Flannery O'Connor: Chronicler of Southern Grotesque and Spiritual Realities

1. Flannery O’Connor (1925 – 1965) • Born in Savannah, Georgia • Applied to Iowa Writer's Workshop, but almost rejected because the admissions interviewer couldn't understand her southern accent • Diagnosed with lupus when she was 25 (a disease which her father died from eight years earlier)

2. O’Connor continued… • A Good Man is Hard to Find (1955) – short story collection • Filled her stories with crazy preachers, murderers, the deformed, the disabled, freaks and outcasts. • Inspired by gothic literature (horror and violence) • O’Connor was a devout Catholic; there is a significant amount of religious imagery in her stories

3. Her fiction • Her fiction grapples with living a spiritual life in a secular world • Her stories are challenging because her characters, who initially seem radically different from people we know, turn out to be, by the end of each story, somehow familiar-somehow connected to us. • O’Connor’s stories are rooted in rural southern culture, but in a larger sense they are set within the psychological and spiritual landscapes of the human soul.

4. Her fiction continued • Her characters struggle with spiritual questions in bizarre, incongruous situations. Their lives are grotesque-even comic-precisely because they don’t understand their own spiritual nature. Their actions are extreme and abnormal. • O’ Connor explains her reasons for this in Mystery and Manners; she says she sought to expose the “distortions” of “modern life” that appear “normal” to her audience. Hence, she used “violent means” to convey her vision to a “hostile audience.” • She wanted to “make [her vision] apparent by shock- to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures.”

5. The Southern Grotesque or Gothic • Southern Gothic Literature is a sub-genre of gothic literature (think Poe!) focusing on character, social, and moral shortcomings in the American south; it reached its height between 1940-1960s.

6. Southern Gothic • Often comments on society’s negatives or weaknesses to point out truths of America’s southern culture • Often disturbing but realistic • Plot relies on unusual, disturbing, supernatural, or ironic events (Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” is a good example)

7. Southern Gothic and the Grotesque • In many of her works, she paradoxically uses styles that are grotesque and brutal to illustrate themes of grace and self-actualization. • As O’Connor herself says, “I have found that violence is strangely capable of returning my characters to reality and preparing them to accept their moment of grace” (qtd. in Hawkins 30). • Although at times disturbing, O’Connor’s paradox is an effective literary technique, deepening the meaning of her stories.

8. A Definition of the Grotesque • grotesque characters or situations– deeply flawed characters, decayed (often rural) settings, evil or disturbing events (often linked to racism, poverty,violence, moral corruption) Examples: • a character’s negatives/undesirable characteristics allow the author to show/comment on unpleasant aspects of southern culture. • racial bigotry, crushing poverty, violence, moral corruption or ambiguity • something physical in the setting is unusual and often broken

9. Themes • “The action of grace in territory held largely by the devil.” Human beings are flawed and incomplete, and modern people in particular have traded the spiritual dimension of their lives (Grace) for material comfort (Self-satisfaction). • Violence and Redemption: The shock of violent encounters serves to revive a recognition of spiritual urgency. • Racism: racists, who are suffering from false pride, use “difference” to claim superiority. • Alienation: those who feel cut off, hungry, angry, “freakish,” are often seekers who “see” more clearly than those who “belong

10. Essential Questions • How does Flannery O'Connor describe the cultural and physical landscape of the South? • What are the characteristics of the literary genre known as "Southern Gothic"? • What are the key themes Flannery O'Connor explores in the various texts?

11. Cultural and Racial Views • Readers should be aware that many of the stories contain racial slurs, and some will use offensive labels by today’s standards. Though not uncommon when O'Connor wrote the stories, these terms can certainly be difficult to discuss in the classroom. Readers will grapple with this issue within the broader context of a changing South, which allows them to recognize how cultural and racial views (acceptable or not) develop over time.

