The Impact of Flannery O'Connor

In a short essay, Flannery O’Connor quotes St. Cyril of Jerusalem, “The dragon sits by the side of the road, watching those who pass. Beware lest he devour you. We go to the Father of Souls, but it is necessary to pass by the dragon.” This wise saying encapsulates well the fiction and philosophy of Ms. O’Connor. Her stories often deal with darkness and pain, her characters could be described as grotesque and profane, yet grace and redemption shine through and make themselves evident in a world populated by falleness. In another essay, Ms. O’Connor remarks, “I have found, in short, from reading my own writing, that my subject in fiction is the action of grace in territory largely held by the devil.” The author has come to recognize that this world truly is as it is described in the Holy Scriptures. Darkness has befallen the Earth and surrounded the human race, yet the light of divinity still finds a way to gleam into the lives of her often macabre anti-heroes. Growing up a Catholic in Georgia during the Great Depression, Ms. O’Connor was afforded an outsider’s perspective on the mainstream protestant religious culture of the Deep South. Her writings are thought to be some of the finest examples of American literature and often praised for their pointed and poignant themes on both Southern religion and culture. Through examination and analysis of her work, a narrow way is found toward understanding the essence of Southern religious experience, and toward understanding how grace, revelation, and redemption find a foothold in the “Christ haunted” South.

The work of grace is commonly thought to be a wonderful and transcendent phenomenon in the human experience. The word itself undoubtedly gives the spiritually minded a little fluffy feeling in the pit of their stomach. It is an act of God which pulls people out from their muck, which delivers them from the messes they get into, and sets them in the purifying light of salvation. But, what if people love their muck? Would the experience still be one which many would want to have? The characters in O’Connor’s stories are people who are resistant to God’s grace, yet receive it anyway. Is this not a more common occurrence in reality than somebody willingly and without struggle accepting the free gift of grace? O’Connor comments, “All my stories are about the action of grace on a character who is not very willing to support it, but most people think of these stories as hard, hopeless and brutal.”

This is very true of Ruby Turpin, the protagonist of O’Connor’s short story “Revelation”. Mrs. Turpin is depicted as a smug and self-righteous woman with a penchant for judging others as beneath her in various ways. While sitting in a doctor’s office waiting room, she begins to have a conversation with a woman whom she deems pleasant. They discuss the qualities of what it is to be of moral and refined character in life, clearly in an effort to vocally demonstrate her superiority to those around her. After a good deal of this, she begins to loudly thank Jesus for the quality of her life and character. Suddenly, the daughter of the pleasant woman, aptly named Mary Grace, hurls a book at her. The book also aptly named, Human Development, strikes Mrs. Turpin in the head and Mary Grace lunges at her and begins to strangle her. Then, there is this exchange, “‘What you got to say to me?’ she asked hoarsely and held her breath, waiting, as for a revelation. The girl raised her head. Her gaze locked with Mrs. Turpin’s. “Go back to hell where you came from, you old wart hog,’ she whispered… she saw with pleasure that the message had struck its target.” This is a great example of how Flannery O’Connor injects God’s grace into the fallen world of her characters. This violent and derogatory encounter sets Mrs. Turpin down a path of self realization. As a result of the well placed insult, which she takes to be a message from God, she begins to see that her life and self-righteousness have been a sham. When she gets home to her pig farm, raising prodigal imagery, she starts raging at God. Her façade of self-righteousness stripped from her, she has a vision of redeemed souls on their way to heaven. This brings her to true repentance and she then sees the souls of her and her husband included in the heaven bound caravan. With Mrs. Turpin taken to be representative of the religious character of Southern culture, O’Connor is commenting on the sham of self-righteousness. If the self were righteous, there would be no need for saving grace. Yet, many in the south are under the impression that there is something special about southern religion, by sheer virtue of what it is. The other people in the waiting room could be taken to be other religious groups, Yankees, nationalities, or people who just live differently from the accepted cultural paradigm. The lack of grace shown to these folks is a clear indicator of the way in which Ruby Turpin and Southern Religious culture is found wanting. God’s grace, represented by Mary Grace, brings the haughty low and shows them their need for humility and true repentance. It is a painful experience but it is necessary for salvation, recalling the dragon of St. Cyril.

