with scholar E.P Walkiewicz offering that Asbury “looks on his mother as a literal-minded fool whose sole purpose is to suffocate him” (68). For instance, once he arrives in his upstairs bedroom at her house in Timberboro, Asbury reflects on the long letter he intends for her to read after he dies by saying that “he knew, of course, that his mother would not understand the letter at once. Her literal mind would require some time to discover the significance of it” (“Chill,” 364). Asbury also blames Mrs. Fox for his failure as an artist, asserting that “her way had simply been the air he breathed and when at last he had found other air, he couldn’t survive in it” (365), solidifying his arrogance and self-righteousness. Literary critic Robert H. Brinkmeyer points out that “it never crosses [Asbury’s] mind that he in any way could be responsible for the miserable results of his artistic endeavors” (150), further revealing the depth of his arrogance. Furthermore, Asbury claims that his mother only stopped forcing him to further his education when “she observed that the more education they got, the less they could do” (“Chill,” 361). Despite his resistance toward further his education, Asbury demonstrates how little he knows by drinking the unpasteurized milk that makes him sick. In this way, critic Ralph C. Wood notices that “the uneducated Randall and Morgan,” who allow Asbury to drink the milk, “prove far smarter than the cultured Asbury” (115). Regardless, Asbury remains arrogant and self-righteous, believing himself smarter than everyone else, particularly his mother.

Idolizing Art and comfortably accepting his death further accentuate Asbury’s need for spiritual correction and focus. God instructs his people the Israelites that they “must not have any other god but me. You must not make for yourself an idol of any kind or an image of anything [...] You must not bow down to them or worship them” (Ex. 20.3-5 NLT). Later, Paul expands idolatry to include the worship of conceptual as well as physical idols, telling the people that they must “put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry” (Col. 3.5 ESV). Asbury demonstrates his idolatry by concluding that “he had failed his god, Art, but he had been a faithful servant and Art was sending him Death” (“Chill,” 373). Asbury continues that “he had seen this from the first with a kind of mystical clarity. He went to sleep thinking of the peaceful spot in the family burying ground where he would soon lie” (373-374), thereby demonstrating his comfortable acceptance of death, even longing for it. He feels that “death was coming to him legitimately, as a justification, as a gift from life” (370), The prophet Jonah, angry at God for showing mercy on Nineveh instead of destroying it, cries out to God, “Just kill me now, Lord! I’d rather be dead than alive if what I predicted will not happen” (Jonah 4.3 NLT). God rebukes Jonah’s anger and demonstrates aversion toward Jonah’s desire for death by saying, ‘Is it right for you to be angry about this?” (Jonah 4.4 NLT). Therefore, O’Connor confirms that Asbury’s idolatry of Art and desire for death show his need for spiritual correction and focus, which the Holy Spirit addresses at the end of the story.

Multiple instances of foreshadowing reveal Asbury’s true ailment to be of his spirit and not his physical body, presaging the presence of the Holy Spirit in the story’s conclusion. Asbury first makes several comments that “what’s wrong with me is way beyond Block” (“Chill,” 359, 360, and 367). Asbury’s confident conclusion that his physical ailment lies out of Dr. Block’s realm of expertise suggests instead a theological ailment in the form of a sick spirit. Further instances that foreshadow the Holy Spirit support Asbury’s true issue to be of the spirit, such as when Asbury stares at the water stains on the ceiling:

Directly over his bed on the ceiling, another leak had made a fierce bird with spread wings. It had an icicle crosswise in its beak and there were smaller icicles depending from its wings and tail. It had been there since his childhood and had always irritated him and sometimes had frightened him. He had often had the illusion that it was in motion and about to descend mysteriously and set the icicle on his head. (365-366)

During the drafting process of the story, O’Connor wrote that she was “busy with the Holy Ghost. He is going to be a waterstain – very obvious but the only thing possible” (The Habit of Being, 257). Therefore, O’Connor interjects the Holy Spirit throughout the story in the form of the bird-shaped water stain on Asbury’s ceiling, foreshadowing his damaged spirituality in need of repair by the Holy Spirit. For instance, when Asbury waits for Father Finn to arrive, Asbury “look[ed] irritably up at the ceiling where the bird with the icicle in its beak seemed poised and waiting” (“Chill,” 374). Later, Asbury “looked at the fierce bird with the icicle in its beak and felt that it was there for some purpose that he could not divine” (378). Punning on “divine,” O’Connor evokes images of the Holy Spirit as a divine being more so than suggesting Asbury cannot discover the purpose of the bird. O’Connor symbolizes the Holy Spirit with a bird because, when Jesus is baptized, “the heavens were opened and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and settling on him” (Matt. 3.16 NLT), thereby explaining frequent comparisons made between the Holy Spirit and a bird, specifically a dove, in Christian belief. As a result, repetitive foreshadowing of the stain symbolizing the Holy Spirit reveals that Asbury suffers seriously from spiritual sickness.