12. O’Connor’s South • Southern history bespeaks a place that is more complicated than the stories we tell about it. Throughout its history, the South has been a place where poverty and plenty have been thrown together in especially jarring ways, where democracy and oppression, white and black, slavery and freedom, have warred. The very story of the South is a story of unresolved identity, unsettled and restless, unsure and defensive. The South, contrary to so many words written in defense and in attack, was not a fixed, known, and unified place, but rather a place of constant movement, struggle, and negotiation.[26]

13. O’Connor’s Religious Views • In her essay "The Catholic Novelist in the Protestant South," Flannery O'Connor writes: "I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted." • O’Connor chose to address issues of morality and hypocrisy not through “preachy” text, but instead through extreme examples of character actions that brought shock to the reader.

14. Characteristics of Style • Filled her stories with crazy preachers, murderers, the deformed, the disabled, freaks and outcasts. • Inspired by gothic literature (horror and violence) • O’Connor was a devout Catholic; there is a significant amount of religious imagery in her stories

15. Characteristics of Style • Her fiction grapples with living a spiritual life in a secular world • Her stories are challenging because her characters, who initially seem radically different from people we know, turn out to be, by the end of each story, somehow familiar-somehow connected to us. • O’Connor’s stories are rooted in rural southern culture, but in a larger sense they are set within the psychological and spiritual landscapes of the human soul.

16. The Element of Grace • Sanctifying grace stays in the soul. It’s what makes the soul holy; it gives the soul supernatural life • Actual grace, by contrast, is a supernatural push or encouragement. It’s transient. It doesn’t live in the soul, but acts on the soul from the outside, so to speak. It’s a supernatural kick in the pants. It gets the will and intellect moving so we can seek out and keep sanctifying grace.  • O’Connor often gives her characters the push they need to recognize grace.

17. http://vimeo.com/28799441

18. Irony • a literary device whereby a reader’s expectations are reversed • a literary device whereby what is going on or being said on the surface of the narrative is undercut and reversed by implications beneath the surface. • Three Types of Irony • Verbal (sarcasm) • Situational (wow, didn’t see that coming) • Dramatic (how could you not see that coming?)

19. Recognizing irony in a story can be very helpful in determining a theme of a story • What is the theme of “The Life You Save May Be Your Own”? • What are some examples of irony in “The Life You Save May Be Your Own”?

20. Examples of Irony • Mrs. Crater talks about never wanting to part with her daughter, but we learn that she is “ravenous” for a son in law. • Mrs. Crater wants a son-in-law for security, but she gets one who robs her. • Shiftlet complains about the “rotten” world but is himself an example of its rot. • Shiftlet complains about the difficulty of finding an innocent woman but does not want the innocent woman he gets. • Lucynell’s innocence is not virtue but idiocy.

21. “The Life You Save May Be Your Own” • Character Analysis • Mr. Shiftlet (shifty, shiftless). He is manipulative, and ever searching for something new. Upon arrival at the farm, he spotted the car, and worked to maneuver Ms. Crater out of the automobile. • Crooked Cross image: “His figure formed a crooked cross” • Mr. Shiftlet’s smile stretched like a weary snake waking up by a fire. • Shiftlet began twisting his neck in his collar. • He looked morose and bitter as if he had been insulted. • “I got…’a moral intelligence!’…he stared at her as if he were astonished himself at this impossible truth.

22. Character Analysis • Ms. Crater (hole, void, empty). Ms. Crater too is manipulative. She is seeking companionship of a male (not intimately), but for company. hSe is willing to do whatever it takes to get what she wants (lie about Lucynell’s age, promote her as one who “not able to sass, talk back, or use foul language”). Morally she is void. • Lucynell: Deaf-mute, but most pure. Seeks nothing of anyone. She represents Shiftlets chance for salvation, but he rejects her as symbolic of his rejection of grace.”She looks like an angel of Gawd”

23. Symbolism/Imagery • Billboard: “Drive safely, the life you save may be your own” • Black Suit/Brown hat • Gray hat • Names • The Turnip cloud: descending over the sun. The goodness and brightness of the word does not exist for Mr. Shiftlet. • Crooked Cross

24. Symbolism/Imagery • Lucy’s blue dress and blue eyes “as peacock’s neck” • Lucy’s white wedding dress • The car: “Mr. Shiftlet slept on the hard narrow back seat of the car with his feet out the side window”—coffin like. (clay eyes, dead internally) • The car: painted green with a yellow band. Note green is symbolic of rejunevenation, yellow is betrayal or rejection.

