Chapter 4
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
147
Chapter 4
Distorted Society: Racial and Intergenerational Conflicts
It is a characteristic feature in O‘Connor‘s works to abolish racial or social
distinctions in the face of misery. She felt a compulsion to reform what was corrupt and
hypocritical in human nature. She wanted her stories to transcend religious boundaries
and reach for the solidarity of the whole human race amidst diverse culture, religion and
tradition. Niebuhr describes how the division of humanity into cultural centers, tore ―the
whole fabric of human togetherness because they made themselves the false centers of
the whole existence‖ (Pramuk 365). This identification reveals a sin of pride and
dehumanization of a race.
O‘Connor admits that racial adjustments and interactions can be planted in
America by uprooting the southern constructed social hierarchies. This preconceived
notions of blacks and whites needed to transcend the stereotypical, to alter the widely
accepted social norms of her time. As a global people, one must rise to recognize the
revelation of a human community. Her stories question the southern social codes of her
time, codes accepted hierarchy of race, a hierarchy that placed whites firmly above
blacks, both socially and economically. To emphasize the humanity and uniqueness of
her characters, Shackelford writes of O‘Connor‘s fiction, ―Without salvation, social
values are meaningless‖ (79). Charity and love would ideally create a cohesive society,
regardless of race, class and culture. O‘Connor notes that:
It requires considerable grace for two races to live together, particularly
when the population is divided about fifty-fifty between them and when they
have our particular history. It can‘t be done without a code of manners based
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
148
on mutual charity…. The South has to evolve a way of life in which the two
races can live together with mutual forbearance. You don‘t form a committee to
do this or pass a resolution; both races have to work it out the hard way.
(Walters 134-135)
O‘Connor‘s fiction calls for a common humanity found in all of us being God‘s children.
Ralph Wood puts it, ―the most profound commonality shared by blacks and whites,
chiefly our common dependence on the grace and judgment of God‖ (Wood, 90).
The Artificial Nigger, Everything That Rises Must Converge, Judgment Day, Revelation,
Greenleaf and The Displaced Person analyse the racial tensions and intergenerational
conflicts in a changing social set-up.
O‘Connor in the story Artificial Nigger depicts the inhumanity of White Supremacy
and invites both the races to reconciliation. The protagonists Mr. Head undertakes the
―moral mission‖ to teach his grandson, Nelson, the stereotypical racist, lesson by taking
him to Atlanta, which is ―not a great place‖ as Negroes reside there (CS 251). Mr. Head
being obsessed with White supremacy fears that Nelson would also one day move to the
city just as his daughter had run away and got married. He strongly disapproves his
daughter, though she is dead now. Being a responsible grandfather and guardian he wants
to bring up Nelson as a White man. Nelson has been with the old man right from his
infancy, and had been told that he was born in the city. Nelson takes pride of being born
in a city and wishes to see his birth place. Mr. Head decides to take him to Atlanta to
show him that there was no reason to be proud for being born in such a place.
He had been thinking about this trip for several months but it was for the
most part in moral terms that he conceived it. It was to be a lesson that the
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
149
boy would never forget. He was to find out from it that he had no cause for
pride merely because he had been born in a city. He was to find out that the
city is not a great place. Mr Head meant him to see everything there is to see
in a city so that he would be content to stay at home for the rest of his life
(CS 251).
The old man wants to reduce Nelson‘s pride for his birthplace and to hate and despise
the black community. He attempts to pass the racial weapons of pride and arrogance to
Nelson. O‘Connor here shows how Whites‘ relationship with their own community
deprives them of social interaction and spiritual integrity, taking away the human in man.
Mr. Head and Nelson start their journey from Georgia, the white rural area to
Atlanta where Nelson is moulded and shaped as a racist. Mr. Head utilizes racism to
degrade and demean the black community of Atlanta. Since he had forced all the Black
people in his locale of Georgia to move out, he brings his grandson, Nelson, to the city to
see his first ―nigger‖: ―You ain‘t ever seen a nigger…There hasn‘t been a nigger in this
county since we run that one out twelve years ago and that was before you were born‖
(CS 252). Nelson however suggests that, since he was born in the city, he must have seen
a ―nigger.‖ He confidently states: "How you know I never saw a nigger when I lived
there before? ... I probably saw a lot of niggers‖ (CS 252). Mr. Head considers this as
foolish and declares: ―A six-month old child don‘t know a nigger from anyone else‖
which voices O‘Connor‘s irony that defining a ―nigger‖ involves a learned experience
(CS 252). A child, symbolic of innocence and purity is unable to divide the human
community on the basis of colour and social position. To an infant‘s eye, all are equal just
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
150
as all are equal before God. But society constructs racial divisions that segregates man
form his fellow beings.
In their journey, O‘Connor arranges three encounters with ―the Negro,‖ through
which Nelson is introduced to the White constructed world of discrimination. The first
takes place on the train ride as a ―coffee-coloured man‖ (CS 254) proceeds down the aisle
wearing ornate clothing, Mr. Head, who has been gripping Nelson‘s arm asks him, ―What
was that‖ and the boy replies ―A man‖ recognizing the humanity of the man before the
colour of his skin (CS 255). His child-like innocence remains untainted by the racial
perceptions of his grandfather. But the old man corrects, ―That was a nigger‖ (CS 255).
Despite the outward appearance of his material success, in the white South‘s eyes
(Mr. Head), the man will always be a ―nigger.‖ Mr. Head is pleased when Nelson fails to
recognize ―the man‖ as a Negro. Nelson feels deceived that ―the man‖ is not ―black‖ but
only ―tan‖ in colour: ―You said they were black,‖ he (Nelson) said in an angry voice.
―You never said they were tan. How do you expect me to know anything when you don‘t
tell me right? (CS 255). As Nelson had imagined niggers to be black in colour, he remains
confused at identifying them. He begins to experience his first hatred for ―niggers‖ as he
has been humiliated: ―He (Nelson) felt that the Negro had deliberately walked down the
aisle in order to make a fool of him and he hated him with a fierce fresh hate; he understood
now why his grandfather disliked them‖ (CS 256). He misdirects the source of his
foolishness and ignorance on the Negro rather than his grandpa. The pigment of skin now
dictates the force of Nelson‘s emotions. He is thus initiated into society‘s discriminatory
stance towards Blacks by Mr. Head. O‘Connor here reveals that man cannot be separated
into categories of black and white as they are the creations of God.
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
151
In the train, Mr. Head tries to show Nelson the dining car where the blacks are
given a separate seating. As he moves to show the kitchen, Mr. Head is stopped by a
black waiter, who clearly rejects white supremacy and warns that ―Passengers are NOT
allowed in the kitchen!‖ Mr. Head is sure not to give ears to his warning as he is a Negro
(CS 257). He cannot take orders from blacks but only give orders. To insult and degrade
the black waiter, Mr. Head spitefully replies that passengers cannot enter the kitchen
because ―the cockroaches would run the passengers out‖ (CS 257). The old man feels
assured of his superior position, as the passengers laugh aloud at his intelligent answer.
Nelson is delighted to see the stronghold white power of his grandpa and his quick wit:
―Nelson felt a keen sense of pride in him. He realized the old man would be his only
support in the strange place they were approaching. He would be entirely alone in the
world if he were ever lost from his grandfather. A terrible excitement shook him and he
wanted to take hold of Mr. Head‘s coat and hold on like a child‖ (CS 257). O‘Connor
here foreshadows that Nelson is going to inherit his grandfather‘s discriminatory stance
towards blacks, as he now views the city as a ―strange place.‖ He feels comfortable and
secure in the company of Mr Head and begins to sense fear in his absence. Setting aside
his intelligence and identity, Nelson conveniently becomes ―a child‖ because ―… his
grandfather was indispensable to him‖ (CS 257). Nelson though feels insecure without
his grandfather he does not confess it to him as he might take him back to Georgia
without seeing his first home, Atlanta.
Both arrive in Atlanta and Nelson is overcome by the glories of the city and shouts,
―I was born here…. This is where I come from!" (CS 259). Mr. Head becomes appalled
at Nelson‘s pride over his birthplace and compares the city to the entrance to the sewer
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
152
system, describes it as ―… an endless pitch-black tunnel [into which] any man might be
sucked into the sewer and never be heard from again‖(CS 259). Nelson‘s unconscious
fears become strong at this that he connects ―… the sewer passages with the entrance to
hell and understood for the first time how the world was put together in its lower parts‖
(CS 259). But once again he recovers from his fears to welcome and embrace his birthplace.
He confidently states: ―You can always stay away from the holes‖ (CS 259). Thus, Mr. Head
is unable to eradicate Nelson‘s enthusiasm for the city.
In the city, Mr. Head loses sight of the train station, and they accidentally wander into
a black neighbourhood. Mr. Head full of pride does not ask for directions and tells Nelson,
―This is where you were born….You can ast one yourself if you want to‖ (CS 261). Here
Nelson encounters a Negro woman, whom he asks for directions to the station. The woman
wearing a ―pink dress that showed her exact shape‖ triggers Nelson‘s sexual desires
(CS 261). Her ―tremendous bosom‖ (CS 262) suddenly enthrals him. Nelson‘s craving for
maternal love and his quest for his origins, as he puts it, ―where I come from‖ (CS 259) are
transfixed by the black woman. The woman becomes the agent for Nelson‘s emergent
identity as a man. Unconsciously, he has his sexual feeling awakened:
He suddenly wanted her to reach down and pick him up and draw him against
her and then he wanted to feel her breath on his face. He wanted to look down
and down into her eyes while she held him tighter and tighter. He had never
had such a feeling (CS 262).
Nelson recognizes his common humanity with the Negro woman that transcends human
segregation. In a letter, written on May 4, 1955 to Ben Griffith, O‘Connor says of the
woman:
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
153
I meant for her in an almost physical way to suggest the mystery of
existence to him- he not only has never seen a nigger but he didn‘t know
any women and I felt that such a black mountain of maternity would give
him the required shock to start those black forms moving up from his
unconscious (HB 78).
O‘Connor highlights the possibility of solidarity between Blacks and Whites but the
socially constructed racial discrimination denies Nelson the bond of love. His grandfather
would consider this union as an immoral and baseless urge. Mr. Head compares his
experience with the black woman to the city‘s sewer system. Nelson felt as if he were
reeling down through a pitch black tunnel. He holds that the devouring power of the
black woman is parallel to the endless underground sewerage system which is filled with
rats. He is lost and needs maternal comfort, an undoubtedly familiar experience from his
past. However, in this case, the maternal comfort is from a black woman, not his mother.
