Context : Food For Thought

The Byzantine Christ

The Byzantine Christ on Parker's back.

Eye to Eye With O'Connor

           Flannery O'Connor uses many themes that traverse the grounds of her many stories, whether it be racism, deformity, or displacement. But one of the largest themes that is present throughout many of her works is the theme of eyes. Particularly when the reader is given details about the eyes of a character, or when characters gaze into the eyes of other characters. The eyes are powerful, and sometimes the eyes are referred to as windows to the soul. Does this hold true in O'Connor's literature though?

            In Revelation, Mrs. Turpin is held prisoner in the eyes of an ugly girl named Mary Grace. That name itself is full of O'Connor irony, because grace is nowhere to be found in her at all. Her eyes look "peculiar" to Mrs. Turpin though. "Her eyes were fixed like two drills on Mrs. Turpin. This time there was no mistaking that there was something urgent behind them" (O'Connor, 642). O'Connor makes these eyes seem like weapons that a predator would use to hold prey captive. And while humans can communicate through using their eyes, Mary Grace is using them as weapons. Earlier, the girl's eyes "seemed lit all of a sudden with a peculiar light, an unnatural light like night road signs give" (637).  Mary Grace has eyes that have something unnatural about them, something that is bent and contorted. What type of people possess eyes that look unnatural? This girl possesses eyes that have a darkness stuck inside of them, because her eyes change after she attacks Mrs. Turpin and is given an injection. "They seemed a much lighter blue than before, as if a door that had been tightly closed behind them was now open to admit light and air" (645). Her eyes had doors in them before that were closed. Is this the work of a demon, or is it madness? The text leads the reader to believe that she is clinically insane, but either way, her eyes are the keys to gazing upon her soul, as Mrs. Turpin learns the hard way.

            Eyes are also very important in Parker's Back. Parker is described as "the hollow-eyed creature" (666), which implies there is nothing behind his eyes, or a lack of substance there. The eyes of the Byzantine Christ pierce Parker's soul as he gazes upon the tattoo design. "Parker returned to the picture--the haloed head of a flat stern Byzantine Christ with all-demanding eyes" (667). This Christ is intense and soul-piercing; Parker has futile hopes that this will please his wife. This tattoo forever connects him with God though and disgusts his wife. In the opening paragraph her eyes are described as, "grey and sharp like the points of two ice picks'' (655). There is no kindness to be found in her eyes, only meanness. The artist saves the eyes of the tattoo for last, because they are the most important part for this particular tattoo; when he finishes the tattoo Parker is hesitant to look at it, but he does. "The eyes in the reflected face continued to look at him--still, straight, all-demanding, enclosed in silence" (670). The eyes consume Parker and in the end he is by himself crying on a tree. Eyes are a powerful tool in O'Connor's stories, and they play an important part in how the reader and characters view the other characters. One of the reasons that the peacock was O'Connor's favorite animal may have been because there are so many eyes on its tail. She also uses the sun as a fiery eye in many of her stories. 

The Ambiguous, the Grotesque and Redemption that Follows

I remember reading O’Connor for the first time in Honors. We read A Good Man is Hard to Find, and though I was enraptured with the story, at the end I paused and said, “What just happened?” “Did they really die?” I looked back trying to find a proof text, checking myself died. Had I missed any pages? I reread the last few paragraphs which were equally baffling, “Hiram and Bobby Lee returned from the woods and stood over the ditch, looking down at the grandmother who half sat and half lay in a puddle of blood, her legs crossed under her like a child’s and her face smiling up at the cloudless sky” (152). “What a strange ending!” I thought to myself.

Since then I have been baffled over and over by her stories and equally baffled by her ability to paint such a real picture of the human condition.

One thing I have learned to look for in O’Connor’s work and other works are for the missing pieces. What details are not included? In A Good Man is Hard to Find, figuring out what is not said is crucial to the story. O’Connor includes at the end that certain people go back to the woods with certain people, at certain times and there are gunshots. She creates ambiguity. Yet, she seems to focus the lens on the grandmother and the Misfit. One can almost hear the thoughts of the grandmother, but the reader is shocked when the Misfit puts her son’s shirt on indicating he is dead.

After reading her stories I have a new eye for the absurd and the grotesque. I understand her purpose and know that each absurdity most likely has telos—an end goal. In one of the only letters O’Connor wrote about Greenleaf she said, “I think Evil is the defective use of good”. Her stories perfectly portray this fact through the absurd and grotesque things the reader must suffer (and laugh) through. We find this in Good Country People, when a Bible salesman (who one would think was a good man) steals Hulga’s prosthetic leg. Mr. Shiftlet seems like a nice fellow until he leaves Lucynell in the diner. Yet, her characters aren’t exactly polar either. They do things we might do, and they capture our capacity for empathy. Similar to Milton’s Satan, we can relate to their humanity.

