Exclusion And Reality In Flannery O Connor's Night Face Up

“Night Face Up” is a fiction about a man goes through a motorcycle accident and the combination of dream and reality at the hospital. He feels uncomfortable because of the medical treatments, but the strange thing is that he dreams of a savage world where he comes from Motecas. Acolytes of Aztecs are looking for him and they want to kill him, so he has to run to avoid them. The philosophical assertion in this story is Aristotle’s hylomorphism because both reality and the dream are alive to the protagonist, and it is the soul that makes them alive. I will further explain this in the second paragraph and give the conclusion in the third paragraph. At the beginning of the story, the protagonist rides his motorcycle on the road that he should
be familiar with since he knows this is “the most pleasant part of his trajectory”. But then when he avoids the old woman, he “lost his vision” and injured. Like matter and form in Aristotle’s “On the Soul”, his accident and his way to the hospital are all matters. Matter gives the physical object, which is the real object. During the operation, he starts to dream. But “it was a curious dream because it was full of smells and he never dreamed smells.” Then he enters the brutal world and starts to flee from the Aztecs. It is the soul that makes him feel his dream is real. He always has the intense feelings and the eagerness of survival. Every time he sleeps, he continues the dream as if it is a complete story. It feels so true that he is thankful that he can awake and finds out that he lives in the modern world with peace. But at the last time, he feels weak and he cannot access to water. Because of the high fever, he is unable to wake up. It is also at this time he realizes that his “dream” is actuality, while the modern life is the dream. The protagonist starts from having the potential to see the Aztecs to actually sees them with torches. This is the process of Aristotle’s belief. From potential to the first grade actuality, and then to the second grade. It is also the process of going from body to soul, then to live. This story is logical because it combines both reality and the dream. It shows how the protagonist struggles in the ward and dreaming, and they both follow the order and logical steps. Then it leads to the reverse of reality when he finds out he is dreaming of the accident. Thus this story shows the hylomorphism that the soul makes things alive.