Two priests, Ignatius Vogle and Father Finn, further foreshadow O’Connor’s theological message about the necessity of the Holy Spirit in remedying spiritual sickness. When Asbury encounters Vogle at a lecture in New York, Asbury snobbishly implores the priest for his opinion, to which Vogle replies that “‘there is,’ the priest said, a real probability of the New Man, assisted, of course,’ he added brittlely, ‘by the Third Person of the Trinity’” (“Chill,” 360), indicating the Holy Spirit. Scholar Margaret Earley Whitt points out Vogle’s foreshadowing by explaining that “O’Connor has selected the priest’s name carefully; vogel is the German word for bird, the symbol of the Holy Ghost, the third person of the Trinity” (133). The story’s second priest, Father Finn, first introduces the Holy Spirit to Asbury by asking him, “‘Do you have trouble with purity?’ he demanded, and as Asbury paled, he went on without waiting for an answer. ‘We all do but you must pray to the Holy Ghost for it. Mind, heart and body’” (“Chill,” 375). While Father Finn may refer to “purity” as sexual morality, the Bible emphasizes the Holy Spirit as necessary for a pure relationship with God, something lacking in Asbury’s spirituality that causes his spiritual sickness. For instance, the apostle Paul explains that “we don’t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words. And the Father who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God’s own will” (Rom. 8.26-27 NLT). Father Finn further emphasizes the Holy Spirit when he asks, “‘How can the Holy Ghost fill your soul when it’s full of trash?’ the priest roared. ‘The Holy Ghost will not come until you see yourself as you are – a lazy ignorant youth!’” (“Chill,” 377). Together, Ignatius Vogle and Father Finn further foreshadow the Holy Spirit and its later role in remedying Asbury’s spiritual sickness.

When Asbury finally discovers that his deplorable character has brought about his bodily ailment, he realizes the more important detriment of his sick spirit in need of the Holy’s Spirit’s restoration, which embodies O’Connor’s purpose for the story in urging readers to maintain spiritual focus. Based on Father Finn’s words that leave Asbury “pale and drawn and ravaged, sitting up in his bed, staring in front of him with large childish shocked eyes” (377), critic Jill Peláez Baumgaertner concludes that “Asbury’s inevitable capture of the Holy Spirit [...] seems to have everything to do with the priest’s words” (106). As a result, when Asbury learns he has undulant fever and will not die, “somewhere in [the] blurred depths [of his eyes] there was an almost imperceptible motion as if something were struggling feebly” (“Chill,” 381), indicating the beginning of Asbury’s awareness of his damaging self-righteousness. Asbury then concludes that “the old life in him was exhausted. He awaited the coming of new” (382). In response, O’Connor explains that “he undeniably realizes that he’s going to live with the new knowledge that he knows nothing. That really is what he is frozen in – humility” (Habit, 261). Through this newfound humility, Asbury notices the water stain:

The fierce bird which [...] had been poised over his head, waiting mysteriously, appeared all at once to be in motion. Asbury blanched and the last film of illusion was torn as if by a whirlwind from his eyes. He saw for the rest of his days, frail, racked, but enduring, he would live in the face of a purifying terror. A feeble cry, a last impossible protest escaped him. But the Holy Ghost, emblazoned in ice instead of fire, continued, implacable, to descend” (“Chill,” 382).

Here, Wood acknowledges that Asbury encounters the Holy Spirit that “has the power to cleanse all his unrighteousness [...] as a fierce bird bearing the icicle of judgement in its beak” (116). Asbury finally recognizes his conceit and self-righteousness, which transforms into humility, thus initiating the presence of the Holy Spirit to purge his sick spirituality, as Father Finn foreshadows. Therefore, in Asbury’s abrupt awakening to the flaws in his spirit, O’Connor conveys the importance of the Holy Spirit in maintaining spiritual focus and ultimately urges readers to prevent spiritual sickness.

Works Cited

Baumgaertner, Jill Peláez. “Flannery O’Connor and the Cartoon Catechism.” Inside the Church of Flannery O’Connor: Sacrament, Sacramental, and the Sacred in Her Fiction, edited by Joanne Halleran McMullen and Jon Parrish Peede, Mercer UP, 2007, pp. 102-16.

Brinkmeyer, Robert H., Jr. The Art and Vision of Flannery O’Connor. Baton Rouge, Louisiana State UP, 1993.

ESV Study Bible: English Standard Version. Translated by Crossway, ESV text ed., Wheaton, Crossway Bibles, 2011.

Gooch, Brad. Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor. New York, Little, Brown, 2009.

Holy Bible: New Living Translation. Translated by Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Tyndale House Publishers, 2015.

O’Connor, Flannery. “The Enduring Chill.” The Complete Stories, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971, pp. 357-82.

---. The Habit of Being. Edited by Sally Fitzgerald, New York City, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1979.

Walkiewicz, E. P. “1957-1968: Toward Diversity of Form.” The American Short Story, 1945-1980: A Critical History, edited by Gordon Weaver, Twayne Publishers, 1983, pp. 35-76.

Whitt, Margaret Earley. Understanding Flannery O’Connor. Columbia, U of South Carolina P, 1997.

Wood, Ralph C. Flannery O’Connor and the Christ-Haunted South. Grand Rapids (Michigan), W.B. Eerdmans Publ., 2005.