Two Halves of a Whole

In much of Flannery O’Connor’s work, she creates many characters who have disabilities, two in which can be found in her story “The Life You Save May Be Your Own.” From what is told in the story, Lucynell Crater is a girl about thirty years old with the disability of being completely deaf. The story also hints at the idea that she may have some sort of intellectual disability. Along with Lucynell, there is also the character Mr. Shiftlet who has a disability. The disability that O’Connor has given Mr. Shiftlet is that he has only half of an arm. Each of these characters have very differing disabilities. While one is affected mentally, the other is affected physically. Because these characters have what the other lacks, did O’Connor pair them together on purpose?

Some could argue that O’Connor made Mr. Shiftlet have half of an arm and Lucynell be completely deaf to simply add to her collection of odd characters. However, I believe that she brought them together for the reason that they complete each other. From the time Mr. Shiftlet arrives, Mrs. Crater tells of Lucynell’s disability and hints that the only thing she is able to do is physical labor: “She’s smart too. She can sweep the floor, cook, wash, feed the chickens, and hoe” (O’Connor 149). Her mother reveals that despite being deaf, she is physically able to do things any normal person could do, unlike Mr. Shiftlet. As the woman sat and listened to Mr. Shiftlet talk and ask questions, all she could think about was his lack of a full functioning arm: “He asked her what she thought she was made for, but she didn’t answer, she only sat rocking and wondered if a one-armed man could put a roof on her garden house” (O’Connor 148). While Lucynell is able to do things like sweep the floor and hoe the garden, Mr. Shiftlet would struggle completing these tasks. However, Mr. Shiftlet is able to sit down and have meaningful conversations while Lucynell is only able to somewhat mutter out the word bird. 

By having their paths crossed and being joined together by marriage, O’Connor seems to be completing her characters. Because she puts two halves of one whole together, I believe it explains the way Mr. Shiftlet feels after leaving Lucynell at the diner. As he left the diner where Lucynell was fast asleep “he was more depressed than ever as he drove on by himself” (O’Connor 155). He now feels as though something is missing as he drives on into a storm, and what is missing is his other half, Lucynell. Mr. Shiftlet’s whole speech to the boy about leaving his mother also reveals the deepening sadness he feels for leaving Lucynell behind: 

I never rued a day in my life like the one I rude when I left that old mother of mine… ‘My mother was an angel of Gawd’ [he] said in a very strained voice. ‘He took her from heaven and giver to me and I left her.’ His eyes were instantly clouded over with mist of tears. (O’Connor 155-156)

Though he is saying this about his mother, Mr. Shiftlet seems to be referring to Lucynell. While in the restaurant the boy behind the counter refers to Lucynell the same way Mr. Shiftlet refers to his mother: “She looks like an angle of Gawd” (O’Connor 154). Mr. Shiftlet is feeling so emotional because he knows he is leaving behind the only thing in the world that can complete him. 

The Sin of Pride

Pride is something that Flannery O’Connor addresses in most of her stories and having too much pride usually results in her characters experiencing some kind of revelation. Within the very first moments of “The Artificial N***er,” O’Connor reveals both Mr. Head’s and Nelson’s prideful tendencies through even the most miniscule interactions. Each characters’ prideful tendencies have resulted in a significant divide within their relationship. Even something as simple as waking up earlier than the other to make breakfast has become a competition and drive for spite. The old man Mr. Head seems to have an abundance of pride in regard to the knowledge he has gathered throughout life. He continually boasts his knowledge and tries to outsmart his grandson Nelson. This only feeds into Nelson’s pride. Nelson’s annoyance for his grandfather stems from the pride he feels for being born in the city rather than out in the country. Both men’s sense of pride controls the way in which they treat each other as well as others. Mr. Head is too prideful to admit that he does not know all, while Nelson is too prideful to admit that he does rely on his grandfather, and both are too prideful to accept the fact that they are no better than anyone else. 

The series of events that unfold as the plot progresses in “The Artificial N***er” reveal each characters’ denial of Christ because of pride. Because each of them is consumed by proving the other wrong, they only worsen their situation of being lost in the city. In Lucas Morel’s “Bound for Glory: The Gospel of Racial Reconciliation in Flannery O’Connor’s ‘The Artificial N***er,’” he argues that both Nelson and Mr. Head are blinded not only by their pride but also by their racial prejudices. As Mr. Head takes them deeper into the city trying to show the boy his “knowledge” he reveals his bigotry as well when refusing to ask black people for directions. What Morel argues is that because Mr. Head refuses to ask for help it is a denial of spiritual transformation, “O’Connor teaches the reader about opportunities for spiritual transformation that are missed by the main characters, Mr. Head and his grandson Nelson, because of their pride and self-justification, which manifest themselves most clearly in racial bigotry” (203). One then may argue that Nelson is not prideful because he does indeed ask a black woman for help, however after he speaks to her, he feels a strong sense of shame, thus revealing his bigotry. Morel argues that because both men ashamed of asking these strangers for help, they are in a way denying Christ. Each one of their encounters with a black stranger is a representation of the Kingdom of God and they are too blinded by pride to realize this. 

