"I wonder what you think of Joyce, Father?": Epiphany in "The Enduring Chill"

This is a paper I recently wrote for my American Literature class. It's a brief interpretive response of Flannery O'Connor's short story "The Enduring Chill." I was really excited to get to bring Joyce in--"The Dead" is one of the most beautiful short stories ever, and synthesizing what I'm learning with British lit feels like irrigating a desert. I'm not good with American Lit. Nevertheless, I really like O'Connor, and getting a picture of this interesting intellectual conversation was certainly valuable.


By highlighting her protagonist’s interest in James Joyce in “The Enduring Chill,” Flannery O’Connor heightens the irony of her story, while developing the crucial contrast between a secular conception of epiphany and the revelation of the Holy Ghost. Confident of his impending death, Asbury Fox demands a visit from a priest in the hope of finding “an ally” (343), who, like the Jesuit he meets in New York, will understand “the unique tragedy of his death” (330). When the priest arrives, Asbury begins the conversation by asking “I wonder what you think of Joyce, Father?” (343). Superficially, this question reflects his desire for cultured conversation. However, taken more seriously, his fascination with the great author proves key to his character and to the ironic conclusion, in which Asbury (and Joyce, in a sense) must confront what it really means to experience epiphany.
Asbury’s fascination with Joyce demonstrates—and may cause—his obsession with self-knowledge. Unable to create anything worthwhile, unable even to maintain the exile which Joyce considers essential to the true artist, he clings to self-satisfaction by priding himself on his superior understanding of life, derived from both his intelligence and his tragic situation. Joyce’s work elevates the deep insight into reality which characterizes epiphany, and Asbury clearly believes that he possesses such insight when he reflects that he has “had to face himself” (333) and that his sickness has brought him to a “state of illumination” (336). Thus, his interest in Joyce proves central to Asbury’s conception of himself and therefore to his state of delusion throughout the story.
The irony of the conclusion, of course, lies in the fact that Asbury finally does experience epiphany, and it proves a great deal more earth-shattering than he had ever imagined. In one sense, his experience actually forces him to live out one of Joyce’s stories. The Spirit’s icy descent in the end of “The Enduring Chill” reminisces strongly of Joyce’s most famous short story, “The Dead.” O’Connor writes, “[T]he last film of illusion was torn as if by a whirlwind from his eyes… the Holy Ghost, emblazoned in ice instead of fire, continued, implacable, to descend” (350). The emphasis on ice evokes Gabriel Conroy’s vision of snow “general all over Ireland,” in “The Dead.” Just as Asbury cannot resist the shattering vision of himself, which finally forces him to accept that he is “a lazy ignorant conceited youth” (345), Gabriel is assailed by “a shameful consciousness of his own person.” The moment of epiphany requires both men to endure the destruction of their delusions. Thus, by borrowing from Joyce, O’Connor clearly heightens the irony of her climax.
However, rather than simply purloining her conclusion from Dubliners, O’Connor critiques the entire idea of secular epiphany which Joyce and Asbury share. This becomes clear when Father Finn displays a callous disinterest in Joyce, instead warning “The Holy Ghost will not come until you see yourself as you are” (345). Asbury’s experience demonstrates that in connecting self-knowledge with the work of God, this uncultured priest understands the phenomenon far better than he or Joyce. The concluding vision of “The Dead” is gentle in its deep penetration—Gabriel’s “soul swooned slowly” in response to the “faintly falling” snow. Joyce’s lyricism contrasts sharply with the violent language of “The Enduring Chill.” Asbury’s delusions are ripped away from him, and he knows that the experience will define the rest of his life (350). The force of this encounter suggests supernatural activity to cleanse the young man’s soul even before the Spirit descends. The difference between the two stories reveals O’Connor’s central contention: any experience of self-knowledge, be it Asbury’s arrogant confidence in his own illumination or Gabriel’s vague feelings of love in “The Dead,” is only another delusion apart from faith. True epiphany is a work of grace, convicting the soul and clearing the way for the descent of the Holy Ghost.