This week we are discussing the end of part two, in which the novel confronts us, yet again, with the problem of freedom. Specifically the problem of freedom within the context of a Christian cosmology. Can anyone be said to be free and responsible for their actions, and if so where does that freedom lie? After all, we all have subconscious desires acting in us, we all have dispositions we didn’t choose, we have the limits put on us by our time and place, and we have the voices of ancestors hectoring us in our heads. Nevertheless the events of life sometimes build to crises, and how we react to those crises seems to say something essential about us as human beings. Perhaps even leads us to damnation. For the Rayber and Tarwater, their moment of crisis turns on the baptism and drowning of Rayber’s mute son Bishop. How they take part in and react to this crises forms the basis of our discussion today, as we attempt to work out what this strange, bleak, claustrophobic, very Catholic, and very Southern novel is telling us about the place of freedom in human life. And more broadly about the possibilities of sin and damnation, and of grace and redemption.