Source: http://web.b.ebscohost.com.reddog.rmu.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=6&sid=c8c00314-76ad-473d-81ea-e350318f92b3%40sessionmgr103

St. Julian the Hospitaller

   

     Julian Chestny claims multiple times throughout “Everything That Rises Must Converge” that he wants to teach his mother a lesson. By the end of the second to last page of this story, it can be argued that Julian’s goal is achieved, his mother definitely learns a lesson regarding racism. But can it also be argued that within the lesson that was taught to his mother, Julian learned a lesson himself? 

While in his headspace, Julian sits and daydreams about all of the possible lessons he could teach his mother, and the perfect lesson begins to unfold right before his eyes. A black man steps onto the bus and sits leaving an empty seat next to him. This allows Julian to implement his plan. Julian immediately invokes anger and frustration within his mother as he seats himself next to the black man. Her anger only accumulates as a black woman joins the party on the bus. As Julian lays his eyes upon the hideous green and purple hat, he grins knowing that his mother is about to learn the most valuable lesson. To his dismay, Julian quickly realizes that the lesson had, “rolled off [Mrs. Chestny] like rain on a roof” (O’Connor 417) due to her own conceit. Julian, disappointed by the failure of the perfect plan, saw a second lesson present itself. As the next series of events unfolded, and Mrs. Turpin ended up with her butt knocked onto the pavement, Julian becomes satisfied. He gloated as his mother lie in shock:

I hope this teaches you a lesson…That was the whole color race which will no longer take your condescending pennies. That was your black double. She can wear the same hat as you…and to be sure, it looked better on her than it did on you. What all this means, is that the old world is gone. The old manners are obsolete, and your graciousness is not worth a damn…You are not who you think you are. (O’Connor 419)

Julian feels power and superiority as he stands above his mother and gloats about her final realization. This feeling of being invincible quickly dissipates as Julian watches his mother slowly die of a stroke. This marks the turning point of when the lesson is being shifted onto Julian. Up until this point, Julian has felt nothing but indignation for and dominance over his mother because he believes he has made himself better than her. This ultimately switches as he helplessly yelps out for someone to come and save his mother lying on the sidewalk. Julian slowly understands the lesson he has been taught as he entered, “into the world of guilt and sorrow” (O’Connor 420) after witnessing and causing his mother’s death.

        

        The significance of Julian ultimately being the one who learns the lesson in this story was O’Connor’s intent. As author David Jauss discusses in his journal article, Julian is the character that is intended to learn a lesson because of the significance of his name. Like most of O’Connor’s work, blatant and hidden ties to Christianity can be found, and Julian’s name is one of those. Julian The Hospitaller is a saint in Roman Catholicism, and like O’Connor’s Julian, he also kills his mother. Aside from both of these Julian’s slaying their mothers, O’Connor creates many parallels between the two. Jauss argues that O’Connor flips the original story of Julian the Hospitaller to fit the situation of her own Julian. O’Connor’s Julian is first the hospitaller as he assists his mother to and from the YMCA each Wednesday, and then he kills his mother. In Julian the Hospitaller’s story, he first kills his parents, and then he becomes a guide that assists people across a river in order to redeem himself. Jauss says O’Connor does this to show that Julian does not rise like his counterpart, “[he] fails to rise because he refuses to ‘converge’ with his mother as St. Julian converged with the leper. He fails to recognize Christ in his mother…discriminating against her in a crueler way then she…discriminates against blacks” (77). Even though it seems as though Mrs. Chestny is the intended villain who needs to learn a lesson, O’Connor sneakily places the lesson on the person we as readers are least likely to suspect is the counterpart to a saint. O’Connor utilizes the parallels between the Julian’s to show how simply one can redeem or fail to redeem oneself.  

Sources: 

Jauss, David. "Flannery O'Connor's Inverted Saint's Legend." Studies in Short Fiction, vol. 25, no. 1, 1988, pp. 76-78.

JJO'Connor, Flannery. "Everything That Rises Must Converge." The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor. Frarar, Straus, and Giroux, 1971, pp. 405-420

Self-Punishment

    

    At the beginning of the film, we see a young Hazel Motes in a flashback being absolutely terrorized by his preacher grandfather. The entire scene is odd. Hazel is in what looks like a large circus tent with dark creepy lighting, coffins, and sounds of his grandfather spitting hellfire and brimstone, yet there is still something else that leaves me pondering. In this flashback, young Hazel is standing on rocky dirt ground, and eventually we see him pick up this rocky ground and put it in each of his shoes. While this is merely a dreamlike flashback, this is not the only time we see Hazel do this in the Wise Blood film. Towards the end of the film when Hazel’s landlady is taking care of him, she picks up his shoes and notices they are quite heavy. As she feels their weight, she realizes there is something in them and dumps the contents onto the ground. To her surprise, she finds rocks and dirt in Hazel’s shoes. This left me wondering, what makes Hazel want to put rocks in his shoes?