His instincts are to rush to a motherly figure, yet his youth has been spent avoiding
blacks. Nelson once again clings to Mr. Head for total dependence and ―would have
collapsed at her feet if Mr Head had not pulled him roughly away‖ (CS 262).
As Nelson is exhausted by the long walk and falls asleep, Mr. Head decides ―to
teach the child a lesson he won‘t forget,‖ Hiding himself in an alley like ―an old monkey
on the garbage can lid,‖ he kicks a trash can which wakes Nelson from his sleep (CS 264).
Nelson is frozen with fear as he cannot find his grandfather. Running madly down the
street he knocks down an elderly lady carrying groceries. Terror fills him as the woman
starts to cry for a policeman. The child however spots his grandfather and ―caught him
around the hips and clung panting against him‖ (CS 265). Out of fear for the policemen,
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
154
Mr Head denies him saying, ―I never seen him before,‖ and lowers his head into ―his collar
like a turtle‘s (CS 265). This clearly parallels Mr Head‘s cowardly nature. "Nelson‘s fingers
fell out of his [grandfather's] flesh‖ and the crowd is shocked to see ―a man who would
deny his own image‖ (CS 265). Immediately, Mr Head is overtaken by an overwhelming
sense of guilt:
Mr. Head began to feel the depth of his denial. His face as they walked on
became all hollows and bare ridges…. The speed of God‘s justice was only
what he expected for himself, but he could not stand to think that his sins
would be visited upon Nelson and that even now, he was leading the boy
to his doom (CS 266).
He realizes his destructive side and waits for boy‘s forgiveness. The boy is determined
not to forgive Mr. Head‘s betrayal. He ignores the old man‘s efforts at reconciliation, by
refusing the shared water which he offers to drink. Mr Head wishes to be carried away
into the dark sewer which would take him into the bowels of the city. As he sees a man
approaching Mr Head cries desperately, ―I‘m lost...Oh Gawd I‘m lost! Oh hep me Gawd
I‘m lost!‖ (CS 267). Here he becomes aware of his sin of pride and humbles himself
before God.
The third encounter takes place when Mr. Head and Nelson wander into an "elegant
suburban section‖ of the city, where they spot a plaster figure of a Negro.
They stood gazing at the artificial Negro as if they were faced with some
great mystery, some monument to another's victory that brought them
together in their common defeat. They could both feel it dissolving their
differences like an action of mercy. Mr Head had never known before
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
155
what mercy felt like because he had been too good to deserve any, but he
felt he knew now (CS 268-69).
Though the statue of ―an artificial nigger‖ reflects on the victimised and marginalised
state of the Blacks, they find how they are united with the statue in helplessness and
sadness. Nelson and Mr Head realise how all human race share same emotions and
feelings that wipes their differences of race and colour. The sufferings of Nelson and
Mr Head are united with the suffering of the artificial Negro. They discover their
solidarity and kinship with Negro. The statue becomes ―the redemptive quality of the
Negro suffering for us all‘ (HB 78).
The ―artificial nigger‖ propels Mr. Head into the depths of his own failures that he
knew ―what heat would be like without light and what man would be like without salvation‖
(CS 268). Mr. Head for the first time recognizes his own sin and foolish pride and the
inextricable relationship between God and humankind. He says to Nelson, ―They ain't got
enough real ones here. They got to have an artificial one‖ (CS 269). Mr Head understands
that categorising man on the basis of colour is an artificial construction, not real. This
revelation ―covered his pride like a flame and consumed it. He had never thought himself
a great sinner before…. [and] felt ready at that instant to enter Paradise.‖ (CS 269-270).
Mr. Head‘s racist world views shape Nelson‘s mind-set. He starts detesting and
discriminating the black community. However, Nelson realizes that defining a ―nigger‖ is
problematic. In the end of the story Nelson is described as watching his grandfather with
―a mixture of fatigue and suspicion‖ (CS 270). Although Nelson vows ―I‘m glad I‘ve went,
but I‘ll never go back again!‖ to the city, he seems to liberate himself from Mr Head‘s
warped racist attitudes (CS 270). Here O‘Connor breaks the notions of white supremacy
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
156
that denies justice to common man on account of his skin colour. She considers South as
tragic because of racial injustice and holds: ―… there is nothing that screams out the
tragedy of the south like what my uncle calls ‗nigger statuary‖ (HB 101).
In Everything That Rises Must Converge O‘Connor explores the racial tensions
between the younger generation represented by Julian and the older generation represented
by his mother in a racially integrated society. Julian seems to be in the midst of accepting
or rejecting the integrated South that fosters equality to all citizens. His mother adheres to
the old customs of racism resisting racial interaction. Julian has to accompany his mother
every Wednesday night to the weight-reducing class at the Y. She has to lose twenty
pounds on account of her blood pressure. She does not like to travel alone at night after
the buses have been integrated. Ironically, her death comes at the hand of a Negro woman
whom she unknowingly insults.
Julian‘s mother sees herself as a selfless and a self-righteous lady. She is uncomfortable
with the idea of racial equality and holds, ―They [blacks] should rise, yes, but on their
own side of the fence‖ (CS 408). She lives in the memories of an elegant past and is
ridiculously proud of her ancestry. She boats to Julian, ―Your great-grandfather was a former
governor of this state. Your grandfather was a prosperous landowner. Your grandmother was
a Godhigh. Your great-grandfather had a plantation and two hundred slaves‖ (CS 407).
In her regressed mental makeup she is still her grandfather's ten-year-old little granddaughter.
She considers herself a compassionate and charitable woman: ‗I've always had a great
respect for my coloured friends,' she said. I'd do anything in the world for them‖ (CS 409).
Julian‘s mother seeks imaginary superior power in her nostalgic memories and she often
goes into her safe world. This is because she now lives ―in reduced circumstances‖ (CS 408).
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
157
The thought of her family‘s past political influence, wealth and control over the lives of
two hundred slaves, prompts her to assure her superiority by dressing and looking dignified
and respectable in public. She feels confident that she is the only woman at the YMCA
who dresses up for classes and has a college-educated son. Equating family lineage with
identity also allows her to live more happily under the false conviction that she is actually
better than everyone else and certainly better than the descendants of ―uppity‖ former
slaves.
The white characters in the bus struggle to either maintain or redefine their sense
of identity. The white women on the bus, for example, deride black passengers in order to
re-establish their social dominance. Julian‘s mother does this as well by repeatedly arguing
that her heritage makes her superior to blacks and even other whites. The owner of red
and white canvas is also happy to find that, ―Everybody was white. I see we have the bus
to ourselves … I come on one the other day and they were thick as fleas-up front and all
through‖ (CS 410). The white community feel comfortable and relaxed within their own
race but are threatened and feel disgusted travelling along with the black community.
They classify people based on the color and race, not knowing that they are all human
being created by the same God. Julian‘s boastful mother admits, ―The world is in a mess
everywhere … it‘s a wonder we can enjoy anything. I tell you, the bottom rail is on the
top‖ (CS 407). This pride and arrogance distances themselves from the saving grace of
God and distorts their vision and mission of life.
Julian, on the other hand, believes his education has brought him the greatest
knowledge. He says to his mother, ―True culture is in the mind, the mind‖ (CS 409).
Julian, though is confronted in the changing social climate, oscillates between his
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
158
acceptance and rejection. He shouts at his mother for her biased views on blacks, but he
himself constantly dreams of a bygone era:
Doubtless that decayed mansion … remained in his mind as his mother
had known it. It appeared in his dreams regularly … It occurred to him
that it was he, not she, who could have appreciated it. He preferred its
threadbare elegance to anything he could name and it was because of it
that all the neighbourhoods they had lived in had been a torment to him
(CS 408-409).
Julian‘s sense of identity also crumbles because of the fast changing society that encourages
racial relationships. His view of reality is blurred like his mother‘s. He is on the verge of
acceptance and he warns his mother that, ―They don‘t give a damn for your graciousness…
Knowing who you are is good for one generation only. You haven‘t the foggiest idea
where you stand now or who you are‖ (CS 407). The present living condition is really
contrary to the luxurious past they enjoyed. He reminds his mother to accept the reality of
the present. His mother, however, cannot shed their glorious past and pride filled notions
of herself and her place in the society: ―I most certainly do know who I am….and if you
don‘t know who you are, I‘m ashamed of you‖ (CS 407). She has descended from a rich
and cultured slave owning family who used to live in a very large and luxurious mansion,
owning lot of niggers. Julian wants his mother to accept racial interaction, thereby leading to
his own acceptance. He reminds his mother that, ―There are no more slaves‖ which can
be seen as O‘Connor‘s view that all are equal and no discrimination is possible to divide
the chain of human community (CS 408).
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
159
Julian wants to liberate his racist thoughts and also his intellectual pride and this
provokes his racist mother. Julian recalls his mother, thus: ―She entered [the bus] with a
little smile, as if she were going into a drawing room where everyone had been waiting
for her. She was holding herself very erect under the preposterous hat, wearing it like a
banner of her imaginary dignity. There was in him an evil urge to break her spirit‖ (CS 409).
The hat here becomes the symbol of superiority preserving her high social status from the
other travellers. Julian is upset at the racial discriminations in the bus. Hence he ―made it
a point to sit down beside a Negro, in reparation as it were for his mother‘s sins‘‖ (CS 409).
He loosens his tie to embarrass her. She burns with anger and so he puts back his tie. He
tauntingly says, ―Restored to my class‖ (CS 409). Julian is irritated at his intrusive and
boastful mother. He looks for means to escape from her tight hold of racism. He withdraws
into the inner compartment of his mind where he spends most of the time, and where he
also feels quite secure:
This was a kind of mental bubble in which he established himself when he
could not bear to be part of what was going on around him. From it he could
see out and judge but in it he was safe from any kind of penetration from
without. It was the only place where he felt free of the general idiocy of
his fellows. His mother had never entered it but from it he could see her
with absolute clarity (CS 411).
Julian is not able to find the freedom he imagines by isolating him as if from the bonds of
his mother. The freedom he thinks he has is just an illusion leading only to alienation.
Julian is not able to cope with his present frustrations and he is incapable of living up to
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
160
his aspirations. By regressing into ―the inner compartment of his mind‖ he tries to escape
from his problems which he is incapable of solving (CS 411).
