All 19 Uses
baptism
in
How to Read Literature Like a Professor
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- Chapter 18 — If She Comes Up, It's Baptism.†
Chpt 18
- Symbolically, that's the same pattern we see in baptism: death and rebirth through the medium of water.†
Chpt 18
- So there are literary drownings like Henry Jr.'s, and near-drowning baptisms like Conrad's, but a character's baptism can also be less harrowing.†
Chpt 18
- So there are literary drownings like Henry Jr.'s, and near-drowning baptisms like Conrad's, but a character's baptism can also be less harrowing.†
Chpt 18
- There's a religious or ritual association here—it resembles baptism in some sects, where the believer is immersed thrice, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.†
Chpt 18
- Rain can be restorative and cleansing, so there's a certain overlap, but it generally lacks the specific baptismal associations of submersion.†
Chpt 18 *baptismal = relating to a Christian ceremony signifying spiritual cleansing and rebirth OR relating to a challenging experience that initiates or purifies
- The thing about baptism is, you have to be ready to receive it.†
Chpt 18
- Then he's ready to become a new person, to undergo his baptismal immersion.†
Chpt 18baptismal = relating to a Christian ceremony signifying spiritual cleansing and rebirth OR relating to a challenging experience that initiates or purifies
- In her Beloved, Morrison makes even greater use of the symbolic implications of baptism and drowning.†
Chpt 18
- So when writers baptize a character they mean death, rebirth, new identity?†
Chpt 18baptize = "spiritually renew" (a person) in a Christian ceremony OR initiate or purify by a challenging experiencestandard suffix: The suffix "-ize" converts a word to a verb. This is the same pattern you see in words like apologize, theorize, and dramatize.
- Baptism can mean a host of things, of which rebirth is only one.†
Chpt 18
- Literal rebirth—surviving a deadly situation—is certainly a part of it, just as symbolic rebirth is the point of the sacrament of baptism, in which taking the new believer completely underwater causes him to die out of his old self and to be reborn in his identity as a follower of Christ.†
Chpt 18
- Seen this way, baptism is a sort of reenactment on a very small scale of that drowning and restoration of life.†
Chpt 18
- Still, it's certainly true that baptism is itself a symbolic act and that there's nothing inherent in the act that makes a person more religious or causes God to take notice.†
Chpt 18
- So in a literary work, does submersion in water always signify baptism?†
Chpt 18
- Does it represent baptism?†
Chpt 18
- And Flannery O'Connor, along the same lines only more peculiar, has a story called "The River" (1955) in which a little boy, having watched baptisms joining people to God on a Sunday, goes back to the river the next day to join God on his own.†
Chpt 18
- The rebirths/baptisms have a lot of common threads, but every drowning is serving its own purpose: character revelation, thematic development of violence or failure or guilt, plot complication or denouement.†
Chpt 18
- Like baptism, drowning has plenty to tell us in a story.†
Chpt 18
Definitions:
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(1)
(baptism) a Christian ceremony signifying spiritual cleansing and rebirth
or:
a challenging experience that initiates or purifiesMost churches baptize infants, but some require an adult to request baptism, and a few (such as the Quakers) require no baptism at all.
Typically, water is used as part of the ceremony, such as sprinkling a little water on a baby's head; though some churches use complete submersion in water. - (2) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)