Why Do the Heathen Rage?

In the spring of 1962, while speaking to students at Rosary College, Flannery O’Connor lamented that she was not working on a third novel. To remedy this discontent, O’Connor began “Why Do the Heathen Rage?” in June, adapting the title from a conservative religious column featured in the Atlanta Journal on Saturdays. Published the following summer in July 1963 in Esquire, “Why Do the Heathen Rage?” is a small excerpt from the beginning sections of a proposed novel of the same name. According to biographer Brad Gooch, as the shortest published O’Connor story, the excerpt is only a microscopic glimpse into the “hundreds of pages of drafts” (349) written for the novel O’Connor would never finish due to her early death in August 1964. Over the course of the first year of drafting, she struggled immensely with writer’s block, writing to a friend in May 1963 that “I appreciate and need your prayers. I’ve been writing eighteen years and I’ve reached the point where I can’t do again what I know I can do well, and the larger things that I need to do now, I doubt my capacity for doing” (qtd. in Gooch 352). However, O’Connor gleaned inspiration for her characters in the unfinished novel from both herself and her friend Maryat Lee, who parallels Sarah Gibbs, a character not present in the short story. O’Connor herself mirrors Walter Tilman, specifically in his reading of St. Jerome. After the Second Vatican Council, convened for the first time in ninety-two years in the fall of 1962, where the Pope called for an expansion of theological scholarship, O’Connor purchased a book containing sayings from St. Jerome, “the fourth-century ‘desert father’” (350). In September 1963, after working on the novel for some fifteen months, O’Connor frustratedly wrote a friend that she had been “trying to make something of Walter and his affairs and the other heathens that rage but I think this is maybe not my material” (qtd. in Gooch 353). While O’Connor was eventually able to relieve her writer’s block and pen a few more captivating stories, a collapse and hospitalization over Christmas 1963 ultimately revealed that she “had begun the long, slow process of dying” (356).

Minimal scholarship considers “Why Do the Heathen Rage?” and its imagery. Critic James C. Robison points out that “O’Connor clearly did not intend to have [“Why Do the Heathen Rage?”] appear except as part of the novel” (97), despite the publication of the small excerpt in a magazine. However, regardless of the story’s brevity, O’Connor writes to a friend that “right now I am writing something that may prove to be longer than I’d like. It’s tentatively called ‘Why Do the Heathen Rage?’ It’s been inevitable I get around to that title sooner or later” (The Habit of Being, 498). Describing the story as “inevitable” gives it significance because it grapples with Christian meaning in a way O’Connor has not previously considered in her writing. She ultimately uses “Why Do the Heathen Rage?” to discourage readers from rebelling against God as a result of underappreciating his powerful might and capacity for destruction. O’Connor first identifies the story’s impactful Christian meaning through establishing Walter’s mother as a Christian woman. After Walter rejects his mother’s assertion that he must now run the farm, she reflects that “there was no innocence in him, no rectitude, no conviction either of sin or election. The man she saw courted good and evil impartially and saw so many sides of every question that he could not move, he could not work. [...] Any evil could enter that vacuum. God knows, she thought and caught her breath, God knows what he might do!” (“Heathen,” 485). Walter’s mother’s rigid view of the way she feels Walter should live his life reveals her judgement that his idleness and “contemptible vice” (486) are sinful, defining his lifestyle as inferior to hers. Conveying her judgement through references to “sin,” “evil,” and “God,” associate Walter’s mother with Christianity, showing that she would most likely define herself as a Christian.

However, as the story’s title anticipates, “heathens” characterized by their rage surround Walter, particularly in his father, Tilman, and judgmental mother. For instance, in the ambulance, Walter’s mother notes that “only [Tilman’s] left eye, twisted inward, seemed to harbor his former personality. It burned with rage” (483). Likewise, after Walter’s mother gives him the ultimatum that he must either run the farm or leave, she shows her own rage when “she made her face hard, as hard as she could make it. ‘The responsibility is yours now,’ she said in a harsh, final voice. [...] Her face became even harder. [...] Her mouth drew into a tight line of outrage and her head trembled almost imperceptibly. [...] She remained standing there, rigid, her eye on him in stunned disgust” (484-485). O’Connor characterizes the heathen-like rage of Walter’s parents through their disgust toward his lifestyle, which emanates from their focus on maintaining their own lifestyle. Walter’s mother critiques that “her father and grandfather had been moral men. [...] They knew who they were and what they owed to themselves. It was impossible to tell what Walter knew or what his views were on anything. He read books that had nothing to do with anything that mattered now” (486). Out of a subconscious need to protect their time-honored lifestyle, Walter’s parents, particularly his mother, refuse to understand Walter’s lifestyle. Literary scholar Margaret Earley Whitt explains therefore that Walter’s mother’s “assessment of him is limited by the reality of her day-to-day existence” (228). As a result, O’Connor characterizes Walter’s parents as raging heathens through their steadfastness toward and protectiveness of their lifestyle, which inhibits them from understanding his interest in reading and thinking.