From the first sentence of the story, Miss O‘Connor has foreshadowed the death
of Julian's mother by stroke, the result of high blood pressure. In the bus, Julian ―made it
a point to sit down beside a Negro, in reparation as it were for his mother‘s sins‖ (CS 409).
He sits down near a Negro just to shock his mother.
He might make friends with some distinguished Negro professor or lawyer
and bring him home to spend the evening. He would he entirely justified
but her blood pressure would rise to 300. He could not push her to the extent
of making her have a stroke, and moreover, he had never been successful
at making any Negro friends (CS 414).
He wants Negro friends only to annoy his mother. Julian‘s approval of racial integration
becomes a vindictive, almost malicious act. Julian objectifies the black man, treats him as
nothing more than a tool that will provoke his mother‘s rage. He even pretends that he
smokes and asks the black man for a light in a feeble attempt to generate conversation.
But when the black man hands him matches, Julian is without cigarettes. Julian is seen in
the midst of transformation. He longs for the lost power and material success, at the same
time, he cannot hold onto racist principles. For instance, Julian ―would have liked to get
in conversation with the Negro and to talk about art or politics or any subject that would
be above the comprehension of those around them… There was no way for Julian to
convey his sympathy‖ (CS 412-413). He is at least able to welcome the changing social
order and see his mother‘s thoughts as immature and unreasonable.
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
161
The racial tension in the story begins as a big ―fierce looking‖ Negro woman and
her four-year-old son, Carver, board the bus. She sits near Julian and the son, next to
Julian‘s mother. The Negro woman wears an identical hat as Julian's mother. She feels
―sickened at some awful confrontation‖ (CS 415). Their relationship shows tensions
when a black mother and son enter the bus. Julian‘s mother is angry because the black
women‘s hat is just like hers, which removes her symbol of superiority to the Negro.
Julian is pleased to see his mother‘s revelation:
The vision of the two hats, identical, broke upon him with the radiance of
a brilliant sunrise. His face was suddenly lit with joy. He could not believe
that Fate had thrust upon his mother such a lesson…he were saying aloud:
Your punishment exactly fits your pettiness. This should teach you a
permanent lesson (CS 416).
The Negro woman hates seeing herself wearing the same hat as the white woman, since
the white woman represents the oppression that the white race has imposed upon her and
her race, and represents everything she stands against. To the Negro, the hat becomes a
symbol of all white oppression. What this story centres around, is a need for humans to love
each other, regardless of colour, or status. Julian gloats over his mother‘s discomfiture. But
the mother soon assumes a comic attitude, and thinks ‗as if a monkey had stolen her hat‖
(CS 416). She sees the blacks as imitating the whites‘ way of life to establish their sense
of identity and so she finds the black mother‘s hat as false stand of power and authority.
Julian‘s mother‘s revelation forces her to accept the reality of the south. She showers
pity and sympathy for the black lady‘s child extending her smile, ―I think he likes me‖
(CS 417). Julian observes, ―It was the smile she used when she was being particularly
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
162
gracious to an inferior. Julian saw everything lost. The lesson had rolled off her like rain
on a roof‖ (CS 417). He is repulsed at his mother‘s attitude of having a bulk of compassion
and generosity for the lower class. But the black woman fiercely shuts herself to this
meaningless gesture, ―The woman stood up and yanked the little boy off his seat as if she
were snatching him from contagion. Julian could feel the rage in her at having no weapon
like his mother‘s smile‖ (CS 417). The lady could no longer be victim of such artificial
emotions and concern. Finally when they get off at the same stop, Julian's mother offers
Carver a penny though Julian had earlier warned her against it. The black woman is
infuriated by her condescension and hits her with her red pocket book and stuns her.
The huge woman turned and for a moment stood, her shoulders lifted and
her face frozen with frustrated rage, stared at Julian‘s mother. Then all at
once she seemed to explode like a piece of machinery that had been given
one ounce of pressure too much (CS 418).
Knocking down Julian's mother, the black woman shouts, ―He don‘t take nobody‘s pennies!‖
(CS 418). The hat lying down the ground can be seen as the humbling of Julian‘s mother‘s
pride and revelation that her racist view was wrong. The black lady‘s reaction reflects
how the African-Americans seem to assert their individuality and respectability as an
equal class of citizens in the changing social scenario. These characters refuse to accept
further subjugation and condescension.
Julian tries to explain his mother that the old ways to which she comfortably clings
are gone. Julian is pleased that his mother has been taught her lesson at last.
―Don‘t think that was just an uppity Negro woman,‖ … ―That was the
whole coloured race which will no longer take your condescending
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
163
pennies. That was your black double. She can wear the same hat as you…
the old world is gone. The old manners are obsolete and your graciousness
is not worth a damn... You aren‘t who you think you are (CS 419).
The black woman acts for all African-Americans when she strikes Julian‘s mother with
her purse at the end of the story. Her strike indicates her refusal to succumb to whites‘
supremacy. The black woman seems ready to lash out at any person who might treat her
with disrespect. Her concealed anger represents the anger suppressed by blacks through
years of slavery, mistreatment, and oppression under white patronage. Julian understands
this and tries to explain to his mother why the black woman had hit her, ―You needn‘t act
as if the world had come to an end...because it hasn‘t. From now on you‘ve got to live in
a new world and face a few realities for a change…it won‘t kill you‖ (CS 419). The fact
that she wears the same hat and rides the same bus as Julian‘s mother highlights that
integration has effectively equalized them.
The shock of the strike is too much for Julian‘s mother and she suffers a heart
attack. It is quite evident that Julian‘s mother is not able to place her son at the moment
of her death. She has almost forgotten him.
Her eyes shadowed and confused, finally settled on his face. He did not try
to conceal his irritation…She leaned forward and her eyes raked his face.
She seemed trying to determine his identity. Then, as if she found nothing
g familiar about him, she started off with a headlong movement in the
wrong direction (CS 419).
The pride filled mother does not recognize her son‘s harmless intention to turn from racism.
In her moment of suffering, she does not call for him but her childhood Negro maid, to
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
164
reclaim her high class position, ―Tell Caroline to come get me‖ (CS 420). Once again, she
becomes her grandfather‘s little granddaughter, ―Tell Grandpa to come get me‖ (CS 420).
Julian stands shallow and helpless, ―A tide of darkness seemed to be sweeping her from
him‖ (CS 420). Julian is proud of himself for having not been too influenced by her ignorance
and racism. However, he feels guilt for being harsh and spiting his mother. He immediately
changes his attitude toward her, cries, ―Mamma, Mamma!‖ and runs down the street to
get help. He realises his unsympathetic treatment to his mother. But it is too late, and his
―entry into the world of guilt and sorrow‖ is impending (CS 420). Racism is the main
point of the conflict between these two characters. Julian‘s mother‘s racism is not defined
by hatred or anger towards blacks; instead she continues to live in the prejudiced upbringing
and understanding of white supremacy that separate the whites from the blacks. Her
decision to give Carver a penny highlights her patronizing attitude toward blacks. Whereas,
Julian‘s longing for the material prosperity of his great-grandfather‘s plantation implies
that he has not fully accepted integration or racial equality.
Revelation deals with the overthrowing of pride of Mrs. Ruby Turpin. The story
begins in a doctor‘s waiting room where the room represents the universe and the patients
represent different types, race and class of humanity. Ruby Turpin, an obese middle aged
woman comes to visit the doctor with her husband Mr. Claud to get treatment for his injured
leg. Plagued with self-righteousness and moral smugness, she looks down on other fellow
patients as inferior and views herself high on the social and spiritual hierarchy. Her superior
and boastful nature is hinted in the opening line of the story: ―The doctor‘s waiting room,
which was very small, was almost full when the Turpins entered and Mrs. Turpin, who
was very large, made it look even smaller by her presence‖ (CS 488). Mrs. Turpin also is
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
165
prone to the habit of discriminating people on the basis of race and economic success.
For instance, Mrs. Turpin considers the higher class woman as ―well-dressed and pleasant‖
and the poor woman as ―white-trashy‖ (CS 490). Moreover O‘Connor narrates how
Mrs. Turpin habitually engaged at night naming her own social ladder of race and class:
On the bottom of the heap were most colored people, not the kind she
would have been if she had been one, but most of them; then next to
them—not above, just away from—were the white-trash; then above them
were the homeowners ,and above them the home-and-land-owners, to
which she and Claud belonged. Above she and Claud were people with a
lot of money and much bigger houses and much more land (CS 491)
This marginalization of mankind on the basis of material and physical status makes her a
thorough racist. It is this sin of pride that prevents her to see the goodness in others and
join hands in racial integration and communal harmony.
Mrs. Ruby Turpin lives in a distorted and false world of superiority. Placing herself
high in the social hierarchy, she confirms her dignified position and importance than the
rest of the human race. But in reality, she fears the crumbling of the South‘s racist policies
and the idea of equality to all. She herself knew how the trashy whites and the coloured
had gained importance and financial success when compared to her type of people. The
author shows how the warped protagonist could not stand to see their material progress:
But here the complexity of it would begin to bear in on her, for some of
the people with a lot of money were common and ought to be below she
and Claud and some of the people who had good blood had lost their
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
166
money and had to rent and then there were coloured people who owned
their homes and land as well (CS 491).
Mrs. Ruby cannot exist to see the lower class of people attaining identity and freedom of
their own: ―Usually by the time she had fallen asleep all the classes of people were
moiling and roiling around in her head, and she would dream they were all crammed
together in a box car, being ridden off to be put in a gas oven‖ (CS 492).
Ruby‘s grotesque dream indicates that she too supported the ideas of the Holocaust,
where thousands of life were crushed and ruined. People who were looked down as
inferiors due to their race or ethnicity, religious or political beliefs, and physical or mental
capabilities were cruelly killed. She considers the black community and the trashy whites
as unfit to live in her society of well-mannered and dignified people. Hence she unconsciously
desires their destruction and death in order to reinforce the southern supremacy.
