[spoilers] A discussion of the “anguish, mercy, charity, divine grace, and imitation of God” themes in this famous and much anthologized story by Flannery O’Connor can be found at the Wikipedia article, which also includes points about the author’s formal intent. That’s all well and good, but—though I could well be missing the point—my interest in this story has more to do with how it works as a cunning horror story. As such, it is more along the lines of the conte cruel because there is nothing supernatural or really the least bit spooky about it. Some may even want to classify it as a type of crime story. Certainly it has its improbabilities and indulgences. In the very first paragraph the unnamed grandmother, who is the main character and an exceedingly annoying person, notices a newspaper item about the “The Misfit,” a lunatic madman who has escaped from prison. Then the turning point of this story occurs when she and her family encounter him by random on the road. The family—grandmother, father, mother, two kids, and a baby—is on a road trip from Georgia to Florida but they are in a strange kind of hurry that is never explained. They might be on the run themselves. The mother has almost nothing to say. O’Connor skillfully uses misdirection to keep us from worrying these points too much in a story that moves quickly, but they register unconsciously as points of anxiety. It all feels innocent but worrisome, worrisome but innocent, something is wrong here, which sets us up for the encounter with The Misfit and his gang. But nothing can really set us up for how the encounter goes. The Misfit is already faintly ludicrous with his self-bestowed moniker—cocky and pretentious too, when he starts talking. And he is first seen, like Vladimir Putin, swaggering around bare-chested. It feels like safe literary symbolism and narrative all the way up to the point where the murders start, as the father and older son are taken off into the woods by henchmen with guns. Two shots are heard and the henchmen return with the father’s garish vacation shirt, which The Misfit casually dons. These points are made with no flourishes. These things just happen. But they are so monstrous they almost put us into shock, certainly on a first reading. It’s clear at that point what is happening and what will happen to all of them, including the grandmother. The story carries an unmistakable load of despair and meaninglessness, and it also feels just a little amused by our sickened response. It also has a lot of heavy religious themes, but they’re for digging out with more care on subsequent readings. I understand some people don’t even want to read it a second time.
Read story online. (Library of America)
Hi Jeff, I'm interested to see you revisiting Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard to Find", almost exactly five years after your first Can't Explain go-round with it, which I'd responded to at the time with my own admiration of her writing. I see that you're now beginning to move this story into the horror genre you like so much in general. I was with you all the way when you considered that Frank Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life" might actually be a horror movie, but for all the horrors that may crop up in O'Connor's stories, I still think one of her major themes (besides her obvious exploration of her Catholic faith) is sociological satire of the rural Georgia society where she spent much of her later life.
ReplyDeleteFlannery O'Connor spent most of her early youth in the relatively urban community of Savannah. She was close to her father, who always encouraged her writing, but he died of lupus in 1941. The family had moved to rural Milledgeville, and Flannery and her mother eventually lived on a family farm there. Flannery had spent time in New York and elsewhere when she was beginning her literary career in the late '40s, but her own diagnosis of lupus in 1952 more or less exiled her back to her mother's farm to stay. I've always imagined that she probably felt trapped there, a Catholic stranded in the Fundamentalist heartland, with a mother who took care of her, but who wasn't necessarily sympathetic to Flannery's ideas.
I think the grandmother in "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" may be an early satire of country people Flannery had encountered around Milledgeville. However, Flannery made a much more fully-realized portrait of an annoyingly bucolic woman, Mrs. Turpin, in her later story "Revelation", one of my absolute favorites of all she wrote. The conversational exchanges among the different classes of country folk in a doctor's waiting room are just hilarious, until Mrs. Turpin's self-righteousness makes her blurt out thanks to Jesus for giving her such a wonderful life -- which then brings on a bit of violence from a domestic adolescent "misfit" who's sick of hearing her talk. Unlike the earlier story, Mrs. Turpin is only slightly physically injured, but the experience works on her mind endlessly, as she moves toward the revelation promised in the story's title. Be sure to read "Revelation" if you get a chance, it's really impressive.
-- Richard Riegel
Thanks Richard! I'm planning to reread Wise Blood in the near future and will look up "Revelation" while I'm at it.
ReplyDelete