In a letter to Cecil Dawkins, O’Connor remarks, “All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful.” It is clear now that an O’Connor understanding of grace, perhaps the more realistic understanding, is not one of transcendent joyful feeling, but of frightful and difficult trial. At the end of one of her most recognized novels, Wise Blood, Hazel Motes puts himself through one of these trials. Feeling as though he could never pay his debt owed to the almighty, Mr. Motes attempts to escape the trappings of the Christian faith and reject belief altogether. He fails miserably and winds up ending his life doing perpetual penance. The grace here shines through Hazel to his landlady, Mrs. Flood. While doing his penance, the landlady schemes a way to marry Hazel Motes and commit him to an asylum so that she can collect his pension. Motes is represented as a type of Christ, a suffering servant, who she is willing to betray for earthly gain. This is a commentary on the way that many in southern religious culture care more for material wealth than spiritual purity, a theme found throughout Wise Blood, to the point of being willing to sell their salvation in the way that Esau sold his birthright. Eventually, Mrs. Flood actually falls in love with Motes, but he continues doing his penance faithfully. One day, he is caught in the elements and Mrs. Flood sends the police to look for him under the auspices of collecting her rent from him. They find him near death in a ditch and one of the officers unknowingly ends his life with a blow to the head while saying, “"You got to pay your rent....Ever' bit of it!"When Motes is returned into the care of Mrs. Flood, she has him placed on the bed and she stares into his eyes, seeing that his consciousness has retreated into a cosmic void. “She sat staring with her eyes shut, into his eyes, and felt as if she had finally got to the beginning of something she couldn’t begin…” Steve Pinkerton comments, “…it provides a source of mystery that for now eludes her but that, given O'Connor's worldview, may yet offer the action of grace that could save her…” Hazel’s self abasement and sacrifice, representative of Christ’s salvific work, is the grace in Mrs. Flood’s life, puncturing through her materialistic cares and bringing her finally to a place where she can begin a life of spirituality with God. O’Connor is saying to the south in this parable that, even if one tries to scheme and connive against their savior, ultimately, they will fall in love with him and be touched by his grace. 

Revelation is another common theme in O’Connor’s work. It is also a huge part of the southern religious experience. One within the southern religious culture will often pursue that moment of saving grace, of divine clarity, as evidence that they are truly in the graces of God. They see revelation as receiving truth from on high and an experience which connects them back to the great biblical prophets. Grace and revelation often go hand in hand in the works of Mrs. O’Connor, such as the insult hurled at Mrs. Turpin in the above mentioned short story. This is also true another short story of hers entitled “A Good Man is Hard to Find”. It is the story of a family travelling to Florida by car through Georgia. The grandmother does not want to visit Florida and instead insists that the entire trip be waylaid down a dirt road in search of an old plantation, which she remembers later is actually in East Tennessee. The grandmother, who repeatedly refers to herself as a “lady”, represents the genteel south of old. She is revealed to be a cold woman who has trouble loving her son, Bailey, and is somewhat ungrateful towards the world. Her startled cat causes Bailey to turn over the car into a ditch. While the family is waiting for help, an escaped convict named “the Misfit” rolls up with his gang and proceeds to murder the family one by one. With only the grandmother left, the Misfit is about to shoot her when she begins to try and flatter him. He ignores her so she tries to witness to him about Jesus. This only makes him angry and reveals to be a man who has spent much time in existential quandary about Jesus and Christianity, concluding that if Jesus, “… did what He said, then it’s nothing for you to do but throw away everything and follow Him, and if He didn’t, then it’s nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can – by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him. No pleasure but meanness.” At this revelation, something changes in the grandmother. The Misfit goes on to decry the fact that he was not present for the miracles of Christ, and how, if he had been he would not have become a murderer. The woman realizes at that moment that the Misfit was one of her own, like a son to her. Here she has a moment of clarity saying, “Why you’re one of my own babies. You’re one of my own children!” In this exchange the Grandmother represents the genteel status quo of southern religious culture and the Misfit is all those doubting Thomases out there. The grandmother is able to see finally that she is one with the Misfit, that they are ultimately the same on a spiritual level, fallen and in need of grace. This revelation brings the grandmother to a place of true humility. Immediately after her epiphany, the Misfit shoots her in the chest and then remarks, “She would have been a good woman… if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.” This statement could be construed as a revelation to the reader on the role of the Holy Spirit in a Christian’s life. In a sense, the Holy Spirit is there to cause someone to die every moment their fallen nature tries to live and exert its influence over the choices a person makes. It is there to remind the believer to daily take up their cross. Connie Ann Kirk comments, “…the grandmother dies in a state of grace; her soul is saved by that single moment when her faith deepened and her concern extended beyond herself.” The Grandmother’s conversion and demise represents another rebuke of southern self-righteousness.

