| | OK - For all of you out there who want to read a well-written commentary on the grim spirituality in Southern writer Flannery O'Connor's short stoires (a.k.a. my research paper)... here you go. Music Review Wednesday will have to come on Thursday this week. Please be informed that the opinions expressed in this piece are not necessarily the ones that I hold: I just thought it would be challenging to write from a slightly different perspective. Enjoy! (haha...)
Holy Crap
Tritely insincere, the perfunctory spiritual formalities performed by many members of today’s society indicate the intrinsic desire to appear righteous to the casual observer when, in actuality, they possess not even a hint of holiness. However, if these individuals happen to hold one of those rare positions as a true religious believer, they witness an even greater sacred scandal – the romanticized, fatherly image of a caring Christ does not truly exist. His children having forsaken Him quite some time ago, God now acts as a smiting authoritarian, and the havoc He wreaks greatly outweighs the souls He edifies. Flannery O’Connor dissects this controversial issue in the American South, a setting that emblazons her subject matter in the most notorious fashion. The author holds back no pretense, as she nourishes her characters with the requisite religious background only to deconstruct them through torturous spiritual warfare. Discussing the everyman of O’Connor’s pen, André Bleikasten comments, “Whether it degrades itself in grotesque parody or exhausts itself in mad convulsions, his quest for the holy is doomed to derision and failure from the very start” (77-78). O’Connor bestows grace upon her characters but torments them through it, ostracizes her creations in order to make them suffer, and revitalizes her innocents for the purpose of destroying them. Throughout each step, her threateningly oppressive God of wrath waits in the shadows to pounce upon His prey the moment it reaches its weakest point. Such a pessimistic view of religious matters requires Martha Stephens to delve into ancient worldviews in order to locate a comparable body of beliefs: “To find so bleak, so austere and rigid, so other-worldly a Christian view of life as hers, one is forced back into the distant past of English religious literature – into the dark side of medieval Christian thought with its constant injunction to renunciation of the world” (55). In conveying Jesus more distastefully, O’Connor seeks to invoke a sense of identification within her readers of their own crippled spirituality. Flannery O’Connor sculpts her character’s fluctuating levels of faith, ranging from unexpurgated devotion to secular agnosticism, to portray the relative absence of decency and overall religious corruption dominant in the acutely Christian world of the South.
O’Connor exposes her antagonistic perception of the faux religious exterior assumed by Southerners by twisting grace, traditionally described as God’s matchless gift of mercy to his erring children, into a wretched tool of ruinous proportions that festers into painful maladies before it executes its decidedly more fruitful chores of forgiveness and reconciliation. This concept makes itself most evident in O’Connor’s “The Artificial Nigger” in which Mr. Head betrays his young grandson, Nelson, after the boy causes a domestic disturbance stemming from Head’s conscious abandonment of the child (O’Connor 98-126). Near the end of the story, Nelson plays Jesus to Head’s Judas, as the elder regrets his foolish decision to betray his own flesh and blood. Nelson’s reluctance to forgive his grandfather represents human nature’s lack of gravitation toward that godly principle of grace, a concept likened to an empty gas tank’s rare acquisition of fuel; although the gas carries a certain efficacy, it does not exist under normal conditions (Guroian). Grace may indeed supplement the lives of its benefactors with temporary clemency, but its infrequency ultimately renders it infinitely useless just like any of God’s other bombastic utensils. The progression to grace’s reception begins with guilt, the awareness and regret of one’s own faults. In bringing His children to this point, “[. . .] God mercifully mortifies them in the hope that they will freely open their hearts to the Holy Spirit [. . .] as they begin to expiate their pettiness [. . .]” (Bruce). Head digresses with his guilt to such an extent that he pictures his forlorn grandson’s nonchalance at his hypothetical disappearance from the face of the earth. “The old man felt that if he saw a sewer entrance he would drop down into it and let himself be carried away; and he could only imagine the boy standing by, watching with only a slight interest, while he disappeared” (O’Connor 123). The old man allows his inevitable sin, although rather grievous in this case, to get the best of him, and he spirals down in a tailspin of shame. The unending watch of an incredulous God torments O’Connor’s characters into a sort of self-conscious hallucination (Bleikasten 82). In addition to this horrific nightmare, Head must also face his coldly abandoned grandson, now bitter with doubt. Bordering on malice, the shattered trust that Nelson holds for his grandfather only amplifies the man’s remorse. “When Mr. Head realized this, he lost all hope. His face in the waning afternoon light looked ravaged and abandoned. He could feel the boy’s steady hate, traveling at an even pace behind him and he knew that [. . .] it would continue just that way for the rest of his life” (O’Connor 122). Head’s realization that his misdeeds greatly burden his beloved offspring thus becomes a pivotal point in the sequence of doomed grace.
