The Enduring Chill

Last updated
"The Enduring Chill"
Short story by Flannery O'Connor
Country United States
Language English
Genre(s) Southern Gothic
Publication
Published in Everything That Rises Must Converge
Publication typeSingle author anthology
Publication date1958

"The Enduring Chill" is a short story by Flannery O'Connor. It was written in 1958 and published in 1965 in her short story collection Everything That Rises Must Converge . After suffering for many years, O'Connor died of lupus at the age of 39. A devout Roman Catholic, O'Connor often used religious themes in her work.

Plot summary

The story about Asbury, a writer from New York who returns home to his mother's farm in the Southern United States after coming down with a serious illness. He is out of money, unsuccessful, and believes he is dying. His mother finds a local doctor, Dr. Block, who draws some of Asbury's blood to examine. In bed Asbury thinks about various experiences, including one the prior year when he interacted with the African-American farm hands and, in a show of rebellion against his mother, smoked cigarettes with them in the dairy barn. He also drank raw milk, but the farm hands refuse to drink the milk, saying that's one thing Asbury's mother doesn't allow. He tried to convince the hands to do this for several days without success, and later hears them talking about him behind his back. Asbury reflects on the time he met a Jesuit priest at a lecture in New York, and asks that his mother bring a priest to him against her wishes. She complies but the priest is elderly, hard of hearing, and not the intellectual that Asbury hoped for. The priest gives Asbury an angry lecture about his failure to say his prayers and learn the Catechism. Though Asbury doesn't believe, this experience leaves him scared and shaken. Asbury then requests to see the African-American farm hands so that he may have a meaningful experience before he dies. Asbury gives them both cigarettes, the farm hands lie to him by telling him he looks well, and they bicker between themselves over the most effective remedy for a cold. Asbury finds this interaction disappointing. After Asbury awakens from a deep sleep, Dr. Block arrives at the house and informs Asbury that he has undulant fever. His mother speculates that he probably got it from drinking raw milk at the dairy. The illness will not kill him but will continually recur and cause him pain. Asbury is disappointed that he will not die a tragic death. [1]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Flannery O'Connor</span> American writer (1925–1964)

Mary Flannery O'Connor was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist. She wrote two novels and 31 short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Verghese Kurien</span> Indian entrepreneur (1921–2012)

Verghese Kurien was an Indian dairy engineer and social entrepeneur who led initiatives that contributed to the extensive increase in milk production termed the White Revolution.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Raw milk</span> Milk that has not been pasteurized

Raw milk or unpasteurized milk is milk that has not been pasteurized, a process of heating liquid foods to kill pathogens for safe consumption and extending the shelf life.

Scaphism, also known as the boats, is an alleged ancient Persian method of execution mentioned by Plutarch in his Life of Artaxerxes. It ostensibly entailed trapping the victim between two boats, feeding and covering them with milk and honey, and allowing them to fester and be devoured by insects and other vermin over time.

<i>Wise Blood</i> 1952 novel by Flannery OConnor

Wise Blood is the first novel by American author Flannery O'Connor, published in 1952. The novel was assembled from disparate stories first published in Mademoiselle, The Sewanee Review and Partisan Review. The first chapter is an expanded version of her Master's thesis, "The Train", and other chapters are reworked versions of "The Peeler," "The Heart of the Park" and "Enoch and the Gorilla". The novel concerns a returning World War II veteran who, haunted by a life-long crisis of faith, resolves to form an anti-religious ministry in an eccentric, fictionalized Southern city after finding his family homestead abandoned without a trace.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">H. B. Reese</span> American businessman and inventor

Harry Burnett Reese was an American inventor and businessman known for creating the number one-selling candy brand in the United States; Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, and founding the H. B. Reese Candy Company. In 2009, he was posthumously inducted into the Candy Hall of Fame.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Toogood Smith</span> John Lennons uncle (1903–1955)

George Toogood Smith was the maternal uncle, through marriage, of John Lennon. Smith operated his family's two dairy farms and a retail outlet with his brother, Frank Smith, in the village of Woolton, Liverpool. The farms had been in the Smith family for four generations, but after the start of the Second World War, they were taken over by the British Government for war work.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andalusia (Milledgeville, Georgia)</span> Historic house in Georgia, United States

Andalusia is a historic home once owned by Southern American author Flannery O'Connor. The estate is located in rural Georgia in Baldwin County, Georgia, approximately 4 miles (6.4 km) northwest of Milledgeville. It comprises 544 acres (2.20 km2), including the plantation house where O'Connor wrote some of her last and best-known fiction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Revelation (short story)</span> Short story by Flannery OConnor

