"All of my stories are about the action of grace on a character who is not very willing to support it."
--Flannery O'Connor
In class, we discussed the first three stories in A Good Man Is Hard to Find. For this post, choose any of the remaining stories in the collection and share your observations on its issues. What is the story "about?"
Posts
"Good Country People" confronts the ugliness and deformity of evil, but it challenges the reader to decide how this ugliness can present itself.
ReplyDeleteLike many of Flannery's protagonists, Joy (Helga) Hopewell is in need of salvation. And like her best characters, she stomps around causing anxiety in the story and for the reader by carrying a disability and unsympathetic demeanor; however, the true
ugliness in the story comes from those characters who are physically whole: the "good country people."
Joy serves as the foil that the other characters, can be compared and by which the reader determines that it is not the disabled character who is ugly. The physically whole bodies are just as problematic, perhaps even more so, just as fragmented, just as alienated, as the disabled body is believed to be.
In the end, when Joy loses her leg (for a second time), the veil with which she and humanity live under is hastily pulled away. She now confronts the "nothingness" she reads about; the "nothingness" that already exists in the whole characters like Manley, Mrs. Hopewell and Mrs. Freedman.
*Note: After reading this, look at Louise Bourgeois's "Couple IV". quite eerie.
`M. Daniele
In “The Artificial Nigger” O’Connor describes the lesson Mr. Head plans to teach his grandson, “It was to be a lesson the boy would never forget. Mr. Head meant him to see everything to see in a city so that he would be content to stay at home for the rest of his life.” (100-101) Initially, O’Connor describes Mr. Head as having “strong character” and “a look of composure and ancient wisdom”,
ReplyDelete(99) but as Mr. Head and his grandson begin their journey into Atlanta, O’Connor starts to reveal to us Mr. Head’s insecurities. Waiting for the train Mr. Head struggles with the decision to turn back and when he wonders if the train will stop, that it might “make an even bigger idiot of him”. (103)
The tone that O’Connor sets is of a torch being passed. However, this torch doesn’t represent accomplishment or pride so much as it represents bitterness, fear, arrogance and cruelty. Mr. Head is going to teach his grandson that wanting to leave home is foolish and arrogant. It is Mr. Head’s plan to demonstrate to the boy why the city is to be feared and avoided, “The thing to do with a boy is to show him all it is to show. Don’t hold nothing back.” (105) Mr. Head and his grandson seem like two rubes. The only advantage Nelson has over Mr. Head is his pride of being born in Atlanta. Nelson says this with much pride as if he really wants to say, “I’m not like the old man here. I wasn’t born in the country.” Mr. Head uses the trip to the city as a way to work out his own self doubt. He talks too loud, wants to engage in conversation with people to prove he’s smart.
After Mr. Head denies knowing Nelson, Mr. Head is acutely aware of the rift and admits he’s lost. Even though his admission of failure has gotten them back in the right direction, Nelson refuses to forgive him. If the story were to end at this point in the story, it would be about a man’s plan that backfired. Then, just as if it seems Nelson and Mr. Head’s relationship has been damaged beyond repair they reconcile over the cement statue, “some monument to another’s victory that brought them together in their common defeat. They could both feel it dissolving their differences like an action of mercy”. (125)
The story’s about ignorance and the terror of being discovered a fraud. Another question the story raises is what you do when the only person in your life wants to leave you for bigger and better things. Mr. Head needs to stop that from happening and he does that by instilling in Nelson the same fear and ignorance as his own: fear, self doubt, and helplessness. O’Connor demonstrates Mr Head’s desire to be seen as worldly and educated while she depicts Nelson as a boy struggling to prove he is independent. Both characters are scared, they only have each other so in facing the possibility of being alone they fall back on what’s comfortable to them.
Diana De P.
In "A Late Encounter with the Enemy," Flannery O'Connor is exploring how absorbed General Sash and Sally become with their own pride. Both live a life that is centred on the General appearing on stage in uniform so that he may relive the only moment in his life he has attached any significance to, or even acknowledges with a memory. Sally is motivated to this end that she makes it her duty to earn a degree while making every effort not to actually learn from it - she wants to receive her diploma in spite of the old ways "she stood for" (154), the physical manifestation of which is her grandfather in his General uniform. The General's interest in sitting on the stage is so that he may stand for a pride in the "old way" he neither has nor genuinely stands for - he is interested in the attention and meaning it gives his life, but by wearing the uniform of someone he never was and standing for something so abstract he is free of the disappointing realities of his past.
ReplyDeleteAt the end of the story, the General's encounter is with the enemy he has made of his past, which overwhelms him in attempt to deny it. What kills the General is how certain he is of himself and the lie he is living that he separates the entire world, past and present, into moments where he is glorified (by beautiful girls) and moments where the world is cruel and unconcerned with his greatness.
- Pat H.
This post is now closed.
ReplyDelete