A bittersweet epiphany swells from Head’s acceptance of guilt and continues the distorted path of God’s perfidious grace. This spiritual breakdown immobilizes the man both physically and mentally, as the hand of God extends to put the sinful actions into perspective. “Mr. Head turned slowly. He felt he knew now what time would be like without seasons and what heat would be like without light and what man would be like without salvation” (O’Connor 124). Bruce L. Edwards, Jr. comments that pragmatic characters have to either submit to God or completely refute this “savage Savior” (2569). This epiphany occurs when Mr. Head’s multitude of conflicting emotions collides, rendering him speechless before his creator. O’Connor elaborates, “Mr. Head stood very still and felt the action of mercy touch him again but this time he knew that there were no words in the world that could name it” (126). Bleikasten reiterates the moment of awakening by affirming, “And paradoxically it is more often than not at the very last moment, at the climax of violence or at the point of death that grace manifests itself, as though these boundary situations were God’s supreme snare and the sinner’s ultimate chance” (78). Depicting God as a dominating huntsman, Bleikasten hits upon the notion of a supreme being that just might not have his creation’s utmost ease in mind; rather, this God seeks to divulge the inherent immorality of his creatures. “He [Mr. Head] had never thought himself a great sinner before but he saw now that his true depravity had been hidden from him lest it cause him despair” (O’Connor 126). Suzanne Morrow Paulson offers, “The epiphany is not a joyous revelation of God in all his glory but an anguished and often paradoxical glimpse of some indirect evidence that God has interfered with and guided the affairs of man” (169). Far from a euphoric episode of blissful gaiety, this vigorous rousing results from the uninhibited power of God. Having remained constrained for as long as it could withstand, God’s relinquished might elicits the moment’s commanding quality. O’Connor describes Head in that life-changing instant: “He stood appalled, judging himself with the thoroughness of God, while the action of mercy covered his pride like a flame and consumed it” (126). Forcefully launching righteous reproof, God ceases to hold the title of loving overseer in every aspect of the realization. “Not until grace descends to seize and possess their tormented souls is the infinite distance separating them abolished. Now the celestial Watcher, now a God of prey; first hovering, motionless, above his victim, then swooping with terrible speed to devour it” (Bleikasten 82). When viewed through O’Connor’s skeptical spectacles, this act of “grace” does not light with the rapturous nature of Handel’s chords; instead, it descends with the piercing gravity of a thousand murderous blades upon the soul of Head.
