Everyone is a Temple: Post for 11/18

I really enjoyed Flannery O'Conner's short story A Temple of the Holy Ghost. I know that we are supposed to talk about symbolism for this post but I'm not sure what to talk about. I'm not the type of person that can spout off symbolic facts like, "This is what the girls being at a convent means!" or "The author wanted to convey this by giving the child braces! Ah-ha!" I can't do that. Is there even anything I could get from that? I haven't figured out yet if I over-think things or I don't think about them enough. Could it be different for each situation? Maybe.

This story began to remind me of the imago dei discussion in Dr. Fettke's essay. At least at the end when the girls (who should not have seen this in the first place, they're only fourteen) saw the intersex person at the fair. At the beginning of this short story they were taking the "I'm a Temple of the Holy Ghost!" statement from the nun very lightly, to the point where they were mocking it. Everyone started to say, "You're a Temple!" to others and so on. Did they think the same thing when they saw the intersex person? Probably not. They were so disgusted by it that it never even would have crossed their mind. At the end of the story priests went to the fair, inspected it, and had the police shut it down. Do they believe that person is a Temple of the Holy Ghost? They are from the same religion that the nun was from that told the girls about everyone being Temples, right? So then, why did they have the place shut down? In no way am I condoning an intersex person displaying the good china for everyone who walks into that tent. But, were the priests offended by the person showing themselves? Or were they offended that the person claimed that God had made them that way and they were okay with it? Maybe the priests thought, "Surely this person can't be a Temple of the Holy Ghost"? But isn't everyone supposed to be a Temple? I hope this kind of discussion is what we were supposed to do for this post.