Was the ending of A Good Man Is Hard To Find a surprise? Because I am somewhat aquainted with Flannery O'Connor's stories, not really! In fact, as I read about the Grandmother and The Misfit, I began to feel as a piece of lumber entering the sawmill for a lo-o-o-ng, vertical cut, knowing that the ride would not be over until the board was completely sliced in half! It seems to me that Flannery O'Connor specializes in drawing protagonists who are somewhat innocent oddballs, in conflict with their circumstances, and full of foibles. It is, in fact, her descriptions of their foibles that draw us in and make us take delight in these characters. While we're smiling, she is also creating selfish antagonists of pure, unthinking brutality, often criminals, who are nonetheless fascinating because they usually have some charming quality. Mesmerized at this juxtaposition of good and evil, we are hoping against hope for a good outcome! She then subjects her fragile protagonist sto unfathomable, sociopathic cruelty or obliteration. And that is that.
One of my favorite movies is the Coen Brothers' O Brother Where Art Thou? and I now see Flannery O'Connor's great influence on its characters and plot: It is set in the South, and presents absurd, innocent, protagonists who are hilarious, lovable and deeply flawed for punishment at the hands of morally corrupt persons in positions of public trust.
Based on The Odyssey, three shackled men escape from a Mississippi prison farm pursued by the Sheriff and his hounds. Everett, the know-it-all, literate main protagonist, was incarcerated for practicing law without a license. He has heard that his wife divorced him and is planning to marry a man whom she considers "bona fide." In the hope of getting home in time to prevent his wife's remarriage, Everett has engineered the escape with his cronies by promising them they are going to collect a (nonexistent) buried treasure. Along the way they are joined by a good-hearted Negro who has sold his soul to the devil in exchange for virtuosity on the banjo, a genial bank robber who robs and kills for crimes' sake, a Bible salesman who robs and leaves them for dead, a Sheriff bent on killing them though they were pardoned by the Governor, and the Klan, out to get them because "they's miscegenated." Much in keeping with the O'Connor tradition, there is a major point of departure when the story ends happily!
Though O Brother contains many Flannery O'Connoresque elements, perhaps when all is said and done, No Country for Old Men is more in keeping with O'Connor's style in that more protagonists are killed mercilessly by an engaging hit man. In the end one is left feeling sickened by the fragility of life and shocked at how arbitrarily it can be snuffed out.
Excellent response. Your writing style is lovely. I, too, feel sickened--almost physically--by this story. How, I wonder, do you reconcile that with O'Connor's Christianity?
ReplyDeleteToday's class discussion was so exciting and infuriating! The variety, depth and richness of other student's blogs and responses to this story left me feeling as though I had failed this exercise miserably. As a result, I resolved to use quotes and page numbers, closely note my reactions as I read, and blog in more of a blow-by-blow descriptive manner in future. As you might imagine, I was shocked and delighted to read your positive comments!
ReplyDeleteI also want to say that I LOVE our Backpack Literature book!! For one thing, its pictures and profiles of the writers greatly enhance and inform the reading experience for me by adding two more layers of sensory involvement. Without knowing what Flannery O'Connor looked like and the source of her life view (other than that she was from the South), my impression and intuition of her was that she was an upper middle class atheist with a broken heart, whose vision was forever distorted by some early sadistic treatment and resulting secret rage into existential despair!
With regard to reconciling the rampant contempt and disregard for the lives of fellow humans exercised by O'Connor's antagonists with her devout Catholicism, it isn't difficult to think of the inexorable, horrifying power, control, and cruelty of the Catholic Church through the ages. The central image of the crucifiction is a good place to start! Not to mention the Spanish Inquisition, the very idea of the blood of the lamb(!), the wholesale slaughter of savages in the new world, the brutalization of Catherine and Bernadette by their Superiors, and threatened purgatorial punishments to name a few more. Looking at it this way I can see where the monster of O'Connor's unstoppable humiliation and murder might have been born. However, now I wonder how and whether the promise of redemption and forgiveness for one's mortal sins implicit in Catholicism influenced her work.
Ok, still no quotes and page numbers. Next story for sure!