Though Mrs. Ruby Turpin appears to be a good religious woman she lacks compassion
and sympathy for the less privileged people. This is clearly brought out when she makes
fun of the civil rights movement with the pleasant lady in the waiting room. She holds
that ―It‘s too late for me to be a nigger, but I could act like one. Lay down in the middle
of the road and stop traffic. Roll on the ground‖ (CS 507). Ruby makes fun of non-violence
and considers it uncivilized and barbarous. She is also against the idea of equal rights as
she says to the pleasant lady in the waiting room: ―but niggers don‘t want to pick cotton
any more. You can‘t get the white folks to pick it and now you can‘t get the niggers—
because they got to be right up there with the white folks‖ (CS 493). Ruby‘s dislike for
niggers and their fight for equality can be related to the result of the civil war. After the
civil war, slavery was almost abolished and African-Americans were not treated as slaves
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
167
anymore. Yet the white community and the colored sect held that ‗niggers‘ were under
white people. The conversation between pleasant lady and Mrs. Turpin shows how they
are proud of being kind to even niggers. Even the white trash woman directly says, ―They
ought to send all them niggers back to Africa, that's where they come from in the first
place‖ (CS 495). Here from O‘Connor religious point of view she considers ―the first
place‖ as God‘s dwelling where all man is equal regardless of their color or race. Man‘s
life begins from this Supreme power and will return in the same way. The song heard in
the doctor‘s waiting room also acknowledges this sameness and union of man and God:
You go to blank blank
And I'll go to mine
But we'll all blank along
To-geth-ther,
And all along the blank
We'll hep each other out
Smile-ling in any kind of
Weath-ther! (CS 496)
But unfortunately, people like Mrs. Ruby Turpin fail to see the image of God in other
human beings. They cannot establish positive relationship with other community and race
and hence the world stands disintegrated and disillusioned.
Pregnant with self-righteousness and self-worth, she seems jubilant and grateful
to God for his blessings on her. She thanks God for blessing her with good looks and
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
168
good disposition. This reveals how hollow she is within herself depending only on the
outward appearance of things. She boastfully proclaims in the waiting room:
If it‘s one thing I am . . . it‘s grateful. When I think who all I could have
been besides myself and what all I got, a little of everything, and a good
disposition besides, I just feel like shouting, ‗Thank you, Jesus, for making
everything the way it is!‘ It could have been different. . . . Oh thank you,
Jesus, Jesus, thank you! (CS 499).
She continually reassures herself that she is a good religious woman with a good disposition
and outward appearance, which will earn her place in society as well as in heaven.
Mrs. Turpin‘s self-appraisal hints at her nearing downfall and revelation.
Mrs. Turpin spends her entire time in the waiting room analysing and judging
everyone around her based solely on their outward appearance. She imagines that if God
had given her a choice between being a nigger or a white trash, she would have opted for
being a ―clean respectable‖ black woman than a trashy one. Based on these baseless
comparisons and biased judgments, she convinces herself that she is better than them all.
There‘s only two places available for you. You can either be a nigger or
white-trash,‖ … she would have said, ―just let me wait until there‘s another
place available,‖ and he would have said, ―No, you have to go right now
and I have only those two places so make up your mind.‖ … ―All right,
make me a nigger then—but that don‘t mean a trashy one.‖ And he would
have made her a neat clean respectable Negro woman, herself but black
(CS 491).
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
169
Mrs. Turpin is whole heartedly thankful to God that He did not make her black, ―white
trash‖, poor or ugly. She considers herself to be blessed with dignity and charm:
Her heart rose. He had not made her a nigger or white-trash or ugly!
He had made her herself and given her a little of everything. Jesus, thank you!
she said. Thank you, thank you, thank you! Whenever she counted her
blessings she felt as buoyant as if she weighed one hundred and twentyfive pounds instead of one hundred and eighty. (CS 497)
The boastful Mrs. Ruby Turpin constantly counts her blessings by comparing herself with
the unprivileged people in the doctor‘s office. Instead of being humble before God‘s
blessings, she is filled with arrogance and pride.
Mrs. Turpin‘s encounter with Mary Grace, the daughter of the well-dressed lady
becomes her agent of revelation. Mrs. Turpin notes how the girl‘s terrible skin was ―blue
with acne,‖ and thinks that she herself ―was fat but she always had good skin‖ (CS 490).
Ruby says that she feels pity for the girl. She ―thought how pitiful it was to have a face
like that at that age. She gave the girl a friendly smile but the girl only scowled the harder‖
(CS 490). Mrs. Turpin considers herself blessed with a good skin and appearance. After
each racist remark about the niggers she makes, the ugly girl seems to get angrier at
Mrs. Turpin. Mary Grace‘s piercing glares always seem to follow Mrs. Turpin‘s thoughts
and it is as if the girl can hear them as well: ―There was no doubt in [Mrs. Turpin‘s] mind
that this girl did know her, knew her in some intense and personal way, beyond time and
place and condition‖ (CS 500). She holds the niggers in contempt and says to the pleasant
lady how they ought to have the knack to manage the blacks to their advantage.
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
170
I sure am tired of buttering up niggers, but you got to love em if you want
em to work for you. When they come in the morning, I run out and I say,
Hi Yawl this morning? And when Claud drives them off to the field I just
wave to beat the band and they just wave back…. And when they come in
from the field, I run out with a bucket of ice water. That‘s the way t‘s
going to be from now on…. One thang I know, the white-trash woman
said. ―Two thangs I ain‘t going to do: love no niggers or scoot down no
hog with no hose. And she let out a bark of contempt (CS 494).
The exchange of their conversation reveals how they use the niggers for their own
benefit. Their contempt and arrogance anger Mary Grace and Mrs. Turpin knew ―every
time [she] exchanged a look with the lady, she was aware that the ugly girl‘s peculiar
eyes were still on her, and she had trouble bringing her attention back to the conversation‖
(CS 494). O‘Connor compares the girl‘s eyes to road signs, saying that Mary Grace‘s
eyes ―seemed lit all of a sudden with a peculiar light, an unnatural light like night road
signs give‖ (CS 492). This comparison symbolizes that Mrs. Turpin is guided to see for
herself the true state of her soul. Though Mrs. Turpin considers herself a good churchgoing
Christian who gives to every piece of trash, ―black or white,‖ and ―break[s] [her] back to
the bone everyday working‖ for herself and the church, in reality she lacks the Christian
mission of brotherhood and love for one‘s fellow being (CS 507).
Mary Grace‘s mother reveals that the girl attends Wellesley College in Massachusetts
where the girl could have accepted the northern culture of equality. Mrs. Turpin‘s racism
provokes the ―lunatic‖ girl to throw the book at her striking her ―directly over the left eye‖
(CS 499). The book is titled Human Development which ironically hints at the conversion
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
171
and development of Mrs. Turpin understanding of man and his creator. The blasts of
Mary Grace make her ―entirely hollow except her heart which swung from side to side as
if it were agitated in a great drum of flesh‖ (CS 500). The girl shouts, ―Go back to hell
where you came from, you old wart hog‖ (CS 500). This verbal insult and her physical
attack acts as the catalyst to Mrs. Turpin's self-discovery. She is infuriated as she the
superior and respectable lady in the room is put to shame and insult by a girl. Her prejudiced
attitudes and contempt for the blacks and the trashy people provokes Mary Grace, who
finally throws the book she has been reading. As Mrs. Turpin remarks ill of the trashy
people she gets the feeling that Mary Grace has, ―known her and disliked her all of her
life‖ and that, ―the girl did know her, knew her in some intense and personal way, beyond
time and place and condition‖ (CS 495). As the girl's fingers clamped into the soft flesh
of Mrs. Turpin‘s neck ―all at once her vision narrowed and she saw everything as if it
were happening in a small room far away, or as if she were looking at it through the
wrong end of a telescope‖ (CS 499). The strike on her face enables her to see without
distortions, the reality of life. Earlier in the story the radio song sang, ―When I looked up
and He looked down‖ for which Mrs. Turpin completes singing, ―And wona these days
I know I‘ll we-eara crown‖ (CS 490). Here she wears the crown of personal suffering and
the assault forces her to examine her inner self. The crown symbolic of superiority has
been replaced by the thorny crown of Jesus Christ, instilling in her the seed of spiritual
awareness.
Mary Grace‘s act of violence is considered as a crazy action by the other occupants in
the waiting room who called her lunatic. She is labeled as sick and deviant from the rest
of the people in the waiting room. However, before the violent incident took place,
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
172
Mrs. Ruby Turpin thinks of her as an ugly freak. ―The dark protuberance over her eye
looked like a miniature tornado cloud which might any moment sweep across the horizon
of her brow…She had the look of a woman going single-handed, weaponless, into battle…
she braced herself for a final assault‖ (CS 505). Mrs. Turpin on the way back from the
doctor‘s office, has strong feelings of being an innocent victim. She affirms herself:
I am not a wart hog. From hell. But the denial had no force. The girl‘s
eyes and her words, even the tone of her voice, 1ow but c1ear, directed
only to her, brooked no repudiation. She had been singled out for the
message, though there was trash in the room to whom it might justly have
been applied. The full force of this fact struck her only now. There was a
woman there who was neglecting her own child but she had been overlooked.
The message had been given to Ruby Turpin, a respectable, hard-working,
church-going woman. The tears dried. Her eyes began to burn instead with
wrath (CS 502).
Her black field hands, consoles her telling, ―You just had you a little fall.‖ […] Mrs. Turpin
knew exactly how much Negro flattery was worth and it added to her rage‖ (CS 505).
Ruby is therefore abruptly severed from her fantasy world and returned to reality. The
book thrown at her ironically becomes the Book of Revelation.
Ruby‘s anger and rage becomes uncontrollable like the dazzling orange of the
sunset. She understands that God has tried to send her a message, but does not understand
why. She mentally shakes her fist at God and roars: ―Who do you think you are?‖ (CS 507).
In a final surge of fury she roared, ―Who do you think you are?‖ The question echoed
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
173
across the pasture ―and returned to her clearly like an answer from beyond the sound‖
(CS 508). After her angry outburst at God, she has a vision:
She saw the streak as a vast swinging bridge extending upward from the
earth through a field of living fire. Upon it a vast horde of souls were
rumbling toward heaven. There were whole companies of white-trash,
clean for the first time in their lives, and bands of black niggers in white
robes, and battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and
leaping like frogs. And bringing up the procession was a tribe of people
whom she recognized at once as those who, like herself and Claud, had
always had a little of everything and the God-given wit to use it right.
She leaned forward to observe them closer. They were marching behind
the other with great dignity, accountable as they had always been for good
order and common sense and respectable behaviour. They alone were on
key. Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their
virtues were being burned away. (CS 508).
The people in the procession are still labeled as ―lunatics‖ ―freaks,‖ and ―white-trash.‖
Ruby, however, observes that the virtues of people from her class are being burned away.
