Author Type

Graduate Student

Date of Award

1975

Document Type

Thesis

Publication Status

Version of Record

Submission Date

October 2026

Thesis/Dissertation Advisor [Chair]

Rice, Julian

Abstract

William Blatty's The Exorcist can be effectively read as a contemporary saint's life. A study of traditional hagiography reveals how closely Blatty's novel conforms to the traditional pattern. Father Karras, Blatty's hero, confronts the mystery of evil in the demon Pazuzu who has inhabited the body of an eleven-year-old girl. Like the traditional saints, Karras exorcises the demon only through personal sacrifice. In so doing he takes the sins of the other upon him self and becomes a living example of the "mystery of goodness." Like his hagiographic predecessors, however, Karras must suffer a fall into despair before achieving sainthood. In The Exorcist this fall (ultimately fortunate) takes the form of a tormenting religious skepticism and soul-killing scientific rationalism. By the end of the novel, however, modern rationalism has been redeemed by the reemergence of a mystical good, which, in the traditional Christian paradox, can only come into being through the machinations of a mystical evil.

Extent

74 p.

Comments

Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters|Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 1975.|FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection|Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters

Identifier

FADT13712

Format

pdf

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