Another kind of revelation is shown in O’Connor’s short story entitled “Good Country People”. This tale takes place on a rural farm in Georgia owned by Mrs. Hopewell. Her daughter, Joy, has earned a doctorate in philosophy and is an avowed atheist much to her mother’s dismay. She has renamed herself “Hulga” for the sheer ugliness. Hulga also has a prosthetic leg from a childhood accident. When a Bible salesman named Manly Pointer makes a visit, he is declared to be “good country people” by Mrs. Hopewell. Manly invites Hulga to go on a picnic and she sees him as an easy mark for corruption. Pointer persuades her to accompany him to the barn loft where he reveals a hollowed out Bible which contains whiskey and condoms. Pointer deceptively persuades her to remove her leg and glasses; he then places them in his bag with his Bibles and rises to leave. As she’s lying on the loft floor, sans a leg, he remarks, “And I’ll tell you another thing, Hulga… you ain’t so smart. I been believing in nothing ever since I was born!” Manly Pointer could be compared to the Misfit in that he reveals an important truth to the main character right before an act of evil. Though, the misfit’s revelation led to saving grace for the grandmother, Manly Pointer’s led to the realization for Hulga that, in spite of her advanced degree, she had not the eyes to recognize evil in her midst. This is a different kind of revelation to be sure. O’Connor seems to be speaking to a southern religious culture which is becoming increasingly influenced by academic nihilism. She is saying that, while these ideas may have the appearance of intelligence and clarity of vision, they will do no good at the moment when one needs to recognize evil. In a letter to Miss A, O’Connor remarks, “…if you live today you breathe in nihilism. In or out of the Church, it’s the gas you breathe. If I hadn’t had the church to fight it with or to tell me the necessity of fighting it, I would be the stinkingest logical positivist you ever saw right now.” It is clear that O’Connor saw nihilism as an encroaching menace to the society in which she lived. Manly Pointer’s dastardly deed done against Hulga was a revelation of this philosophy’s inability to assist in times that matter most.

Redemption is the crux of Christianity. The work of Christ on the cross was all for the purpose of redeeming the fallen human race. Understandably, this theme is prominent in the Christ haunted south as well as in the works of Flannery O’Connor. In one of her most controversially named stories, “The Artificial Nigger”, O’Connor tells the tale of a Grandfather taking his grandson to Atlanta for the first time. Mr. Head spends much of the time debasing his grandson, Nelson, for being naïve and for having never seen an African American. While in the city, the two get lost and Nelson accidentally knocks over an old woman. His grandfather pretends he does not know him and the boy loses his respect for his elder. Eventually, they are pointed in the direction of the train station and along the way, they spot an artificial Negro. As they stare at it, O’Connor states, “They could both feel it resolving their differences like an action of mercy.” This is Mr. Head’s first encounter with mercy and it compels him to say something eternally wise in order to earn his grandson’s respect back. He proclaims, “They ain’t got enough real ones here. They got to have an artificial one.” The action of mercy continues to work on Mr. Head’s heart and he begins to have a transcendent religious experience. He burns with shame at what he has done to his grandfather and realizes that he is no better than the worst sinner. He then realizes that, “…he was forgiven for sins from the beginning of time, when he had conceived in his own heart the sin of Adam, until the present when he had denied poor Nelson. He saw that… since God loved in proportion as he forgave, he felt ready at that instant to enter paradise.” Here redemption is realized not employed. The old man does nothing to be redeemed other than be a fallen human. It is something which has already been done for all people. The old man, representing southern religious culture, only has to realize this truth to be washed in the light of its glory. He also has to realize the absolute futility of trying to earn this redemption through personal effort.