Seemingly, both the virtues of people she perceives as superior and the vices of those she
perceives as inferior lose their significance. This last part of Ruby‘s vision is the revelation.
God reveals to her that the hierarchy she has used to classify people is not valid when
people go to Heaven and condemns her snobbery. Through her experience, Mrs. Turpin
gains insight and is humbled before God. In her final vision over the pig pen Mrs. Turpin
sees her false view of reality has been radically altered, Ruby‘s perception of herself and
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
174
the hierarchy of people begin to fall apart. As she walks back to the house, she hears
―the voices of the souls climbing upward into the starry field and shouting hallelujah‖
(CS 509). Mrs. Turpin sees her true self and her place in God‘s plan. She has learned to
see the beauty in life and graciously accepts it.
Judgement Day traces the changing racial relationships of an elderly Southerner
named Tanner with a black man, Coleman that highlights the possibility of racial interaction
and harmony. The story begins with Tanner's thoughts of his own death. Being a stroke
victim, Tanner is forced to leave his Georgian home and live in his daughter‘s New York
City apartment. In the North, Tanner dwells in his nostalgic south memories and considers
―New York air, [as] the kind fit for cats and garbage‖ (CS 531). Tanner rues the day he
left his South which he regards as his ―eternal home.‖ The South to which Tanner hopes
to retreat no longer follows the southern hierarchical code of White Supremacy. However
when he was young, Tanner utilizes southern code of superiority to define race and class.
His relationship with blacks is governed by his own philosophy:
He had always handled them with his wits and with luck. He was known
to have a way with niggers. There was an art to handling them. The secret
of handling a nigger was to show him his brains didn‘t have a chance against
yours; then he would jump on your back and know he had a good thing
there for life (CS 536).
His domination of Coleman Parrum for thirty years was based on that. By virtue of being
black Coleman must endure the injustices and discrimination of the community.
O‘Connor then depicts the transformation of Tanner who was a clear racist. About
thirty years before Tanner owned sawmill, where he had to manage Negro labourers. He
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
175
always ―managed them with a very sharp penknife‖ only to conceal his shaking hands,
which were a repercussion of a kidney disorder (CS 537). He would use his penknife to
whittle as well as threaten the workers, saying, ―Nigger, this knife is in my hand now but
if you don‘t quit wasting my time and money, it‘ll be in your gut shortly‖ (CS 537).
One day, a ―large black loose-jointed negro,‖ starts hanging around the saw mill. Tanner
fears that his workers too will turn lethargic and so decides to confront the man. Initially,
Tanner considers calling the man ―nigger,‖ that places him at the bottom of the southern
hierarchy. As he approaches, Tanner feels ―some intruding intelligence that worked in his
hands‖ as ―an invisible power‖ surges through him while carving. Tanner, unaware of
what his hands are carving, approaches the man (CS 538). However, instead of feeling
threatened, Tanner pities the man and asks, ―you can‘t see so good, can you boy?‖ (CS 538).
Tanner, then, hands him the pair of spectacles he had been carving and says ―put these on
… I hate to see anybody can‘t see good‖ (CS 538). The man, appreciating Tanner‘s
gesture, accepts the glasses. Immediately, Tanner asks Coleman what he sees:
―See a man.‖
―What kind of a man?‖
―See the man make theseyer glasses.‖
―Is he white or black?‖
―He white!‖ the Negro said as if only at that moment was his vision
sufficiently improved to detect it. ―Yessuh, he white!‖ he said.
―Well, you treat him like he was white,‖ Tanner said. (CS 539)
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
176
The implication is clear as Tanner, who is of the ruling white class, helps Coleman ―see‖
his place in the social order. He forces Coleman to define him in racial terms. In doing so,
Coleman must also define himself racially and be an inferior to the white Tanner. Based
on these racial constructs, Coleman submits control to Tanner. Initially, Coleman does
not ―see‖ race either in himself or Tanner nor does he see his place in the social order.
Coleman could have ―taken the glasses and crushed them in his hand or grabbed the knife
and turned it on [Tanner]‖ (CS 538). But once he wears the glasses and sees through the
lenses of the white dominance, Coleman is reminded of his place in the southern
hierarchy.
The relationship between Tanner and Coleman transforms into a friendship and
dependency over years of togetherness. Tanner squats on land with Coleman, an act that
runs counter to both southern laws and manners regarding integration. Tanner initially gets
Coleman but when they live together, they are equals, and Tanner recognizes this. The pair
exchanges postcards as soon as Tanner arrives in New York City. Also, Coleman is a man
who deserves the truth. Tanner wants to warn Coleman about the horrors of urban life.
Tanner envisions bringing his friend north as a form of warning: ―I come to show you it
was no kind of place. Now you know you were well off where you were‖ (CS 541). Finally,
Tanner ultimately decides that Coleman and not his daughter is the best person to care for
him after his death. In the event of his death, Tanner wants Coleman to take charge:
He had written a note and pinned it in his pocket. IF FOUND DEAD SHIP
EXPRESS COLLECT TO PARRUM, CORINTH, GEORGIA. Under this
he had continued, COLEMAN SELL MY BELONGINGS AND PAY
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
177
THE FREIGHT ON ME & THE UNDERTAKER. ANYTHING LEFT
OVER YOU CAN KEEP (CS 531).
Tanner‘s trust of Coleman is significant. It shows how Tanner and Coleman‘s relationship
transcends the southern hierarchy. Also, it offers insights into Tanner‘s mistrust of his
daughter. Tanner‘s alienation toward his daughter offers yet another crack in the southern
code, a code built on the foundation of family ties.
Tanner fears that his soul would not rest if he is buried in New York. As his daughter
is indifferent to his burial instructions, he cries out painfully, ―Bury me here and burn in
hell!‖ (CS 533). After he hears his daughter‘s plan to bury him in New York, Tanner
begins to plan his escape to South: ―Tanner was conserving all his strength for the trip
home. He meant to walk as far as he could get and trust to the Almighty to get him the
rest of the way. That morning and the morning before, he had allowed his daughter to
dress him and had conserved that much more energy‖ (CS 531). He wants to return to his
South, ―Dead or alive. It was being there that mattered; the dead or alive did not‖ (CS 532).
To get back home at any cost even in a coffin was his main aim in life.
In Judgment Day, it is the daughter who admonishes her father for living with a
black man. The codes and conduct of the old southern hierarchy are disintegrating. Tanner‘s
daughter find him living in a shack, on land he did not own, with Coleman Parrum, a
black companion of thirty years. When his daughter goes down south to view her father‘s
situation, she is appalled, not by the dingy shack in which he lives, but because of whom
he lives with a black man ―curled up on a pallet asleep at the foot of Tanner‘s bed, a stinking
skin full of bones, arranged in what seemed vaguely human form‖ (CS 534). He tells his
daughter that the shack they live in was built by ‗him and me‖ (CS 535). The daughter
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
178
chastises Tanner for choosing such an ignominious living arrangement: ―if you don‘t
have any pride I have and I know my duty and I was raised to do it. My mother raised me
to do it if you didn‘t. She was from plain people but not the kind that likes to settle in
with niggers‖ (CS 534). This moment in the story is telling on many levels. First, it
shows the daughter‘s awareness of the old southern code. In essence, she knows that
living with a black person is unacceptable in the south. The daughter‘s words are
hypocritical, though, since in the north, she herself lives in integrated housing.
However, Tanner‘s plan to stay in Georgia shatters when a half-breed entrepreneur,
Dr. Foley, purchases the land upon which Tanner and Coleman are squatting, and he informs
Tanner that he can stay on the land only if he will operate a still for him. But Tanner will
not stand for the insult: ―The government ain‘t got around yet to forcing the white folks
to work for the colored‖ (CS 540). Doctor Foley holds that ―The day coming . . . when
the white folks is going to be working for the colored and you might's well to git ahead of
the crowd‖ (CS 540). Tanner‘s pride forces him to assure him, ―That day ain‘t coming
for me‖ (CS 540). Indignant, Tanner refuses to accept those conditions, and he goes to
live in New York with his daughter. Once in the North, Tanner regrets his life in the
mixed community. The thought of living in the integrated city destroys Tanner‘s pride
and he decides to return ―to squat on the doctor‘s land and to take orders from a nigger
who chewed ten-cent cigars. And to think less about it than formerly‖ (CS 542). In the
city he seems displaced and isolated. He cannot enter into relationships with other people
due to his southern racial principles.
Tanner had continued to look across the field as if his spirit had been
sucked out of him into the woods and nothing was left on the chair but a
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
179
shell. For he had known it was a question of this- sitting here looking out
of this window all day in this no-place, or just running a still for a nigger,
he would have run the still for the nigger. He would have been a nigger‘s
white nigger any day (CS 540).
Tanner realizes that racial constructs that southern society embraced just a generation ago
are crumbling. Unlike the time when he served as foreman of a lumberyard, Tanner now
has nothing to lord over Dr. Foley. Dr. Foley accurately warns Tanner that soon ―a white
folk IS going to be working for the colored‖ (CS 540). Suddenly, Tanner is placed in the
lower section of the southern hierarchy, a place usually reserved for blacks. Foley stands
high and exerts his power over them: ―He was everything to the niggers—druggist and
undertaker and general counsel and real estate man and sometimes he got the evil eye off
them and sometimes he put it on‖ (CS 535). But Foley, part black and the rest Indian and
white becomes for Tanner an intermediate position.
Through the years of his friendship with Coleman, Tanner believes he can extrapolate
from that relationship an understanding of all black people. When the new tenants occupy
the next door, Tanner imagines himself manipulating and lording over his neighbour.
But his efforts to engage the black man are futile. He imagines that the man must be a
―South Alabama nigger‖ (CS 543). After an initial failed attempt, when the black man
ignores Tanner‘s greetings completely, Tanner wonders whether the man is ―deaf and
dumb‖ (CS 544). After another failed attempt to engage the man and ―show him his
brains didn‘t have a chance‖ (CS 536), against Tanner‘s mind, the old southern man
suffers a near-death experience. He addresses the man as ―Preacher‖ because ―it had been
his experience that if a Negro tended to be sullen, this title usually cleared up his
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
180
expression‖ (CS 544). Tanner is not open to reason even when he hears the new neighbour is
not from South Alabama but from New York City and is not a preacher but an actor. He
addresses him, ―Good Morning, Preacher.‖ The actor misconstrues ―Preacher‖ to be a racist
slur and he reacts by slamming the ―woo-peckerwood old bastard‖ through the apartment door
(CS 545). The actor blasphemes God before he assaults the old man: I‘m not even no
Christian. I don‘t believe that crap. There ain‘t no Jesus and there ain‘t no God‖ (CS 545).