            In class we discussed the idea that Hazel puts the rocks in his shoes in a way to punish himself. Not only do we see self-punishment with the rocks, but also with the barbed wire wrapped around his torso and his self-inflicted blindness. While I do agree that this was no doubt a way for Hazel to punish himself for the sins that he has committed, I wonder, why did he punish himself to that extent? As Brian Ingraffia mentioned in his journal article, “If Jesus Existed, I Wouldn’t Be Clean: Self Torture in Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood,” he discusses the idea that Hazel punishes himself in this way to show that he has finally been converted to Christianity. Ingraffia, as well as other critics, see Hazel’s acts of self-punishment as a sort of penance, even though they are extremely brutal and painful. After reading this article discussing Hazel’s self-punishment, it then left me asking, could he have repented in a less severe way?

            Catholics and protestants have been repenting in ways far less painful than blinding oneself and walking on rock shards, so why does Hazel Motes face his penance in this way?

Could he not simply confessed to the sins he has committed like most Christians do now? What Ingraffia and other critics have argued while trying to answer this question is that Hazel could not simply confess because thus far in his life that is not the kind of Christianity he has been taught. From the time Hazel was a young boy, he was only taught Christianity to its extreme. His grandfather instilled a version of God in Hazel’s mind that inflicted fear in him to the extent that he would pee himself. Because of this, Hazel only knows religion by its extremes. To him, the punishment of being blind, putting rocks in his shoes, and wrapping himself in barbed wire is perfectly just. Hazel was taught the extreme hellfire and brimstone version of God which carried over into every aspect of his life. Because he was taught this extreme version of Christianity, in his journey away from it, Hazel felt he needed to sin in the most extreme way. He sleeps with a prostitute, creates a religion without Christ, and even murders a man. These extreme acts of sin then lead to his extreme acts of penance. To Hazel though, this is all fitting because “his life of penance ‘is as grotesque in his embrace of God as his life of flight from God had been” (Ingraffia 79). To you and me these acts of penance make us wince and scratch our heads, but to Hazel they make perfect sense. Hazel knows no other way of being a good Christian than to devout his whole life to every extreme. 

Source: Ingraffia, Brian. “‘If Jesus Existed I Wouldn’t Be Clean’: Self-Torture in Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood.” Flannery O'Connor Review, vol. 7, 2009, pp. 78–86. 

Was O'Connor a Recovering Racist?

           

     In Flannery O’Connor’s story “Revelation,” we are introduced to another one of her infuriating and judgmental characters, Mrs. Turpin. Though in this story Mrs. Turpin makes many remarks that are very telling of her self-righteous personality, one of the comments she made that really stood out to me was her reference to what black people really want to do, “improve their color” (O’Connor 496). While in the waiting room, the woman Mrs. Turpin refers to as white-trash makes a comment saying she wishes all black people would return to Africa because that is what they want to do. Mrs. Turpin in return disagrees and says, “Nooo, they’re going to stay here where they can go to New York and marry white folks and improve their color. That’s what they all want to do, every one of them, improve their color” (O’Connor 496). Considering Mrs. Turpin’s view on class ranking, this comment aligns perfectly with her beliefs. She believes for a black person to better themselves; they need to marry a white person and create what her husband Claud calls, “white-faced _______” (O’Connor 496). 

    

        What I found interesting about this comment is that in other pieces of literature written and taken place during this time period, interracial couples were completely unthought of and extremely controversial. Up until the Supreme Court Case Loving vs. Virginia in 1967, interracial marriage was outlawed. Knowing this, it was very surprising to me that interracial marriage was even considered by someone as judgmental as the character Mrs. Turpin. This then led me to think about the discussion we had about O’Connor’s true intentions when writing about race. Though this particular story is very racially charged, the fact that Mrs. Turpin is not completely disgusted by the concept of interracial marriage leaves me to question O’Connor’s intent yet again. 

 

             As we discussed in class, many critics and everyday readers of O’Connor’s work have a difficult time deciding whether or not she was racist, standing up against racism, or merely a product of her own time. I too am someone who has become especially torn over O’Connor’s stance on race. From the personal letters that have been released, or the stories like “Revelation”, it can be easy for one to decide that O’Connor was racist. However, through her character Mrs. Turpin, I have to think that maybe her stance on race was a lot more complex than what we understand. As Angela Alaimo O’Donnell suggests in her book, Radical Ambivalence: Race in Flannery O’Connor, maybe O’Connor was what she calls, a “recovering racist.” Much like a recovering alcoholic or even recovering catholic, one is traumatized by their experience and though they are trying to get away from it, it still takes up a large part of their lives. Classifying O’Connor as a recovering racist somewhat combines all of the categories many critics of her work try to shove her in. 

