Good Country People by Flannery OConnor - Essay Example

Flannery O’Connor: “Good Country People” and “A Good Man is Hard to Find” In a protestant south undergoing social and political change through violent means, Flannery O’Connor emerged as one of the most widely recognized American novelists, essayists and short story writers of the twentieth century. At the time of her birth to Roman Catholic parents, southern newspapers were full of sensationalistic headlines of armed and dangerous criminals inciting havoc across the region. And national and world newspapers were exposing social upheaval (from the Civil Rights movement) and religious conflicts (the rise of Islam coinciding with the Black Power Movement and the creation of a Jewish state in Israel). Often, O’Connor’s stories came to reflect a non-secular nation at war with itself, although many of her works focused on the fictional tale of one family, who happens to be directly affected by this conflict (with the occasional murder). Even today, as the intertwining aspects of violence and religion continue to appear across America’s newspapers and our awareness of the world, O’Connor’s works tap the underlying issues plaguing many peoples since they were first written. Flannery O’Connor spent the earliest and latest years of her life residing in Georgia. Although she was a devout Roman Catholic, her 1955 short story “Good Country People” followed the lives of a protestant family and one “naïve” Bible salesman. This particular story follows Hulga Hopewell, a PhD in Philosophy, who swore off many of the non-intellectual aspects of the world, including the affection of men. But, when a Bible salesman saunters into town to preach for his own prophet, she decides that despite her limited experience with the opposite sex (since she had never been kissed), she would seduce the boy, believing he was simple and inexperienced when it came to love. When she proceeds to exert her dominance, she begins to succumb to the notion of love and affection (even allowing him to remove her wooden leg, which was dismembered when she was an adolescent). But then she refuses to take the next step in their fiery short relationship, so he snatches her leg and stuffs it into his suitcase, and leaves Hulga behind. However, despite the differences between O’Connor’s personal beliefs and those of her characters, numerous similarities exist between the author and her work. The main character Hulga and O’Connor remain comparable on several levels. They were both intellectuals who also suffered from debilitation, as Helga has a prosthetic leg and O’Connor was stricken with lupus, which limited much of her mobility in the later years of her life. The expression of the author’s belief in the importance of preparation for a good death is evident in the beliefs and actions of Hulga in “Good Country People”. And as she respected the religious differences between herself and those coexisting in her surroundings, she incorporated both aspects of the different belief systems in this story (particularly the protestant women and Catholic Bible salesman). “O’Connor was a Roman Catholic in the Bible Belt South; her fiction, though, is largely concerned with fundamentalist Protestants, many of whom she admired for the integrity of their search for Truth” (Gordon). Although she was separated from her neighbors due to their religious affiliations, she became inspired by the similar beliefs of their divided faiths. Her work also contains a significant amount of religious imagery and comparisons to express her vision of the story to the reader. “The Bible salesman in ‘Good Country People’ is implicitly compared to Christ” (McFarland 983). In Hulga’s final glimpse of the man she succumbed her restraint to, she witnesses him walking across the pasture (although the image is blurred, because the Bible salesman also took her glasses), and describes it as a Christ-like body walking across water. “…she saw his blue figure struggling successfully over the green speckled lake” (O’Connor 445). The use of religious imagery and metaphorical references continue in another of O’Connor’s classic short stories. O’Connor’s graphically controversial “A Good Man is Hard to Find” follows a wholesome family’s vacation to Florida, which happens to be interrupted by the murderous rampage of a “Misfit”. The most distinguishable character is this story, the religiously outspoken grandmother, initially fears that the family will encounter a dangerous felon known as “The Misfit”, who appeared in the morning’s newspaper. The rest of the family dismisses her warnings, and as the family conveniently gets lost on a long dirt road in the middle of nowhere, their paths cross with “The Misfit” and his gang of ruthless criminals. As “The Misfit” prepares the end the grandmother’s life (after killing the rest of her family), she deliriously screamed that he was one of her children. The grandmother’s final vision of earth after “The Misfit” guns her down is of a “cloudless sky” (O’Connor 456). When “The Misfit” and his accomplices walk away from the scene, he utters his first and final impression of the persistently devout grandmother; “She would have been a good woman…if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life” (O’Connor 456). The macabre seen ends as “The Misfit” and his cohorts drag the body of the lifeless grandmother into a ditch. Much like the story “Good Country People”, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” inexplicably compares one of its characters to Christ. O’Connor conceived “The Misfit” as a “spoiled prophet” who is truly capable of doing the right thing, but instead opts for brutal acts of aggression towards innocent people (Fitzgerald 988). And the final glimpse of his victim, the grandmother, smiling heavenward, shows her continuous search for spirituality through the harshness of reality (as she passes on staring towards her personal image of what afterlife would look like). The front pages of today’s newspapers are splattered with headlines and photos of people resorting to violence in the name of religion. But O’Connor utilized America’s graphic depictions of reported violence for this story. Prior to