His tantrum swells from some ―unfathomable dead-cold rage‖ (CS 544). He vents out his
anger for being the object of oppression. He displaces the wrath onto Tanner. To understand,
Tanner needs harsher treatment from the actor. Crippled by the stroke, Tanner decides he
will return to the south, but;
…his body felt like a great heavy bell whose clapper swung from side to
side but made no noise. A sensation of terror and defeat swept over him.
He would never make it. He would never get there dead or alive He pushed
one foot forward and did not fall and his confidence returned. The Lord is
my shepherd… I shall not want (CS 548).
Laboriously, Tanner makes his way into the hall and starts for the stairs only to be struck
down by another stroke, which causes him to fall down the steps to the first landing.
As he lies on the landing, the vision which came to him in his dream appears to him
again, and as he regains consciousness, he cries out to the black form leaning over him,
―Judgment Day! Judgment Day! You idiots didn't know it was Judgment Day, did you?‖
(CS 549). For a moment, he becomes rational enough to recognize that the black man
bending over him is not Coleman that it is the black actor whom Tanner tried earlier to
befriend. His final words, ―Hep me up, Preacher. I‘m on my way home,‖ angers the black
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
181
man, and he leaves Tanner stuffed through the spokes of the stair banister to be found by
Tanner‘s daughter (CS 549). His last words reveal that he is still caught in his old belief.
Tanner‘s daughter first buries him in New York, but, because she is troubled by
guilt, she finally has his remains sent home to Georgia. Returning to the South, dead or
alive, becomes his sole obsession. Though the daughter decides to dispose of his body to
suit her convenience, but conscience makes her worry about her betrayal. When she
disinters the body for reburial at home transforms. The last sentence of the story reads:
―Now she rests well at night and her good looks have mostly returned‖ (CS 550).
Mrs. May in Greenleaf is self-righteous and conceited like Mrs. Ruby Turpin.
Her pride and moral smugness is attacked by a bull, which becomes her agent of grace.
Flannery O‘Connor uses the bull as a symbol of Christ. The bull brings chaos to Mrs. May‘s
life, violates her worldly code of conduct and finally forces her to realize her need for
grace as he gores her to death. Mrs. May thinks of herself ―as a good Christian woman
with a large respect for religion, though she did not of course, believe any of it was true‖
(CS 316). She seems to be virtuous and good, but in reality, she is arrogant and evil.
Widowed Mrs. May rules her farm with an ―iron hand,‖ and is obsessed with her farm
and its harvest: ―The pastures were enough to calm her. When she looked out any window in
her house she saw the reflection of her own character‖ (CS 321). She is proud of her
managerial skills and is confident to prove herself on the Judgment Day that, ―I‘ve worked,
I have not wallowed‖ (CS 332). However in the end, this pride and self-worth crumbles
as she is shattered by the power of the bull and realizes her powerlessness before the
mystery of God.
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
182
Mrs. May‘s crisis begins with the arrival of a stray bull in her prospering farm.
Mrs. May first becomes aware of the animal‘s presence when it wakes her one night
while noisily browsing on the hedge surrounding her garden. She compares the scrub bull
to her farm helps, the Greenleafs, whom she classifies as lower-class people. She fears
that the bull might ―ruin the breeding schedule‖ and contaminate her cows (CS 314). This
will bring out poor quality of milk production and also produce only scrub cows, like the
Greenleafs‘. She cannot tolerate the mating of her mighty bull with the trashy bull. The
bull threatens Mrs. May‘s ability to feel in control of her life and farm.
She had been conscious in her sleep of a steady rhythmic chewing as if
something were eating one wall of the house. She had been aware that
whatever it was had been eating as long as she had had the place and had
eaten everything from the beginning of her fence line up to the house and
now was eating the house and calmly with the same steady rhythm would
continue through the house, eating her and the boys, and then on, eating
everything but the Greenleafs, and on and on, eating everything until
nothing was left but the Greenleafs on a little island all their own in the
middle of what had been her place (CS 311-312).
Symbolically, the bull represents everything that has been eating away for the last fifteen
years. She constantly fears that the Greenleafs, whom she regards as ―scrub-human‖ on
the social ladder might displace her and her family (CS 317). This thought frightens her
which triggers a dream of a bullet that ―suddenly . . . burst[s] through the tree line and
race[s] down the hill towards her‖ (CS 329). This clearly foreshadows Mrs. May‘s death
at the end of the story.
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
183
The bull is the catalyst that forces Mrs. May to realize her need for grace. The bull
is a Christ-like figure, donning a ―prickly crown‖ and is on her property for three days.
It is ―a patient god come down to woo her‖ and ―an uncouth country suitor‖ (CS 312).
The bull brings Mrs. May to the full realization of her helplessness and powerless state
before the power of nature. There is symbolic meaning in Greenleafs and Mrs. May‘s
reactions to the stray bull. The Greenleafs see the bull as a force of nature that cannot be
controlled, Mrs. May, on the other hand, is obsessed with controlling it because she is
obsessed with the idea of imposing her own order of form onto every aspect of her life.
The religious beliefs of Mrs. May and Mrs. Greenleaf reveals their attitude toward life
and God. Mrs. May uses religion as a social tool, only for appearances and respectability.
Mrs. May is self-satisfied and superficial, and thinks that she is a good person who ―thought
the word, Jesus, should be kept inside the church building like other words inside the
bedroom. She was a good Christian woman with a large respect for religion, though she
did not, of course, believe any of it was true‖ (CS 316). The sterile piety of Mrs. May reflects
that for her the word ―Jesus‖ had no place in her house and farm except in the church.
But Mrs. Greenleaf believes deeply in the powers of Jesus and applies her faith to her life
seriously.
Every day she cut all the morbid stores out of the newspaper--the accounts of
women who had been raped and criminals who had escaped and children
who had been burned and of train wrecks and plane crashes and the
divorces of movie stars. She took these to the woods and dug a hole and
buried them and then she fell on the ground over them and mumbled and
groaned for an hour or so moving her huge arms back and forth under her
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
184
and out again and finally just lying down flat and Mrs. May suspected
going to sleep in the dirt (CS 315-16).
She sincerely prays for various offenses against humanity. Flannery O‘Connor admits
that the devout Mrs. Greenleaf, ―was virtuous, you‘ll have to admit. She prayed for the
whole world‖ (HB 150). But Mrs. May looked down on Mrs. Greenleaf‘s way of praying as
uncivilized and meaningless. She is disgusted to see her flat on the dirt while doing these
spiritual healings, and is repulsed as she did not do motherly things that were considered the
normal housewife obligations to the family, such as washing her children‘s clothes. She is
unable to appreciate Mrs. Greenleaf‘s action and she chastises her telling that Jesus
would tell her ―to get up from there this instant and go wash your children‘s clothes‖
(CS 317). Mrs. Greenleaf‘s ―yard around her house looked like a dump and her five girls
were always filthy; even the youngest one dipped snuff‖ (CS 315). Mrs. May looked on
the racial hierarchy and order to save herself but Mrs. Greenleaf rolls on the ground and
cries ―Jesus, stab me in the heart‖ (CS 317) to save her from sin. Ironically it is the bull
that gores into Mrs. May‘s heart to humble her pride filled soul and her racial
classifications.
Mrs. May sees herself as superior to the Greenleaf family through means of education
and social status. She holds a condescending view of the Greenleafs, and regards her
charity and offer of job in the farm for fifteen years as their reason for the Greenleafs
success. Yet Mrs. May is puzzled by the prosperity of the Greenleaf sons.
She returned to bed thinking that if the Greenleaf boys had risen in the
world it was because she had given their father employment when no one
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
185
else would have him. She had had Mr. Greenleaf fifteen years but no one
else would have had him fifteen minutes (CS 313).
Mrs. May cannot digest how people of low race can breed success and peace in their life.
She wonders:
Mr. and Mrs. Greenleaf had aged hardly at all. They had no worries, no
responsibilities. They lived like the lilies of the field, off the fat that she
struggled to put into the land. When she was dead and gone form overwork
and worry, the Greenleafs, healthy and thriving, would be just ready to
begin draining Scofield and Wesley. (CS 319)
On the contrary, though she regards herself superior she has been toiling and toiling to
the point of frustration and disintegration. She is depressed over her two sons, Scofield
and Wesley, as both are unproductive and unmarried. She can never rest in peace or
enjoy her life.
Mrs. May‘s fear of losing her farm and life often haunts her and places her in
threat and insecurity. Though Scofield was ―the best nigger-insurance salesman in the
country‖ his mother was not pleased with his job (CS 315). She disliked him selling
insurance to niggers and would say to him, ―if you sold decent insurance, some nice girl
would be willing to marry you. What nice girl wants to marry nigger-insurance man?
You‘ll wake up some day and it‘ll be too late‖ (CS 315). But Scofield is deaf to his
mother‘s racist views and provokes her by saying that he will marry some ―nice fat farm
girl‖ only after her death, so that she will be the owner of the farm (CS 315). Mrs. May
worries that her farm will be reduced to trash and dirt after her death. She holds:
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
186
I‘ work and slave, I struggle and sweat to keep this place for them and soon
as I‘m dead, they‘ll marry trash and bring it in here and ruin everything.
They‘ll marry trash and ruin everything I‘ve done,‖ and she made up her
mind at that moment to change her will. The next day she had gone to her
lawyer and had had the property entailed so that if they married, they could
not leave it to their wives (CS 315).
Mrs. May is only obsessed with her property instead of being content with what she had.
Her discontent and worry take her age and beauty.
Mrs. May remains alone and without support. She is always unsatisfied and confused
like her second son Wesley, who is a professor. Like Mrs. May‘s hatred for the Greenleafs,
her son is filled with hate for all his life.
He didn‘t like anything…he hated the twenty-mile drive and he hated the
second-rate university and he hated the morons who attended it. He hated
the country and he hated the life he lived; he hated living with his mother
and his idiot brother and he hated hearing about the damn dairy and the
damn help and the damn broken machinery. But in spite of all he said, he
never made any move to leave (CS 319).
Wesley even goes so far as to tell her that he ―wouldn‘t milk a cow to save [her] soul
from hell‖ (CS 321). There is no unity between the brothers as they quarrel often. Mrs. May
spitefully holds to her sons‘, ―you two should have belonged to that woman‖ (CS 321).