It is that humanity that seems to make the redemption so real in O’Connor’s stories. I have learned to look for redemption by a different description. Redemption does not necessarily come at altars and it isn’t always in a pretty package. Sometimes redemption is brutal; sometimes it is beyond our understanding.

O’Connor’s writing has made me look for all these elements in her literature and in others. Reading so many of her stories has certainly shaped the way I will look at fiction from now on. I will always expect the absurd and I will look for a deeper redemption beneath the surface.  

Write What You Know

A few questions that come to my mind when I reflect on O’Connor’s stories are: why does she write with these characters, and why have put them in the setting of the rural South or, at least, have characters come from there? She seems more than capable as a writer to be able to write using different scenery and characters like some of her colleagues and, more to the point, away from where she grew up. So why would she use characters that could have been, and more than likely were, in her everyday world?

I think the answer to these questions is reasonable. She grew up and lived in Georgia most of her life. This was the case with her faith, Catholicism, as well. She did go off to Iowa and Connecticut but she could not escape where she lived, especially when you have a thick Georgia accent. The questions I have to ask, in contrast to the prior questions, are: What does she know well? Would it not make more sense to write about characters that are a part of her, like her accent? One of the reasons why she was able to write her stories as well as she did was because her characters and their scenery are connected to her in more ways than one, like: they are all from or live in the southern country, they all have some sort of religious background or agenda, etc. Obviously, she did not have these extremes like her characters, but the connections are still there.

What I have learned through this idea is kind of selfish on my part: I am thinking about how I write and what exactly I write about. From this perspective, I take away the notion that I need to write what I know. In hindsight, this seems like a very obvious lesson that everyone already knows. In any case, this is what I figured out on my own time. I feel like there is nothing wrong with experimenting with different forms and ideas but it should only be mixed in with what I already know and/or what I have experienced.

 

 

Sandpaper to My Soul

     Reading O'Connor has been a journey for me. It hasn't been an easy journey either, its been a struggle. She has made me hate her characters, love them and hate them again. I've been left feeling like a sucker punch has sent me sprawling on the ground. O'Connor rubs me the wrong way and leaves me feeling uncomfortable like I've been grated by sandpaper. It stays with me and shakes me up, but throughout it all, I've come out better.

   Some themes in characters I've noticed throughout O'Connor's stories are people who refuse to believe in God, those who are over-righteous, those who are innocent, those who are wise to the world, those who are lost. The affects of post-modernism and its battle with the South are still present. Many of her characters such as Hulga, Haze Motes, Rayber, Julian, even young Tarwater, they all believe they know better than others because they have an education. They are too 'smart' to believe in God. These are her main characters! I wasn't comfortable with the main characters being anti-theists; those who hate God and belief in Him. Then her characters are always trying to spread their haughty knowledge to others, or more so they are trying to crush the faith of others. They become preachers and evangelists of their own faith, a faith without Christ. As Rayber told Tarwater, "You need help. You need to be saved right here now from the old man and everything he stands for. And I'm the one who can save you," (p.438).  Haze Motes told the people in the city, "I preach there are all kinds of truths, your truth and somebody else's. but behind all of them, there's only one truth and that is there's no truth...is what I and this church preach," (p. 93). These characters are offensive and abrasive to me, the make me feel prickled and angry at them. They mimic the abrasive of some Christians. The way O'Connor describes her these characters makes me want to know what happens to them. They all ignore that there are things they cannot dispell. Like Rayber's love for Bishop, his mentally retarded child. For Haze Motes, its his knowledge that being a bastard is wrong. Unexplainable love, knowledge of good and evil these are things that point toward a Creator, something exists beyond ourselves and the physical world. O'Connor stealithy has made her readers confront the inconsistencies of naturalism, determinism... etc.
     The South, like O'Connor said, is haunted by Christ. We have a Christianized culture, and many of us are lost, like Enoch and young Tarwater, they aren't sure what they believe. God doesn't seem like a reality to them but there is almost a fear for complete unbelief in Him. God is depicted at first like a detestable authority figure in their lives, that was no right to rule them. Enoch, is searching for love and acceptance. Tarwater is searching for freedom and truth. Tarwater may have found it, I'm pretty sure he did. Enoch, not so much. Also in the South are those who are pious and over-bearing like Old Tarwater, Mrs. Hopewell, etc. These characters make me upset too, they are just as uncomfortable as characters like Haze Motes. Yet, in some of them there is wisdom, that makes me stop and think.
     Then O'Connor makes her characters experience or do horrible things, and because she often writes switching between first person and third person; She makes the reader experience them too. Its agony sometimes, because as the character is expose to the harsh truth so it the reader. Through grotesque writing, I have to go encounter grace like her characters, and its not always cut and dry. I'm left with a choice. Some callouses, some rough spots have been rubbed away my soul has been exposed. I will forever read O'Connors work with a Southern Twang inside my head, because the language she uses so is originally Southern, its something that brings her characters to life. Also her characters come alive because they are not perfect, ideal humans. They struggle, they doubt, they don't always understand, they have need. They seem so unlike me but at the same time I can empathize because they go through things like me. They and I both have a choice to make, will we acknowledge God's grace and mercy? My soul has been workd on by O'Connor grotesque 'sandpaper' novels. I am better for it.