Left battered and bruised, Head would not have experienced so much trauma had he just listened to God in the first place. The root of his guilt complex, Head’s denial of his own grandchild, surely went against the wishes of God. O’Connor explains that Head’s eyes, “glazed with fear and caution,” had seen the possibility of legal entanglements, so the coward claimed to have never known Nelson before (120). Still, the most strenuous portion of the grace process lies ahead: Nelson must decide whether or not to forgive the deplorable actions of his elder. “Not until the soul has reached that ultimate point of searing self-knowledge does salvation become a possibility. Then begins for those who survive the fire of grace, the ‘enduring’ death-in-life of purgatorial suffering [. . .]” (Bleikasten 79). Following Head’s passage through an agonizing time of self-actualization, he arrives at a rescue possibility, and his young companion responds with reluctant forgiveness. The two encounter a peculiar figurine, the one to which the title of the story refers, and they eventually resolve their immediate differences (O’Connor 125). “Grace takes men by surprise. It catches them unawares, stabs them in the back. Nothing heralds the passage from darkness to light. And the light of grace is so sudden and so bright that it burns and blinds before it illuminates” (Bleikasten 78). Undoubtedly, O’Connor perceives the burning quality of grace to supercede the romantic notion, as she focuses ample time on delineating its corrupt nature. She knows that if one experiences blindness from their harsh encounter with benevolence he has nary an opportunity to experience the alleged “illumination.” “The impact of grace, as evoked by O’Connor, is that of a painful dazzle; it does not flood the soul with joy; her characters experience it as an instantaneous deflagration, a rending and bursting of the whole fabric of their being” (79). In O’Connor’s world, the work of grace includes violently disassembling the lives of her characters often without the conclusion of a tidy reconstruction. Head and Nelson come to terms of mutual acceptance, but they never again return to their former relationship of familiarity (O’Connor 126). Thus, O’Connor characterizes God’s ultimate “gift” as a painful thorn in the sides of her wandering apostles. The author’s sharp disapproval of this supposedly noble aspect of Christianity merely hints at the arrant condemnation she spews upon the religion’s less admirable qualities.
Equally disconcerting, the morbidly fantastic notion of physical death contributes to the shocking portrayal of Christianity presented by O’Connor. Though the Southern scribe often textures her writings with this lachrymose entity, its most powerful appearance comes in the pages of “The River,” the story of a young boy, Harry, with secular parents who stumbles upon a baptizing sensation with his charismatic babysitter and ultimately gives his life to Christ (O’Connor 23-46). O’Connor’s agenda does not contain the task of conveying the popularized everything-will-work-out-perfectly-in-the-end mentality all too often associated with giving one’s life to Christ. On the contrary, bombarding her audience with “the full scandal of Christianity” graces the top of O’Connor’s list (Edwards 2569). With said scandals in her handbag and sensation at her beck and call, Flannery O’Connor places an innocent child in the throes of searing spiritual warfare. An absorbing sequence commences in the awkward baptism scene. The traveling preacher instructs his fresh pupil on the grim realities of fire and brimstone, to which Harry responds in a bemused attitude of basic understanding coupled with curious ignorance (O’Connor 36-38). While Harry strains to grasp the concept of intricate spiritual politics, he becomes aware of the sin that Christ’s love has replaced. Describing this realization, Bleikasten remarks, “For the revelation it brings is first and foremost self-revelation, the terrified recognition of one’s nothingness and guilt. As each character is brutally stripped of his delusions, he sees and knows himself at last for what he is [. . .]” (79). This rude spiritual awakening kills Harry’s former spirit in the process of creating a revived version; furthermore, its symbolic death foreshadows the tangible termination on the horizon. In the dampened spirit of such an observation, Robert H. Brinkmeyer, Jr. notes, “Dead is precisely the condition in which a number of O’Connor’s characters end up, most of them having been shocked out of their complacent everyday existence by some act of intense violence that propels them to a complete acceptance of Christ [. . . ]” (26). In Harry’s case, the act of violence comes in the form of his volatile family life where his aspirations end only in discouragement. O’Connor describes the young boy when he tries to block his mother out in favor of a return to the redemptive river: “He shut his eye and heard her voice from a long way away, as if he were under the river and she on top of it” (41). The author complicates the boy’s home environment so that it produces a certain “supernatural tension” in her characters (Edwards 2567). This young, born-again Christian has to return home after his emotional conversion and wage a daily battle for his newly-established spirituality. Sequestered in such a hostile environment, Harry finally escapes and makes his way back to the only place of safety he has ever known – the river.