            By writing stories such as “Revelation,” O’Connor is not only exposing racism for what it is, but maybe she is also writing to better understand how to overcome it herself. O’Connor uses characters like Mrs. Turpin to expose white southerners who feel as though they are superior to black people, while also purging her own personal thoughts that she knows are racist. Because O’Connor lived in the South where racism ran ramped, she used her writing as a way to help herself and others see just how wrong racism was.  O’Donnell’s term, recovering racist, is something that helps me better understand O’Connor’s work. While though it seems that she uses many of her characters as tools to break down racism, they may also be a tool to help O’Connor cope with and mend her own racist views.

A Modern Controversy

CNN Business posted an article this past August addressing BBC’s apology for using an uncensored racial slur during one of their news segments. Though they apologized for this racial slur, this was not the first time they raised controversy pertaining to the n-word. The controversy first started when a member of BBC’s Social Affairs Correspondents used the n-word while reporting on an attack against a rapper known as K-Dogg. The musician was hit by a car and the attack was said to be racially aggravated. Though the report using the racial slur aired July 29^th, the stations apology was not released until one of their popular DJ’s resigned. BBC’s DJ Sideman, also known as David Whitely, resigned from his position due to the airing of the report that included the n-word. Whitely commented on the incident in disapproval, “the use of the N-word and the subsequent defense of it felt like a slap in the face of our community.” The DJ continued to address the situation and explain why it was not okay with him, “the BBC sanctioning the N-word being said on national television by a white person is something I can’t rock with. This is an error in judgment where I can’t just smile with you through the process and act like everything is okay.” After Whitely resigned, along with 18,600 complaints from viewers, BBC finally felt the need to apologize for the use of the n-word. Along with DJ Sideman, another employee of BBC voiced his disapproval of the use of the n-word on air. Larry Madowo, a correspondent for BBC World also commented on the issue and discussed his own run in with the use of the n-word. Madowo said that when he tried to post an article that used the n-word while quoting an African American, the network did not allow him. Then months later, Madowo sees the airing of a white woman using a racial slur on national television and it did not sit right with him. Because of the uproar from both viewers and employees BBC then apologized and banned the n-word from being used in any context.

"A Good Man is Hard to Find"

As I began reading “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” I was actively searching for ties to Christianity knowing that O’Connor was a devout Catholic. Towards the end of the story, I came to the conclusion that O’Connor was mocking what I would call "fake Christians" through the character, the grandmother. The way in which the grandmother carries herself during the plot was very ironic. O’Connor paints this character in a way that makes readers want to roll their eyes at her. She proclaims to be a good Christianly woman, but her actions do not support this. The only time that the grandmother exemplifies true Christian values is when she is staring death in the face. This is what led me to believe that O’Connor was mocking Christians who do not lead a Christian life until they are overtaken by desperation. 

I believed this to be true until I read Conley Greer’s take on the biblical references throughout “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” Greer discusses a biblical reference that I overlooked completely. He discusses the relevance of the grandmother saying the quote, “Gone With the Wind.” (O’Connor 120). Immediately after reading this quote, my mind went to Margaret Mitchell’s, Gone With the Wind. However, Greer discusses that this reference is actually a bible verse, Psalm 103: 15-17. This verse discusses how mankind is only eternal through death, “the grandmother's unknowing biblical allusion is just that: it is an ironic statement from a secularly obsessed sinner who unknowingly comments on the Christian concept of eternal life.” (Greer 52).

    Greer’s commentary then made me shift my original view of the grandmother. While I originally saw her death being an ironic mockery, I now see it as a way for O’Connor to show what she thinks is the most rewarding aspect of Christianity. O’Connor being the devout Christian she is, shows the grandmother in a very unflattering light, until she is faced with death. In her last moments, like the Misfit said himself, the grandmother acted the most Christianly compared to any other moment in the story. Though the situation that the grandmother found herself in was terrifying, in her last moments she acted gracefully and accepted the Misfit for what he was, a sinner but also a child of god. “In this context, "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" may end grotesquely, but the allusion to Psalm 103 foreshadows hope in the sense that the grandmother will have an opportunity to experience eternal life when she comes face to face with death.” (Greer, 52). Through the grandmother's final actions, O'Connor shows what she believes it means to be a Christian, which is accepting that you and everyone around you is not only a sinner but also a child of God. 

Sources:

Greer, Conley. Orthodoxy and Allusions in "A Good Man is Hard to Find." The Corinthian: The Journal of           Student Research at Georgia College, 2003.