25. Symbolism/Imagery • The piercing sunset: Ms. Crater had to shade her eyes

26. Moment of Grace • Lucynell was “a prize”; she represented all that was good, but he chose to reject her. • At the end of the story the moment of grace is when the boy responds in anger to him and jumps out the car. Shiflet says, “Break forth andwash the slime from this earth!”. Yet, he outraces the storm, and the drops on hit the rear of his car. This symbolizes his rejection of grace.

27. Gender Roles/Time Period • Ms. Crater and Lucy appear to have been surviving well without Mr. Shiftlet; however the expectation or need to have a man around created the destruction Mr. Shiftlet was able to afflict.

28. Critical Commentary • Based on the many descriptions of Mr. Shiftlet, it can be argued he represents Lucifer and the archetype of a trickster. • In the MelitaSchaum’s critical analysis, “Erasing Angel: The Lucifer-Trickster Figure in Flannery O’connor’s Short Fiction”, she identifies the definition of a trickster as presented in the work of cultural historian Lewis Hyde, “Trickster Makes This World” (1998). Hyde joins a long and distinguished line of critics examining the archetypal trickster-figure in world mythologies: a figure of mischievous disruption characterized by rule-breaking, lies, theft, shape-shifting, and wordplay; a citizen of contingencies and thresholds who, while subverting and denigrating existing orders, paradoxically thereby allows for a creative reanimation and restoration of social and metaphysical order.

29. Critical Commentary • Schaum goes on to note, Tom Shiftlet, in O'Connor's "The Life You Save May Be Your Own," is just such a classic wanderer, agent of chaos and change. As with so many of O'Connor's Lucifer-Trickster figures. He is first seen coming up the road, an out-of-town (indeed, out-of-this-world) stranger who seems to arrive at the Crater homestead literally from nowhere. True to his shifty, shiftless name and nature, he dodges Mrs. Crater's questions about his origins: "'You from around here?' 'Name Tom T. Shiftlet,' he murmured, looking at the tires. ... 'Where you come from, Mr. Shiftlet?' He didn't answer" (Stories [The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor]146-147). Shiftlet is the quintessential drifter, connected in name and identity as he is in locale: • A sly look came into his face. "Lady," he said, "nowadays, people'll do anything anyways. I can tell you my name is Tom T. Shiftlet and I come from Tarwater, Tennessee, but you never have seen me before: how you know I ain't lying? How you know my name ain't Aaron Sparks, lady, and I come from Singleberry, Georgia, or how you know it's not George Speeds and I come from Lucy, Alabama, or how you know I ain't Thompson Bright from Toolafalls, Mississippi?""I don't know nothing about you," the old woman muttered, irked.(147-148)

30. Critical Commentary • Finally, SchaumidentiesShiftlet’s character as one, “Far from being a "Christlike" seducer or helpful reconciler of conflicts” (31). • Trickster classically functions far more dynamically as the principle of disorder, a catalyst for subversion and loss. He is the "border breaker," the outlaw, the anomaly; deceiver and trick player, shape-shifter and situation-inverter; sacred messenger and "lewd bricoleur"1--one who, according to Joseph Campbell, "doesn't respect the values that you've set up for yourself, and smashes them" (qtd in Hynes and Doty 1). • This is apparent in the manner in which Shiflet swindles Ms. Crater out of her automobile, and more importantly her daughter. Perhaps the greatest connection is Shiftlets conscious decision to reject the grace he has been offered.