Dr. Scott Foran, associate professor of English at Montreat College, brings together literature, mythological studies, and depth psychology in his new book, Shadow Side of Grace. The book offers a fresh reading of Flannery O’Connor’s first novel, Wise Blood, exploring it as a story of spiritual struggle, suffering, descent, redemption, and grace.
At the center of Foran’s study is Hazel Motes, the troubled protagonist of Wise Blood. Foran interprets Hazel’s journey as a “nekyia,” or underworld journey. In classical literature, a nekyia involves a descent, an encounter with the dead, and a return with knowledge needed for life.
In Shadow Side of Grace, Foran uses that framework to examine Hazel’s spiritual crisis, as well as O’Connor’s own suffering as she wrote the novel while facing a life-threatening diagnosis of lupus.
Foran also explores the psychological meaning of the nekyia. Thinkers such as Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung saw connections between mythic descent narratives and the inward journey of psychological growth. Foran compares his approach to reading Wise Blood to wearing a pair of eyeglasses: one lens literary, the other psychological.
The title, Shadow Side of Grace, carries several meanings. “Shadow” can refer to the dead, connecting the book to the theme of descent. It also recalls Jung’s concept of the shadow, or the dark and hidden parts of the self. In O’Connor’s novel, this idea sheds light on Hazel Motes’s spiritual unbelief and reflects O’Connor’s confrontation with suffering and mortality.
O’Connor was diagnosed with lupus while working on the first draft of Wise Blood, the same disease that had taken her father’s life nine years earlier. After spending time in the hospital, she returned to the novel and reshaped its plot around redemption. Foran argues that the writing and rewriting of Wise Blood became part of O’Connor’s own nekyia, a process through which she wrestled with death and reconnected with the sustaining power of her Christian faith.
The book also helps readers make sense of O’Connor’s famously grotesque and unsettling fiction. While many readers use “grotesque” to describe her strange characters and violent circumstances, O’Connor understood the term spiritually. Her characters are grotesque because they fail to recognize their need for redemption.
Ultimately, Shadow Side of Grace adds something distinctive to O’Connor studies. It is the first full-length study to focus exclusively on Wise Blood, explore the literary trope of the nekyia in O’Connor’s fiction, and examine her work from a psychological perspective.
Through Foran’s scholarship, readers are invited to see O’Connor and her first novel with renewed depth as a story of suffering, descent, redemption, and grace.
Foran teaches courses in Montreat College’s English major and Honors Program. Learn more about the college’s English major and Honors Program.