Susan Derwin

Bio: Susan Derwin is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: Orality. The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 1 publications receiving 1 citations.

Orality, Aggression, and Epistemology in Walker Percy's The Second Coming

Abstract: The second coming (1980) has been read as a celebratory affirmation of the restorative powers of love in the modern world. Like all of Percy's protagonists, Will Barrett, hero of both The Last Gentleman (1966) and The Second Coming, is a perennial seeker. But unlike Binx Boiling, Dr. Thomas More, and Lancelot Andrewes Lamar, Will actually discovers the objects of his pursuit. When the novel opens, Will Barrett is experiencing spells of physical and psychic dislocation: he inexplicably falls down on golf courses and suffers extended fits of involuntary memory. Recently widowed, Will comes to recognize that he and his wife had been virtual strangers to each other and that he is equally estranged from his only daughter, Leslie, \"a dissatisfied nearsighted girl whose good looks were spoiled by a frown which had made a heavy inverted U in her brow.\"1 While Leslie quells her discontent through \"new-style\" Christianity, her belief in \"giving her life to the Lord through a personal encounter with Him\" (152), Will rejects the dogmatic forms of both old and new-style Christianity. Well into middle age, he finds himself detached from family, friends, and God and slowly losing hold of whatever tenuous connections to the world he had hitherto maintained. A second line of narration interwoven with Will's story centers on Allie, a young woman tired of conforming to the demands of her parents and of attempting to achieve socially determined goals. Having