Within this river, one of Flannery O’Connor’s most moving, albeit disturbing, scenes takes place, and she choreographs it thus to jolt her jaded readers into a recognition of their lingering spiritual apathy. In the poignant account, O’Connor reveals, “He plunged under once this time, the waiting current caught him like a long gentle hand and pulled him swiftly forward and down. For an instant he was overcome with surprise; then since he was moving quickly and knew that he was getting somewhere, all his fury and his fear left him” (45-46). Ironically calm, the death of Harry boasts not of grief and sorrow but of solace and content. Almost too serene, this peaceful conclusion of life hints at the handiwork of a sly devil, not of a righteous god. Likewise, Bleikasten ponders O’Connor’s shady creator, a being bearing an eerie resemblance to the same author’s Satan: “[. . .] the concept of God suggested by her work is in the last resort hardly more reassuring than her Devil” (79). The unclear demarcation between the two great powers does not have a simple explanation, and the possibility exists that the combined raw power of both deities finally kills the boy. “It is God’s violence responding to Satan’s violence, divine counterterror fighting the mutiny of evil” (79). Ultimately, the culprit of this shocking conclusion does not carry as much significance as the effect it has on the reader. Powerfully moving, the pitiable figure of an aptly-named Mr. Paradise staring down a narrow river after having just witnessed the death of an innocent boy continues to affect readers to this day (O’Connor 46). To ensure that her readers could grasp the hidden complexities of a story like “The River,” O’Connor injects her writings with enough shock value to keep them pondering. The author herself reveals, “‘When I write a novel in which the central action is baptism, I am aware that for a majority of my readers, baptism is a meaningless rite . . . so I have to see that this baptism carries enough awe and mystery to jar the reader into some kind of emotional recognition of its significance’” (Edwards 2570). Moreover, she seeks to douse those willing to listen with a cold glass of water, enabling their eyes to open to the deplorable condition of their unenthusiastic spiritual age. “She wanted her readers to escape the jaundiced vision of their own time. [. . .] O’Connor refused to turn away from the dragon or the storyteller and she asked of her twentieth century readers the same courage” (Edwards 2574). Courageous indeed, O’Connor effectively employs her gothic scare tactics to obliterate the misconception of an unproblematic Christian life.
As sharp as the double-edged sword of a shocking death, the pretentious façade of Christianity assumed by Southerners masks their own cynical beliefs and drives away potential converts to the faith. Well aware of this alarming trend, O’Connor analyzes three of its archetypal participants, the classic nonbeliever, the wily deceiver, and the abused skeptic, in “Good Country People.” Mrs. Hopewell, the typical gossip, fills the position of the nonbeliever, and O’Connor structures her to represent the legions of Southerners that claim to live by the Bible but in actuality do not have the slightest concern for their salvation. Stephens notes, “What is oppressive about the O’Connor work as a whole, what is sometimes intolerable, is her stubborn refusal to see any good, any beauty or dignity or meaning, in ordinary human life on earth” (56). As Stephens suggest, the author could have portrayed Hopewell in a decidedly more positive light, for the woman does possess a number of admirable traits. However, the woman’s blemishes outshine her beauties. When questioned by a traveling Bible salesman, Mrs. Hopewell swears that her own Bible never leaves the nightstand, although it really occupies a remote location in her attic (O’Connor 177). She undoubtedly experiences pressure from Southern society, deeply steeped in Christian values, to continue this frivolous religious masquerade. “She is a ‘good Christian woman,’ [. . .] who thinks ‘the word, Jesus, should be kept inside the church building like other words inside the bedroom’” (Drake 32). Not unlike her peers, the woman discourages the unnecessary and often taboo nature of religious ideas in everyday life. To Mrs. Hopewell, attempting to apply spiritual values in a practical fashion only results in a waste of time. Her lack of respect necessitates that she hold back her laughter during an earnest conversation in which the salesman shares the gospel (O’Connor 179). O’Connor’s characterization of Hopewell subtly eats away at the South’s revered tradition of Christianity by painting its allegedly sincere believers as dishonest fakes. Edwards points out that O’Connor championed an inescapable version of Christianity, for she certainly did not advocate an enticing view (2567). Determined to provide an unerring snapshot of religious politics in this region, Flannery O’Connor does not gloss over contradictions of the faith: she confronts the controversial subjects in an honest manner.