this story being written, an “Atlanta paper (featured an article) about a small-time robber who called himself ‘The Misfit’, in a self-pitying excuse for his crimes” (Fitzgerald 987). But, the greatest inspiration for this story was not the anti-glamorized small-time “Misfit”, but another infamous figure running rampant in the region. Mr. James Francis (“Three-Gun”) Hill, “…amassed a record twenty-six kidnappings in four states, an equal number of robberies, ten car thefts, and a daring rescue of four Florida convicts from a prison gang – all brought off in two fun-filled weeks” (Fitzgerald 988). O’Connor’s combination of religious imagery and references provides a thought-provoking backdrop against the random acts of violence perpetrated by the antagonists against the protagonists, or just some innocent bystanders. Flannery O’Connor, through her writings, expresses her belief that the carnage inherent in the modern world, which includes the horrible brutality of assaults, rapes murders and genocides, are the unfortunate consequence of nihilism. This nihilism “shrinks souls before it destroys bodies” (Wood 179). The seemingly needless violence in O’Connor’s stories is rationalized through the ultimate difference between those in the modern world with the distinction of varying religious beliefs. This is the battle of good versus evil. Justifying the use of violence in her stories (e.g. “A Good Man is Hard to Find”), she says that violence is not an end in itself, but rather a means, a force which can be used for good and evil. Extreme violence leads both good and evil characters to revelations, to the disclosure of their inner self, preparing them for the acceptance of divine mercy (Munteanu). The ultimate battle within the Roman Catholic faith, between the concepts of Satan and God, is represented as the definitive fight of good and evil, in which every human being must pick a side, frequently through violence. With her writings, O’Connor explores the reality which has continually come with societies dominated by fundamentalist religious beliefs, where violent acts become a natural occurrence. “…it is always the act of aggression that spurs insight” (Rosengarten). The characters in her stories, particularly “The Misfit”, react to something out of the ordinary with a violent act. This occurs as the grandmother acknowledges him as her “child” and places her hand on his shoulder. But as they reflect on the consequences of their actions, it results in a revelation of sorts for one character (“She would have been a good woman…”). Prior to this sadistic ending, “The Misfit” and the grandmother debate the Biblical tale of how Christ raised the dead, in the story of Lazarus. “The Misfit”, in his angry scowl criticizing Christ for throwing “everything off balance”, causes the grandmother to inexplicably discredit (“Maybe He didn’t raise the dead”) one of the tales which she had based her entire belief system upon (O’Connor 455). Even the threat of violence could not maintain the faith within the religiously devoted grandmother’s soul. The importance of her religious beliefs, and the subsequent search for her own personal insight, is consistently explored through her fictional works. As O’Connor explains; “To the hard of hearing… [Christian writers] shout, and for the…almost blind [they] draw large and startling figures” (Gordon). This statement has become an accepted explanation of O’Connor’s deliberate intent as a writer, especially illustrated by the characterization of “The Misfit”. However, these “large and startling figures” usually seem to resort to drastic measures. Through her use of violent and religious imagery, Flannery O’Connor opened a dark and brutal world to her readers, one which at the time of their publication shocked most of her unsuspecting readers. O’Connor intertwines the inherent violence which existed in the southern states with and a long and storied religious history, which helped to define who she was as a spiritual human being. “The unremitting intimacy of violence and vision is the hallmark of O’Connor’s fiction” (Rosengarten). But, her fictional stories connect to reality on an even greater level. Major events of the last one hundred years, including the Holocaust and the current Palestinian/Israeli conflict, represent how religious (and ethnic) differences can result in violent aggression from one source towards another. In “Good Country People”, the aggression is embodied in the actions of the Bible salesman, who runs off with the most vital possessions of the main protagonist. In “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, the aggression is more direct and violent, as “The Misfit” butchers an entire family, including the outspokenly religious grandmother among the innocent children. This is also evidenced in much of O’Connor’s work, especially these short stories. But, her writings are not intended just to glamorize violent acts. Her stories are written more as parables for a modern world than merely for the entertainment of an audience. Bibliography Fitzgerald, Sally. “Southern Sources of ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’”. The Story and Its Writer. Ed. Ann Charters. 7th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007. 987-8. University of Georgia Press, 2009. 14 June 2009. McFarland, Dorothy Tuck. “On ‘Good Country People’”. The Story and Its Writer. Ed. Ann Charters. 7th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007. 980-3. Munteanu, Ioana. “Flannery O’Connor: A Catholic Writer in the Protestant South”. Valahia, University of Targoviste. ND. O’Connor, Flannery. “A Good Man is Hard to Find”. Literature and Its Writers. Ed. Ann and Samuel Charters. 4th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007. 445-56. O’Connor, Flannery. “Good Country People”. Literature and Its Writers. Ed. Ann and Samuel Charters. 4th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007. 430-45. Rosengarten, Richard A. “The Catholic Sophocles: Violence and Vision in Flannery O’Connor’s ‘Revelation’”. University of Chicago Divinity School, 2003. 14 June 2009. Wood, Ralph C. Flannery O’Connor and the Christ-Haunted South. Grand Rapids: Eardmans, 2004. Read More