Being a complete racist she can imagine the source of evil only from the colored and
trashy body, rather than a sinful heart like hers. Mrs. May internally wishes to see the
destruction of the Greenleaf boys, ―She had always suspected that they fought between
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
187
themselves secretly‖ (CS 326). But the truth is that, ―They never quarls… They like one
man in two skins‖ (CS 326). Mrs. May‘s family seems to stand for disorder and hate,
whereas the Greenleaf seems to be symbolic of unity and love.
Mrs. May‘s sense of security is shaken when she then finds out that the bull belongs
to the Greenleaf twins O.T and E.T. Mr. Greenleaf boys made their mark in the Army,
married French wives, and now live in an attractive brick duplex, working their joint farm
in harmony. Their unity and success fills Mrs. May with jealousy. She constantly reassures
herself that ―no matter where they [the Greenleaf boys] go, they came from that‖ (CS 317).
She falsely thinks that the Greenleaf sons‘ will prove to be a failure in the future, as they
belong to the trashy class of people than an elite class like hers. Furious, Mrs. May drives
to their place to tell them to come and collect it. There she is astonished at the prosperity
and cleanliness of their homestead. She is also dismayed as she considers the boys‘
offspring who will be in the future well-mannered, refined individuals of society. Their
six children troop out of the house leaving her with the distinct impression that ―she was
on trial by a jury of Greenleafs‖ (CS 324). She wonders, ―And in twenty years, do you
know what those people will be? …―Society‖ (CS 318). She assumes that twenty years
from now the Greenleaf boys, who have learned the ultimate skill of cooperation will also
be cooperating with the rest of society. They will have worked their way up from a lower
class life to the middle class through their cooperative success. The May boys on the
other hand remain lazy and are in cooperative. She thinks how ―O.T. and E.T. are fine
boys‖ and wishes, ―They ought to have been my sons‖ (CS 321).
Mrs. May makes several attempts to have the bull removed but never succeeds.
It continues to use her property as it pleases. Mrs. May‘s biggest fear is that her farm will
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
188
be taken over by the bull and the Greenleafs, bringing her farm and cows to a degenerative
level. She is infuriated at the ingratitude of Mr. Greenleaf who has been hiding the truth that
the bull belonged to his sons‘. His sons‘ indifference and disobedience to come and get the
bull away from her farm causes great rage in her mind. She concludes, ―Everything is
against you… the weather is against you and the dirt is against you and the help is against
you. They‘re all in league against you. There‘s nothing for it but an iron hand‖ (CS 321).
The more Mrs. May tries to control the bull‘s reign over her farm, the more the bull
proves Mrs. May is powerless over her life.
Mrs. May finally orders Mr. Greenleaf to shoot the bull and restore the security
and wellness of her farm. She sits on the car‘s bumper waiting for Mr. Greenleaf‘s return
from the woods. Her car is in the center of a ―green arena‖ encircled with trees (CS 331).
This ―arena‖ becomes the death point of Mrs. May. She honks the horn of the car when
Mr. Greenleaf does not appear from the woods. This sound invites the bull into the farm
and ―like a wild tormented lover,‖ its horns penetrate Mrs. May (CS 333).
She continued to stare straight ahead but the entire scene in front of her had
changed—the tree line was a dark wound in a world that was nothing but
sky—and she had the look of a person whose sight has been suddenly
restored but who finds the light unbearable (CS 333).
Mrs. May had held that she will only die when she is good and ready. However, her death
is violent and swift: ―One of his horns sank until it pierced her heart and the other curved
around her side and held her in an unbreakable grip‖ (CS 333).
The Christ figure pierces Mrs. May‘s heart forcefully and violently. ―She remained
perfectly still, not in fright, but in a freezing disbelief...One of his horns sank until it
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
189
pierced her heart and the other curved around her side and held her in an unbreakable
grip‖ (CS 333). In the end, Mrs. May is confronted with the truth about life and nature.
―Through her closed eyes, she could feel the sun, red-hot overhead. She opened her eyes
slightly but the white light forced her to close them again‖ (CS 332). The bull becomes a
messenger from God to humble her proud self and to acknowledge the power of God
over nature and mankind. Though she is powerful and commanding to her black farm
hands, she is unable to control the bull. In the end she ―seemed… to be bent over
whispering some last discovery into the animal‘s ear‖ (CS 334). She is forced to submit
to its supernatural power and to break her notions of prejudice and superiority and
transform her sinful self. Through the bull, she finds that God may resort to violent
measures to awaken people to the reality of their own unjustified pride.
The Displaced Person traces the racial conflicts between Mrs. McIntyre, the white
landowner, her hired workers, Mr. and Mrs. Shortley and the black workers, Astor and
Sulk. The first part of the story explores Mrs. Shortley‘s biased views and her discriminatory
stance toward the black workers and the Polish Refugees, whose arrival threatens her
husband‘s employment and her family‘s survival. Her power of authority and superiority
in Mrs. McIntyre‘s farm is ruined with the intrusion of the Guizacs‘. Mrs. Shortley is ―the
giant wife of the countryside … [who] stood on two tremendous legs, with the grand selfconfidence of a mountain‖ (CS 195) to see the Guizacs‘ entry into the farm as ―a sign of
danger‖ (CS 194). Escaping from the Nazi occupation of Poland, Mr. Guizac and his
family arrives in America to work in Mrs. McIntyre‘s Georgia farm. Being an irreligious
woman, she can consider the priest escorting the immigrant family, as an insect, ―blacksuited‖ and ―long-legged‖ (CS 195). Her distorted social perceptions and unbelief
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
190
obstruct her to extend compassion and sympathy to the Guizacs‘. The heartless Mrs. Shortley
burns with hatred for those victims of persecution. When Mr. Guizac bows with European
formality and greets Mrs. McIntyre by kissing her hand, Mrs. Shortley jerks back her
hand as though stung by venom. She holds that if her husband, ―Mr Shortley had tried to
kiss her hand, and Mrs. McIntyre would have knocked him into the middle of next week‖
(CS 195). She condemns Mr. Guizac for his arrogance and courage to kiss a white lady
that breaks the racially constructed principles of the southern supremacy. Mrs. Shortley
informs to Mr Shortley: ―When Gobble hook first come here, you recollect how he shook
their hands, like he didn't know the difference‖ (CS 207). This friendly gesture unfortunately
triggers the conflicts between the farm workers, resulting in the death of Mr. Guizac.
To Mrs. Shortley, the Guizacs‘ becomes the carrier of contagion infecting America
with unreformed religion and uncivilized social norms. She claims that the name Guizac
is unpronounceable and so she and Mrs. McIntyre would call them, the Gobblehooks.
This Gobblehook foreshadows Mr. Guizac‘s death, as he becomes a fish on the racist
hook. She compares them to animals, implying that they are less than human. This
creates readers sympathy for Mr. Guizac.
Mrs. Shortley had the sudden intuition that the Gobblehooks, like rats with
typhoid fleas, could have carried all those murderous ways over the water
with them directly to this place. If they had come from where that kind of
thing was done to them, who was to say they were not the kind that would
also do it to others? The width and breadth of this question nearly shook
her (CS 196).
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
191
Mrs. Shortley views the ―Gobblehooks‖ as sent from ―the devil‘s experiment station‖ (CS 205).
Mr. Guizac is ―toothless‖ on one side and ―a little sway-backed‖ which could have been
the result of his persecution in the concentration camps or in a Polish prison. He could
also probably be subjected to hard labour and torture. Mrs. Shortley instead of being
merciful to them is prejudiced, and fears that they would carry the infection of violence to
their south.
Mrs. Shortley recalled a newsreel she had seen once of a small room piled
high with bodies of dead naked people all in a heap, their arms and legs
tangled together, a head thrust in here, a head there, a foot, a knee, a part
that should have been covered up sticking out, and a hand raised clutching
nothing (CS 196).
She constantly associates the Polish refugees with death and destruction. Her peaceful
Southern code of hierarchy feels collapsing with their intrusion. She fails to join a helping
hand for the suffering refugees, and instead plots for their death. Her dream of the Nazi
concentration camp indirectly foreshadows her death.
Mrs. Shortley‘s power of authority on the farm is shaken when Mrs. McIntyre starts
regarding Mr. Guizac as her salvation. His mastery over mechanical and manual skills proves
an obvious competition and risk to her husband, Mr. Chancey‘s job. Mrs. McIntyre keeps
buying Mr. Guizac new machinery and exploits him to get her more money. Mrs. Shortley
fears that Mr. Guizac will reveal the secret distillery that Mr. Chancey owns and runs in
the corner of the farm to Mrs. McIntyre. Mrs. Shortley tries to evade such fears by
plotting against the Polish man. Firstly she informs the black workers, Astor and Sulk
that with people like the Guizac coming to America to work, black people will have no
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
192
place in society and will cease to exist. ―I heard her [Mrs. McIntyre] say ‗This is going to
put the Fear of the Lord into those shiftless niggers‖ (CS 199). Mrs. Shortley purposely
repeats it to Astor, to show how black people are considered ―shiftless‖ or lazy by the
white owner. She tries to make them insecure and join hands in finishing off Mr. Guizac.
Mrs. Shortley‘s lack of spiritual faith hinders her to see the goodness in Father Flynn
and Mr. Guizac as evil. To Mrs. Shortley, ―religion was essentially for those who didn‘t
have the brains to avoid evil without it‖ (CS 203). It is only after Mrs. McIntyre announces
Mr. Guizac, ―That man is my salvation,‖ (CS 203) that Mrs. Shortley turns to religion and
allows her inner vision to lead her to prophesy: ―The children of wicked nations will be
butchered‖(CS 209). Her prophecy continues with a description of the dislocation of
body parts, a reference to a newsreel footage she has seen. Ironically, it is Mrs. Shortley‘s
death, not the death of Mr. Guizac, which closely resembles the ―inner vision‖ (CS 200).
Mrs. Shortley is constantly associated with visions, and her husband has full faith in the
accuracy of her sight. She tells Mr. Shortley that Mrs. McIntyre would fire them to death
if they remain in the farm, as they would be a burden to her than helpers. She warns him
that Mr. Guizac had replaced him and cries, ―ain‘t waiting around to be fired.‖ Mr. Shortley
who ―had never in his life doubted her omniscience,‖ obeys to her plan to escape the farm
as soon as possible (CS 212). In her first vision,
She was seeing the ten million billion of them pushing their way into new
places over here and herself, a giant angel with wings as wide as a house,
telling the Negroes that they have to find another place. She turned herself
I the direction of the barn, musing on this, her expression lofty and
satisfied (CS 200).