Grace and Truth in the Comical and Grosetque

Definitely the biggest thing for me has been the different redemptive analogies and themes O'Connor was able to represent through the use of the grotesque and with the aid of some pretty uncomely characters. I never considered being the possibility of doing something like this having been under the previous understanding that experiences with grace were to be paired with a happy fuzzy endings... a change in action. I had  mostly only been exposed to that which O'Connor considered "soggy literature." She does something so unique in that her focus on the encounter with grace transcends the after effects of grace... which is the most important part of the whole thing! It matters if you have truly had an encounter with grace or not! What happens next can't even be considered if the experience with grace has never occurred! And this grace doesn't look the same way as it usually does! This has lead me to a whole new perspective of looking at truth and this collision also changes the perspective of her characters... Hazel Motes, Mrs. May, Hulga... then BAM (literally for Mrs. May.)

I think mostly it will change my idea of writing, especially in the "Christian genre." O'Connor was bold to write about real, dirty things. This was so bold and brave. And there is light.

On a side note in the subject of the experience of grace not looking like what we think it should ... I am reminded (on a smaller, but somewhat similar scale) of some of Ted Dekker's works and the grace his characters face. If you are familiar with him, in his book Thre3, a character has an encounter later in him life with an angry childhood bully who has come back for the blood of he and his childhood friend... and after many attempts on his life and much drama it is discovered that he himself suffers from a multiple personality disorder... a sickness of the mind that had tormented him as a child, inventing a friend and an enemy. This man's encounter with grace, like O'Connor's friends, results in the revelation that all the destruction has been from he himself.







-BK

Everything that Rises Must be Equal and Not At All Racist

“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

-Martin Luther King Jr.

The most virtuous of Flannery O’Connor’s characters aren’t always evil. With the exceptions of The Misfit, Many Pointer, and the like, few are outright villainous. Often they are merely misdirected in their pursuit of righteousness. Similar to the Pharisees, they seek morality and the destruction of wrongdoing, but are driven by pride, which leads them to malice. This is especially true of the stories that deal with racism. Julian, in Everything that Rises Must Converge, is just as racist as Old Dudley in The Geranium, or Mr. Head in The Artificial Nigger, but genuinely believes that he isn’t. However, his racism is different than that of his mother.

 When his mother says, “I’ve always had a great respect for my colored friends… I’d do anything in the world for them” and turns “unnaturally red” when her son sits next to a black person on the bus, she exhibits a common, easily recognizable type of racism. That part reminded me of people who say, “Well, I’ve managed to befriend one black person, so I’ve earned the right to make questionable comments about their race” (Okay, that’s not a direct quote, but you get it). It is obvious in her comment, even before reading the bus scene, that she does not see equality between her race and theirs. By pointing out that she respects them, she is suggesting in order for the two races to be equal the lower must be elevated to be even with the higher.

 Unfortunately, the opposite of this view is not true equality, but merely another form of racism, as seen in Julian. Immediately following the mother’s comment, Julian says that “when he got on a bus by himself, he made it a point to sit down beside a Negro, in reparation as it were for his mother’s sins.” Never mind the faulty motives behind his so-called act of kindness, by pointedly sitting next to a person of different color, he is suggesting that he is lowering himself to the state of his seatmate in order to be equal to him. He does, however, see the ridiculousness of his actions when his mother tries to give a little boy a nickel and later says, "Your graciousness is not worth a damn." 

What’s most disturbing about this to me is that these subtle hints at racism that still happen today, even outside of the South. We may not sit on opposite sides of the bus anymore, but we aren’t as far removed from it as we think we are. I think that even in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement, Flannery O’Connor saw that racism will not be entirely removed until we stop talking about not being racist. It’s kind of like humility. Truly humble people don’t say that they’re humble or care if others think that they are.