The wandering Bible salesman plays the part of the wily deceiver in “Good Country People,” and O’Connor’s particularly ruthless pen creates a detestable devil in his infamous personality. He appears on the doorstep of Mrs. Hopewell with his arsenal of scripture and guilts the woman into entertaining his sales pitch. “‘Lady,’ he said, ‘for a Chrustian, the word of God ought to be in every room in the house besides in his heart. I know you’re a Chrustian because I can see it in every line of your face’” (O’Connor 177). Nevertheless, his picture-perfect praying man routine shatters once Mrs. Hopewell and her daughter learn the bitter truth that the man does not sell Bibles much less possess any spiritual integrity. Mary Ellen Snodgrass cites O’Connor’s fondness for these “false religious extremists,” caricatures of deception that stir trouble in the lives of others to preoccupy themselves from their own pathetic existences (237). Using the alias Porter, the man seduces Hopewell’s sole daughter, and the young girl follows him to a secret rendezvous in the stable. Once there, he continues to lead the girl on until he obtains the object of his perverse desire, her wooden leg. After his theft, he deserts her, proclaiming, “‘[. . .] you ain’t so smart. I been believing in nothing ever since I was born!’ and then the toast-colored hat disappeared down the hole and the girl was left, sitting on the straw in the dusty sunlight” (O’Connor 194). Hulga, the girl defiled in this disturbing incident, will forever link Christianity to beguilement, for somebody took advantage of her the first time she released her safety net. Flannery O’Connor offers another distressing reality with this parable: Christianity often serves as the sheep’s clothing that a fraudulent wolf chooses to don. Marilyn Chandler McEntyre waxes philosophical, “Far from attempting to make Christianity accessible, comprehensible, or palatable to a contemporary audience, she goes to the most baffling and troubling of its claims and challenges us to begin our reflection there” (44). Vividly chiseling her morals upon the mind of the reader, O’Connor’s technique flourishes in the bizarre. Fascinatingly, the Bible salesman receives a more gracious treatment than the blameless Hulga, as he tricks the girl into giving herself away only to escape unscathed by any immediate repercussions. Drake observes, “Again, it’s the sort of Anti-Christ figure of the Bible salesman who wins something of our admiration: he may be a devil but he’s not, as is Hulga, a fool [. . .]” (32). O’Connor gifts the morally corrupt character with the preferential end of the deal and leaves the innocent individual to suffer alone; yet, this seeming paradox explains itself once the character of Hulga receives a bit more observation.
Over the course of the story, Hulga vacillates between spurning the spiritual and flirting with the faith, but the pivotal key that unlocks the complexities of this character rests within her name. Christened Joy upon her birth by Mrs. Hopewell, Hulga detests her legal moniker and has it immediately changed the moment she turns twenty-one (O’Connor 171). Joanne Halleran McMullen explores, “O’Connor’s uses of ‘Hulga’ at the beginning and end of this episode function as a framing device within which she establishes her main character’s spiritual fate” (40). Awkwardly clunky, the name Hulga symbolizes the girl’s desolate spiritual fate which obtains a brief reprieve during her visit with the Bible salesman. “She looked up and down the empty highway and had the furious feeling that she had been tricked, that he had only meant to make her walk to the gate after the idea of him. Then suddenly he stood up, very tall, from behind a bush on the opposite embankment” (O’Connor 186). McMullen astutely observes that O’Connor blatantly ignores Hulga’s singularity once the Bible salesman steps into the picture (40). Sure enough, the author calls Hulga by her name before the doomed encounter with the salesman but uses the ambiguous pronoun she during the occasions spent together by the two. After the man makes his startling revelation concerning his true identity, the letters of her true name appear on the page once again. He reveals, “‘I use a different name at every house I call at and don’t stay nowhere long. And I’ll tell you another thing, Hulga,’ he said, using the name as if he didn’t think much of it [. . .]” (O’Connor 194). McMullen concludes this shrewd inspection by stating, “Not until she has been absolutely annihilated and left spiritually, emotionally, and physically devastated to consider her fate does O’Connor give her back her name” (40). Although the writer returns Hulga’s name, she emphasizes the girl’s pathetic nature instead of renewing her individuality. As the girl skirts along the outside of the Christian faith by flirting with the Bible salesman, O’Connor drops the worldly name; however, the name reappears with the inevitability of her spiritual cynicism. Collectively, the three principal characters of “Good Country People” represent what Edwards calls “the shallow view of Christ lurking behind modern faith” (2573-2574). O’Connor unabashedly examines this corrupt vision of Christ by mocking the shams, swindlers, and skeptics of the polluted South.
