The Enduring Mystery Of Truth “Most things are beyond me,” Block said. “I ain’t found anything yet that I thoroughly understood.” Dr Block’s words are a calm response to the insult flung by his hostile patient Asbury Fox, who claims that his illness is way beyond the expertise of any ‘simple’ rural doctor. This exchange occurs early on in Flannery O’Connor’s short story The Enduring Chill, and I think that Block’s reply was crafted by the author, to explain to the reader (her patient), that the world is full of mystery. Anybody coming to O’Connor’s fiction for the first time should be ‘warned’ that the lady uses loaded language. Words loaded with symbolism and double meaning; the second meaning invariably being either a truism or an irony. Before that first encounter between Fox and Dr Block, we learn that Asbury Fox is a twenty five year old aspiring writer, a vain young man determined to leave his mark on the world. He’s a Southerner who has rejected his heritage and now lives in New York City, which he believes is a superior environment for the development of his artistic talent. He works in a bookstore to support himself while writing and his leisure time is spent cultivating the company of a motley group of pseudo intellectuals typified by Goetz, whose chief aim and enjoyment of life revolves around preaching a vague gospel of despair to anyone searching for some meaning to existence. However, at one of Goetz’s gatherings, Asbury meets a Jesuit priest who impressed him as being vastly different from the usual ruck of ‘hangers on’ attracted to Goetz.The story begins with a sick Asbury Fox being met by his mother at the rail stop nearest home. ‘Living alone in his freezing flat’ in New York, Asbury had become ill; too ill to work even; and without money he had no alternative but to return home, a mo...