Juxtaposed to the above view of redemption is the way it is portrayed in O’Connor’s famous novel Wise Blood. This story is heavily laden with redemption; it is the main driving motivation for the protagonist Hazel Motes. As was mentioned above, Motes is trying to find a way around the need for redemption, having realized at a young age that he could never pay back a divine redemptive debt. However, wherever he goes and whatever he does redemption through Christ seems to follow him. Whether he mistakenly dresses as a holy man or is confronted by a grotesque Madonna and child, Hazel Motes is a man pursued by God. Hazel Motes runs because he desires peace, as he shouts from atop his car, “If you had been redeemed, you would care about redemption but you don’t. Look inside yourselves and see if you hadn’t rather wasn’t if it was. There’s no peace for the redeemed… I preach peace, I preach the Church without Christ, the church peaceful and satisfied!” This is an intriguing notion. For a man like Hazel Motes, undoubtedly representing an element of southern religious culture, redemption is an unsettling thought. It is something that brings discomfort, it is something you have to pay back with a heavy price, and it is something which perhaps brings death. Hazel Motes openly flees while many within the southern religious fabric do the same internally, with the objects of their desire. After openly fleeing, Hazel seems to give up when his car, a symbol of his ability to flee, is destroyed. He spends the rest of his day doing the penance which he k new he must do as a child. He walks daily with broken glass in his shoes and barbed wire around his torso. After years of this, he finally meets his end in the fashion described above. Through a cursory reading, one could easily come to the conclusion that this story is one of hopelessness. Like many of her European contemporaries, O’Connor was accused of writing Kafkaesque existentialism into an American fictional fabric. She addresses this directly in a letter to Helen Green, “…I don’t intend the tone of the book to be pessimistic. It is after all a story about redemption and if you admit redemption, you are no pessimist. The gist of the story is that H. Motes couldn’t really believe that he hadn’t been redeemed.” It is a character haunted by unbelief and redemption, much in the same way that the south is haunted by Christ. Pinkerton comments, “…he is made to recognize his utter powerlessness beside the presence of God without; and he is brought to a profound and painful acceptance of guilt, a debt that he alone cannot pay. Like so many of O'Connor's protagonists, Hazel has to learn the futility of staking any claim to independence from God; his redemption can come only from the Redemption.” Southern religious culture is made up by many things: dramatic flair, high fashion, large church bank accounts, admirable missions work, and relentless culture warriors. By all these efforts and more, the south seeks to redeem itself from an old cultural wound it received during the Civil War and Reconstruction. In Hazel Motes, O’Connor is telling the South that their redemption will only come through that which haunts them.

For Flannery O’Connor, the dragon which sits by the side of the road, frightening and devouring travelling souls on their way to the father, is experienced through grace, revelation, and redemption. It breathes a refiner’s fire which burns up stubble and hay and lays bare those things within humanity which are of value and permanence. Indeed, an encounter with this beast could even be said to spawn one of these precious jewels of virtue. Like Mr. Head discovered in his encounter with the action of mercy, “…it grew out of agony… it was all a man could carry into death to give his Maker…” O’Connor speaks to the Southern Religious culture and says that salvation is a work of God’s hand and it is uncomfortable as it requires the death of the self. From this it can be surmised that the essence of Southern Religious experience is a struggling to avoid and yet realize this truth all at once.

Sam Bolton - March 17th, 2012


Sources:

• O'Connor, Flannery. "The Fiction Writer and His Country." In: Collected Works. New York: Library of America, 1988.
• O'Connor, Flannery. "On Her Own Work.” In Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1969. 118.
• O'Connor, Flannery. "The Grotesque in Southern Fiction." In Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1969.
• O'Connor, Flannery. "Revelation." In Collected Works. New York: Library of America, 1988.
• O'Connor, Flannery. "To Cecil Dawkins.” In The Habit of Being: Letters. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1979.
• O'Connor, Flannery. "Wise Blood." In Collected Works. New York: Library of America, 1988.
• Pinkerton, Steve. "PROFANING THE AMERICAN RELIGION: FLANERY O'CONNOR'S WISE BLOOD." Studies in the Novel 43, no. 4 (December 1, 2011)
• O'Connor, Flannery. "A Good Man is Hard to Find." In Collected Works. New York: Library of America, 1988.
• Kirk, Connie Ann. "A Good Man is Hard to Find." In Critical companion to Flannery O'Connor. New York: Facts on File, 1998
• O'Connor, Flannery. "Good Country People." In Collected Works. New York: Library of America, 1988.
• O'Connor, Flannery. "To A." In Collected Works. New York: Library of America, 1988.
• O'Connor, Flannery. "The Artificial Nigger." In Collected Works. New York: Library of America, 1988.
• O'Connor, Flannery. "To Helen Greene." In Collected Works. New York: Library of America, 1988.