O’Connor’s final instrument that brings Southern corruption to light concerns her emphasis on gothic devils; although a number of faithful Christ followers occupy her pages, they rarely live to see the resolution of the story. In “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” an elderly grandmother tags along on a road trip with her son, Bailey, and his family. However, events take a grotesque turn when the dysfunctional group stumbles upon a deceptively level-headed mass murderer appropriately called The Misfit (O’Connor 1-22). Most disturbing about the author’s account of the already horrific predicament, her scattered use of random detail unsettles the reader into a greater sense of fright. After ordering his henchmen to take Bailey into the woods in order to carry out his execution, The Misfit makes casual small talk with the grandmother about matters of Southern etiquette. “He put on his black hat and looked up suddenly and then away deep into the woods as if her were embarrassed again. ‘I’m sorry I don’t have on a shirt before you ladies,’ he said, hunching his shoulders slightly. ‘We buried our clothes that we had on when we escaped and we’re just making do until we can get better. We borrowed these from some folks we met,’ he explained” (O’Connor 16-17). Claire Kahane agrees with this chilling break from reality by exposing, “Even when an image is not itself objectively threatening, O’Connor can make it so by a vividness of inconsequential detail which in its special intensity suggests a deflection of focus from something frightening to something reassuringly innocuous” (24). In this case, the terror increases with the unhinged nature of The Misfit. The mind wanders to suppose that he uses a euphemism in saying “folks we met” when he really means “innocent people we murdered.” The lunatic proceeds in his childlike conversation to include suitcases, an ordinary life, and prayer just before a pistol sounds from the forest, signaling the death of the grandmother’s son. Resultantly, the old woman’s tortured cries fill the still air with an untold horror (O’Connor 17). This abrupt end to the superfluous dialogue verifies the worst of the readers’ fears that the insane madman actually lacks enough moral grounding to kill a guiltless man on a family vacation. “Perhaps the most brilliant of this prolonged focus on inconsequential detail is the succession of irrelevant description ending with an almost parenthetical but climactic image [. . .]” (Kahane 24). Not only does this creature rob the life of his fellow man, he stoops so low as to slaughter an old lady. O’Connor disturbingly writes, “She reached out and touched him on the shoulder. The Misfit sprang back as if a snake had bitten him and shot her three times through the chest. Then he put his gun down on the ground and took off his glasses and began to clean them” (22). “For the grandmother [. . .] the beginning is quite literally the end, and the price paid for spiritual rebirth is immediate death” (Bleikasten 79). Though O’Connor might have gone a bit far with the graphic image of a grandmother’s unprovoked slaying, the entire incident augments the initially unnoticed trauma taking place within the soul of The Misfit.
