es the religious fanaticism of Mason as a disease in the family line. As he says, "The affliction was in the family. It lay hidden in the line of blood that touched them, flowing from some ancient source, some desert prophet or polesitter, until, its power unabated, it appeared in the old man and him and, he surmised, the boy."[6] Rayber tries to steer Francis toward a secular life as surely as Mason tries to steer him toward God. Wilson argues that "The family in this novel is a means of continuity, a vital blood passageway for progeny, for passing on the torch to the unwilling inheritors of Jesus, of madness, of salvation."[7] Rayber's secular life will prove him a failure in every way imaginable, perhaps because he rejected the family "affliction" and rejected religion as salvation which closes him off to any form of redemption in O'Connor's view.
Francis, who was kidnapped by Mason so he could be baptized, is not overly thrilled with the idea of becoming a prophet. He does everything in his power to avoid t
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