"Revelation" is a Southern Gothic short story by author Flannery O'Connor about the delivery and effect of a revelation to a sinfully proud, self-righteous, middle-aged, middle class, rural, white Southern woman that her confidence in her own Christian salvation is an error. The protagonist receives divine grace by accepting God's judgment that she is unfit for salvation, by learning that the prospect for her eventual redemption improves after she receives a vision of Particular Judgment, where she observes the souls of people she detests are the first to ascend to Heaven and those of people like herself who "always had a little of everything and the God-given wit to use it right" are last to ascend and experience purgation by fire on the way up.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">A Good Man Is Hard to Find (short story)</span> Short story by Flannery OConnor

"A Good Man Is Hard to Find" is a Southern gothic short story first published in 1953 by author Flannery O'Connor who, in her own words, described it as "the story of a family of six which, on its way driving to Florida [from Georgia], is slaughtered by an escaped convict who calls himself the Misfit".

"The River" is a Southern gothic short story by the American author Flannery O'Connor that was first published in 1953 about a very young boy who is taken by his babysitter to a preacher at a Christian healing where he is baptized in a river, and, the next day, runs away from home to the site of his baptism and baptizes himself, and then is taken by the river to find the Kingdom of Christ, as told by the preacher, and drowns.

"The Life You Save May Be Your Own" is a short story by the American author Flannery O'Connor. It is one of the 10 stories in her short story collection A Good Man Is Hard to Find, published in 1955.

Aajonus Vonderplanitz was an American alternative nutritionist and food-rights activist who focused on raw foods, particularly meat and dairy. He was a controversial figure who conducted legal battles, implemented legal loopholes for consumer access to raw milk, and developed a diet based largely on raw meat: the primal diet. His later years, marked by his allegations of conspiracies and by his infighting within the raw food community, drew him notoriety even among advocates of alternative healthcare and food rights.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Parker's Back</span> Short story by Flannery OConnor

"Parker's Back" is a Southern gothic short story by American author Flannery O'Connor about the efforts of a worldly tattooed Southern man to demonstrate his love for a fundamentalist Christian woman whom he courts and marries but never understands why he stays with her. After a self-indulgent, disordered, and carefree life, the story's protagonist accepts God's grace and fulfills the meaning of his given name, Obadiah, but his wife with her Old Testament beliefs rejects grace in the form of Jesus Christ tattooed on her husband's back. The work was published in 1965, in her final short story collection, Everything That Rises Must Converge. André Bleikasten, a scholar who studied Southern American writers and their works, said "'Parker's Back' belongs with O'Connor's most explicitly religious stories" as well as “one of her most enigmatic and gripping texts”.

"The Lame Shall Enter First" is a short story by Flannery O'Connor. It appeared first in The Sewanee Review in 1962 and was published in 1965 in her short story collection Everything That Rises Must Converge. O'Connor finished the collection during her final battle with lupus. She died in 1964, just before her final book was published. A devout Roman Catholic, O'Connor often used religious themes in her work.

"The Displaced Person" is a novella by Flannery O'Connor. It was published in 1955 in her short story collection A Good Man Is Hard to Find. A devout Roman Catholic, O'Connor often used religious themes in her work and her own family hired a displaced person after World War II.

"Good Country People" is a short story by Flannery O'Connor. It was published in 1955 in her short story collection A Good Man Is Hard to Find. A devout Roman Catholic, O'Connor often used religious themes in her work. Many considered this to be one of her greatest stories.

"A Temple of the Holy Ghost" is a short story by Flannery O'Connor. It was written in 1953 and published in 1955 in her short story collection A Good Man Is Hard to Find, and is one of O'Connor's few explicitly Catholic stories. A devout Roman Catholic, O'Connor often used religious themes in her work, but more commonly described rural Southern Protestants as her main characters.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Daniel H. Kress</span> Canadian physician and Seventh-day Adventist missionary

Daniel Hartman Kress was a Canadian physician, anti-smoking activist, Seventh-day Adventist missionary and vegetarian.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Milk borne diseases</span>

Milk borne diseases are any diseases caused by consumption of milk or dairy products infected or contaminated by pathogens. Milk borne diseases are one of the recurrent foodborne illnesses—between 1993 and 2012 over 120 outbreaks related to raw milk were recorded in the US with approximately 1,900 illnesses and 140 hospitalisations. With rich nutrients essential for growth and development such as proteins, lipids, carbohydrates, and vitamins in milk, pathogenic microorganisms are well nourished and are capable of rapid cell division and extensive population growth in this favourable environment. Common pathogens include bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites and among them, bacterial infection is the leading cause of milk borne diseases.

References

  1. Richard Giannone, Flannery O'Connor, hermit novelist (University of Illinois Press, 2000)