Snubbing Jesus and taking a violent approach to self-service, The Misfit represents an exaggerated caricature of an ordinary Southerner. He tries to correct the misbalanced scales of the world but only ends up feeling emptier than before. His dejected life obviously did not take well to religion, as he refuses to believe the basic doctrines of Christianity. “‘Maybe He didn’t raise the dead,’ the old lady mumbled [. . .]. ‘I wasn’t there so I can’t say He didn’t,’ The Misfit said. ‘I wisht I had of been there,’ he said, hitting the ground with his fist. ‘It ain’t right I wasn’t there because if I had of been there I would of known. Listen lady,’ he said in a high voice, ‘if I had of been there I would have known and I wouldn’t be like I am now’” (O’Connor 21). Paulson surveys, “Unable to believe in Christ’s Resurrection because he was not there at the time and cannot intuit beyond the material world, The Misfit examines his life but concludes with nihilism” (91). O’Connor intends for the reader to identify with The Misfit. While the average human being does not go on deranged killing sprees, he does grapple with the incapability to believe the mere legends of a man that lived a couple of millenniums ago. Having a bit of difficulty applying Christ’s precepts to his life, The Misfit blames Jesus instead. “[The grandmother] found herself saying, ‘Jesus. Jesus,’ meaning, Jesus will help you, but the way she was saying it, it sounded as if she might be cursing. ‘Yes’m,’ The Misfit said as if he agreed. ‘Jesus thown everything off balance’” (O’Connor 20). Irving Malin claims, “Although The Misfit claims that everything is Jesus’ fault – if He ever lived! – he does not plan to let things stand. He will right the balance. He will be the new Jesus of self-love. But his Church of meanness gives him no pleasure or salvation. He continues to be anxious, empty, and metallic” (21). The unsatisfied feeling of The Misfit after all of his killings have ended for the day corresponds to the unquenched thirst that straying Christians try to satiate with any combination of lies, sin, or alternative religions. After the final murder of the grandmother, The Misfit silences his optimistic cohort: “‘Some fun!’ Bobby Lee said. ‘Shut up, Bobby Lee,’ The Misfit said. ‘It’s no real pleasure in life’” (O’Connor 22). Once again, O’Connor takes her metaphor for spiritual degradation to an extreme level, but only to highlight an imperative point to her readers. “What some readers see as cynical and distorted views of human life, O’Connor sees as honest representatives – however exaggerated and symbolic – of human suffering and sin repressed by the community [. . .]” (Paulson 86). The Misfit serves a twofold purpose, as he acts as the villain of the story but also plays the role of the flawed protagonist with which the reader identifies. McEntyre remarks, “Certainly, O’Connor’s stories invite us to rub elbows with publicans, sinners, crazies, and outcasts with an intimacy we might just as soon avoid. They compel us to reckon with the inadequacy of our own instinctive moral judgments” (48). O’Connor does indeed include some religious devotees in her tales, but her unwavering focus on the iniquitous imperfections of spirituality comprise the majority of her work, making her vision of the South frightening, pessimistic, but strikingly realistic.
Throughout all of her works, Flannery O’Connor firmly focuses on a less popular perception of Christianity to rudely awaken her audience but also to exhibit an accurate side of spirituality that often goes unnoticed. A complete one-hundred eighty degree revolution from the alternative points of view, her venomous vision displays a drearily pessimistic opinion of God and His creations. O’Connor accosts grace by declaring it overbearing, and her characters that experience its forceful oppression show more signs of torment than of thankfulness. In the midst of distributing this oft-burdensome grace, the God of O’Connor’s pages also finds time to witness the death of devout believers. Both Harry of the river and the grandmother at the hands of The Misfit die without the needed succor of a superhero deity. Most engrossing, this turn of events does not certify that God arranged the killings: it merely hints at an ambiguous onlooker. O’Connor asserts that the God everyone has come to trust might not hold such a valiant position as most people assume. In fact, His role often skews closer to the Lord of Hell rather than the Lord of Heaven. The presence of extreme evil in O’Connor’s stories does nothing to better the Almighty’s case. Her disturbing, gothic portrayals of sheer malevolence routinely eclipse the characters with meek souls. Rendering her reflections supremely potent, the setting of the American South becomes the final key to O’Connor’s mysterious spirituality. The South, replete with characters of religious corruption and apathy, provides the playground on which evil can execute its wicked games. Through archetypes such as the classic cynic and the fibbing fake, the author exposes alarming trends of Southern spirituality, often masked by the pretensions of the culture. In these characters, however, O’Connor hits close to home, for many of her readers actively inhabit the personalities she describes. Most people in society mislead others into thinking they have an amazing spiritual relationship with God, though they cope with their own misgivings on a daily basis. O’Connor refuses to let this atrocious behavior continue unheard, so she structures her characters and her God to do the talking for her. She wades deep into the abhorrent swamp of Southern lies and penetrates the murky layer of spiritual stagnation, and her unwavering vision of uncompromised accuracy ultimately offers an invaluable portrait of truthful realism desperately needed in this torpid religious atmosphere. |
