Llamadas a lo poco

Explica muy biene Susan Srigley la decepción de Francis Tarwater al descubrir lo poco importante que parece su vocación: simplemente bautizar a Bishop, un niño que «respira pesadamente y con ruidos nasales; come estrepitosamente, como un cerdo» (breathes heavily and with gurgling noises; he eats loudly, like a hog), quizá porque «no piensa mucho más que un cerdo» (he don't think no more than a hog) (TBVIA 116).

Francis había visto en su tío un profeta grandioso* y con Bishop lo que tiene es una relación que pasa por el silencio y el agua (hay una anticipación del bautismo en la «conversación en silencio» con Bishop por teléfono (TBVIA 81-82), donde dice que «era el tipo de ruido que alguien haría si estuviera peleando por respirar en el agua» (it was the kind of noise someone would make who was struggling to breathe in water).

Tanto su padre Rayber (superado por ese amor a su hijo que le ahoga: «overwhelming love») como Tarwater (que lo percibe como testigo silencioso de su vocación profética) se esfuerza en controlar a Bishop. En ambos el medio que usan para enfrentarse a ello es la violencia: Rayber rechazando el amor que siente por Bishop, anestesiándose a sus afectos, Francis ahogándole.

*Esto es lo que le había pasado a su tío:

He had been called in his early youth and had set out for the city to proclaim the destruction awaiting a world that had abandoned its Saviour. He proclaimed from the midst of his fury that the world would see the sun burst in blood and fire and while he raged and waited, it rose every morning, calm and contained in itself, as if not only the world, but the Lord Himself had failed to hear the prophet's message. It rose and set, rose and set on a world that turned from green to white and green to white and green to white again. It rose and set and he despaired of the Lord's listening. Then one morning he saw to his joy a finger of fire coming out of it and before he could turn, before he could shout, the finger had touched him and the destruction he had been waiting for had fallen in his own brain and his own body. His own blood had been burned dry and not the blood of the world (TBVA 5-6).

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*Flannery O'Connor's Sacramental Art, Notre Dame, Indiana, 2004, 121-122