Despite Walter’s parents’ rejection of his lifestyle, the story’s ending reveals that his literary interests may actually allow him to understand more about God than his judgmental mother, who identifies as a Christian yet scorns her son’s interests. In the story’s conclusion, she stumbles across a book of Walter’s opened to a letter written by St. Jerome of the early Christian church to Heliodorus. O’Connor directly quotes The Satirical Letters of St. Jerome, which describes that Heliodorus “had accompanied Jerome to the Near East in 373 with the intention of cultivating a hermitic life” (St. Jerome 2). The excerpt Walter’s mother notices reads, “Love should be full of anger. [...] Listen! the battle trumpet blares from heaven and see how our General marches fully armed, coming amid the clouds to conquer the whole world. Out of the mouth of our King emerges a double-edged sword that cuts down everything in the way” (“Heathen,” 486). In Walter’s mother’s judgmental rejection of the material Walter reads, she fails to recognize that her finding “some strange underlined passage in a book he had left lying somewhere” (486) demonstrates his understanding of St. Jerome’s letter, which, to her is “something that made no sense” (487). However, Walter’s mother’s realization of the meaning of the passage from St. Jerome’s letter arrests her attention regarding her spirituality. She, “with an unpleasant little jolt,” concludes that “the General with the sword in his mouth, marching to do violence was Jesus” (487), a conclusion Walter already understands and his God-worshiping mother does not. St. Jerome directly references John’s description of Jesus in Revelation, which describes that “his eyes were like flames of fire. His feet were like polished bronze refined in a furnace, and his voice thundered like mighty ocean waves. He held seven stars in his right hand, and a sharp two-edged sword came from his mouth” (Rev. 1.14-16 NLT). Walter’s mother’s realization potentially shows her that her son’s lifestyle immersed in books allows him to understand more aspects of the God she worships, specifically God’s power and ability to destroy.

Allegorizing the conflict between Walter and his heathen parents to Psalm 2 perhaps best explains the function of Walter’s parents as raging heathens, the significance of Walter’s mother’s discovery that the General in St. Jerome’s letter is Jesus, and O’Connor’s purpose for the story in discouraging readers from rebelling against a mighty God with the power to destroy. The first verse of Psalm 2 in the King James Version, which reads, “Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?” (Ps. 2.1 KJV), indicates the allegory. Acts 4:25 and Hebrews 4:7 in the New Testament define the second Psalm’s supposedly anonymous author as King David, who writes:

1 Why do the nations rage

and the peoples plot in vain?

2 The kings of the earth set themselves,

and the rulers take counsel together,

against the Lord and against his Anointed, saying,

3 “Let us burst their bonds apart

and cast away their cords from us.”

4 He who sits in the heavens laughs;

the Lord holds them in derision.

5 Then he will speak to them in his wrath,

and terrify them in his fury, saying,

6 “As for me, I have set my King

on Zion, my holy hill.”

7 I will tell of the decree:

The Lord said to me, “You are my Son;

today I have begotten you.

8 Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage,

and the ends of the earth your possession.

9 You shall break them with a rod of iron

and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.”

10 Now therefore, O kings, be wise;

be warned, O rulers of the earth.

11 Serve the Lord with fear,

and rejoice with trembling.

12 Kiss the Son,

lest he be angry, and you perish in the way,

for his wrath is quickly kindled.

Blessed are all who take refuge in him. (Ps. 2 ESV)

The first four verses of the psalm describe as heathens the Gentile kings who live in David’s kingdom and plan to revolt and seize power. David immediately distinguishes between the heathen “kings of the earth” and himself as God’s “Anointed,” which foreshadows the destruction of the Gentile kings, who oppose God (Ps. 2.2 ESV). David explains in verses four through six that, while the Gentile kings believe they oppose David, they actually oppose God, who “holds them in derision” (Ps. 2.4 ESV) and will “terrify them in his fury” (Ps. 2.5 ESV). In verses seven through nine, David summarizes God’s decree that he will send his son, Jesus, a descendant of David, to “break [the Gentile kings] with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces” (Ps. 2.9 ESV). David concludes the psalm in verses ten through twelve with a warning that encourages people to “serve the Lord with fear” (Ps. 2.11 ESV) and obey Jesus, “lest he be angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled” (Ps. 2.12 ESV). Ultimately, David warns the Gentile kings, who, like heathens, rage against God, that God possesses a powerful might and capacity for destruction that will destroy those who disobey him out of lack of fear, the same message O’Connor conveys in her story.

Walter’s parents mirror the Gentile kings who rage against God in Psalm 2, while Walter, attentive and inquisitive, echoes David. As a result, the warning David’s psalm presents to the Gentile kings matches the realization Walter’s mother receives when she learns that the General in St. Jerome’s letter is Jesus. She finally understands the potentially destructive power of Jesus and God, something Walter already understands. Walter’s mother’s judgmental nature, which causes her steadfast protection of her own lifestyle and her complete rejection of Walter’s lifestyle, results in her underappreciation of God’s fear-inducing might. Recognizing Jesus as the powerful and destructive General in St. Jerome’s letter startlingly reminds her of the extent of God’s power in the same way that David attempts to warn the Gentile kings of God’s capacity for destruction in Psalm 2. Therefore, O’Connor’s allegorizing of “Why Do the Heathen Rage?” to Psalm 2 ultimately discourages readers from rebelling against God, warning them of the detriment that results from underappreciating God and Jesus’s powerful might and potential capacity for destruction.

Works Cited

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: King James Version. Edited by Bible Gateway, Zondervan, www.biblegateway.com/.

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

O’Connor, Flannery. The Habit of Being. Edited by Sally Fitzgerald, New York City, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1979.

---. “Why Do the Heathen Rage?” The Complete Stories, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971, pp. 483-87.

Robison, James C. “1969-1980: Experiment and Tradition.” The American Short Story, 1945-1980: A Critical History, edited by Gordon Weaver, Twayne Publishers, 1983, pp. 77-109.

St. Jerome. The Satirical Letters of St. Jerome. Translated by Paul Carroll, e-book ed., Henry Regnery Company, 1956. https://archive.org/stream/satiricalletters027924mbp/satiricalletters027924mbp_djvu.txt.

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