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
193
In this vision, Mrs. Shortley‘s racist views is directed towards black people. But her
discrimination soon changes directions, and she fears that with the black employees gone,
it will be her family against all the immigrants from Europe. She begins reading the Bible
and starts to think of Father Flynn as evil. Soon, she has her biggest vision:
A gigantic figure stood facing her. It was the color of the sun in the early
afternoon, white gold. It was of no definite shape, but there were fiery
wheels with dark eyes in them, spinning rapidly all around it. She was not
able to tell if the figure was going forward or backward because its
magnificence was so great. She shut her eyes in order to look at it and it
turned white. A voice very resonant, said the one word, Prophesy! (CS 210)
Since Mrs. Shortley choses to close her eyes to the light of spiritual truth, she misinterprets
the prophecy, thinking the wicked are the Guizacs. ―The children of the wicked nations
will be butchered… Legs where arms should be, foot to face, ear in the palm of hand.
Who will remain whole? Who will remain whole? Who?‖ (CS 210). The Shortleys‘
existence in the farm comes to an end when she overhears the white owner, Mrs. McIntyre
telling the priest that she would send the Shortley‘s in order to increase the wages of
Mr. Guizac. Fearing that she would shoot her husband to death, Mrs. Shortley runs to
her home and packs all the family‘s belongings into their old car.
The phrase ―wife of the countryside‖ implies a harmony with nature (CS 194).
Mrs. Shortley seems to be in harmony with her natural surroundings, but not with her
social and cultural ones. In the car, she again has a vision of the misplaced legs and arms
which symbolically become those of her own family predicament: ―She thrashed forward
and backward, clutching at everything she could get her hands on hugging it to herself,
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
194
Mr. Shortley‘s head, Sarah Mae‘s leg‖ (CS 213). Again O‘Connor further depicts
Mrs. Shortley‘s death by using the same imagery which Mrs. Shortley associates with the
death camps in Europe of a confused intermingling of body parts and piles of corpses.
There is a certain irony in O‘Connor‘s noting that the Shortley girls do not realize that
their mother has undergone a ―great experience‖ or has been ―displaced in the world from
all that belonged to her‖ (CS 214). The next morning, Mr. Shortley finally asks where
they are going, but his wife does not answer.
Fierce heat seemed to be swelling slowly and fully into her face as if it
were welling up now for a final assault … there was a peculiar lack of
light in her icy blue eyes. All vision in them might have been turned
around, looking inside her. She suddenly grabbed Mr. Shortley's elbow
and Sarah Mae‘s foot at the same time and began to tug and pull on them
as if she were trying to fit the two extra limbs onto herself. (CS 213)
Mrs. Shortley is trying to make herself whole at last by adding extra arms and legs to
herself. In her prophecy she bed asks, "who shall remain whole?'" reflecting on her
situation (CS 210). Realizing her lack of wholeness and her weakness she recognizes that
she too has been a displaced person, ―then ell at once her fierce expression faded into a
look: of astonishment and…her huge body rolled back against the seat and her eyes like
blue painted glass seemed to contemplate for the first time the tremendous frontiers of her
true country‖ (CS 214). It is also ironic that it is Mr. Guizac who serves as the catalyst
which forces Mrs. Shortley to ―contemplate.‖ Mrs. Shortley mental limitations prevent
her to understand the pathetic circumstances of the poor refugees from Europe, and she
considers them to be ―only hired help,‖ like her family and the black men. In the violence
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
195
of death, she accepts herself in humility all the displaced persons whose only strength can
come from God, not from self. This ―giant wife of the countryside‖ learns in her moment
of encounter that her true country is spiritual (CS 194).
Mrs. McIntyre realises that she has been fooling away with sorry people. Both the
niggers and the poor white trash have been undependable and dishonest: ―… not a one of
them left without taking something off this place that didn‘t belong to them‖ (CS 202).
When the efficient, hardworking Polish refugee, Mr. Guizac comes to the farm, Mrs. Shortley
thinks that the Negroes would be dismissed, just as tractors replaced mules. She even
expresses sorrow over their plight; ―I hate to see niggers mistreated and run out. I have a
heap of pity for niggers and poor folks‖ (CS 207). By an ironic twist of events, it is not
the Negroes who are displaced by the arrival of Mr Guizac, but the Shortleys.
However, Mrs. McIntyre also turns against Mr. Guizac when he acts against the
custom and practice of the Southern society, by planning to get his cousin married to one
of Mrs. McIntyre‘s niggers. His ignorance of the pattern of social relationship in rural
Georgia makes him lose his life and upset the order of the farm. The entire population on
Mrs. McIntyre‘s farm is displaced ultimately. Mrs. McIntyre racists‘ ideologies force her
to ask Mr Guizac, ―You would bring this poor innocent child over here and try to marry
her to a half-witted thieving black stinking nigger! What kind of a monster are you!‖
(CS 222). And suddenly she does see him as a monster, just as Mrs. Shortley had. The
pragmatic Mrs. McIntyre begins to speak of her situation in moral and religious terms:
―I cannot understand how a man who calls himself a Christian…could bring a poor innocent
girl over here and marry her to something like that. I cannot understand it. I cannot!‖
(CS 223). Mr. Guizac still cannot not comprehend the mores of the society, but he takes a
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
196
much more humane view of his cousin‘s situation. ―‗She no care he black‘…‗She in
camp three year‖ (CS 223). Outraged by this, Mrs. McIntyre tells the priest that Guizac is
not satisfactory because he ―doesn‘t fit in‖ (CS 225). She notices how Mr. Guizac does
not follow the southern code of hierarchy and deconstructs the social order.
When Mr. Shortley returns a few weeks later, she rehires him, planning to give
Guizac his notice. She feels that she had been tricked by the old priest. He had said there
was no legal obligation for her to keep the displaced person if he was not satisfactory, but
then he brought up the moral one. She felt she must have this out with the priest before she
fired the displaced person. Ultimately, the priest is so entranced by the peacock, which
becomes symbol of transcendence that attracts his attention. He scarcely hears what
Mrs. McIntyre is saying to him. At this the priest says, ―Dear lady, I know you well enough
to know you wouldn‘t turn him out for a trifle!‖(CS 225-226). And without waiting for an
answer he raised his hand and gave her his blessing in a rumbling voice. She smiled angrily
and said, ―I didn‘t create this situation, of course‖ (CS 226). The priest let his eyes wander
toward the birds. ―They had reached the middle of the lawn. The cock stopped suddenly
and curving his neck backwards, he raised his tail and spread it with a shimmering timbrous
noise. Tears of small pregnant suns floated in a green golden haze over his head. The priest
stood transfixed, his jaw slack (CS 226).‖ Mrs. McIntyre wondered where she had ever
seen such an idiotic old man. ―Christ will come like that,‖ he said in a loud gay voice and
stood there, gaping (CS 226). Mrs. McIntyre‘s face assumed a set puritanical expression
and she reddens with anger. Christ in the conversation embarrassed her the way sex had
her mother. She shouts;
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
197
It is not my responsibility that Mr. Guizac has nowhere to go…I do not
find myself responsible for all the extra people in the world... He‘s extra
and he‘s upset the balance around here ... I‘m a logical practical woman
and there are no ovens here and no camps and no Christ Our Lord (CS 231).
Mr. Guizac becomes a displaced person in south and does not qualify to stay there as he
does not follow the racial order of the society. Mrs. McIntyre has no compassion for their
homeless state. She is no believer in God and has no goodness in her. This is implies
when she ignores the majestic presence of the peacocks as they gather around her when
the Priest speaks to extend mercy and help to the Guizac‘s.
Meanwhile, Mr. Shortley begins a gossip campaign which turns the town against
Mrs. McIntyre. Caught between the moral obligation the priest has implied, and the social
pressure the town has applied, Mrs. McIntyre ―could not stand the increasing guilt any
longer‖ (CS 233). Mrs. McIntyre would appear to have two options: she can receive the
displaced person and accept a new equilibrium, or she can reject him and go back to the
old dysfunction. In the end, she chooses to reject the displaced person, conspiring with
Mr. Shortley and Sulk to murder the man who had upset the old balance. ―[Mrs. McIntyre]
had felt her eyes and Mr. Shortley‘s eyes and the Negro‘s eyes come together in one look
that froze them in collusion forever, and she had heard the little noise the Pole made as
the tractor wheel broke his backbone‖ (CS 234). With the displaced person is out of the
way, the old triad of landowner, white dairyman, and black labourer, look for the prosperity
of the farm. But guilt pulls down Mrs. McIntyre‘s health and wealth. She sells off her
farm and she is bedridden. Her sense of conscience pricks her. The priest comes to administer
Guizac‘s last rites but Mrs. McIntyre was too shocked by her experience to be quite
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
198
herself. Her mind was not taking hold of all that was happening. ―She felt she was in
some foreign country where the people bent over the body were natives and she watched
like a stranger‖ (CS 235). Mr. Shortley and the Negroes desert the heartless Mrs. McIntyre.
Mrs. McIntyre is the one who is ultimately displaced both from her farm, and from the
true country. Just as she has rejected Guizac, the displaced person, she has rejected
Christ. Mrs. McIntyre has chosen to remain with the old balance of life, and thus she
remains off- centred spiritually.
In the stories analysed above one finds intergenerational conflicts and the problem
of acceptance of racial integration. The older generation like, Mr. Head, Julian‘s mother,
Tanner, Mrs. Greenleaf, Mrs. Ruby Turpin, Mrs. Shortley and Mrs. McIntyre have enjoyed
racial power and superiority, but as the hierarchy crumbles they fear their loss of power
and dominance over the lower section of the community. Hence, they rebel and openly
express their disapproval over the equality of the both races. As Russell notes, ―If the
manners of a country or a culture are lived on the level of sensibility, then those manners
cannot be changed by swift, legal fiat without generating a welter of lies at the deepest
core of life--a cure worse than the disease‖(Russell 34). However their arrogance and
pride is humbled before God‘s violent agents of painful spiritual revelations. The younger
generations like Nelson, Julian, Tanner‘s daughter and Greenleaf‘s sons, Scofield and
Wesley is caught in the changing social atmosphere. Through these stories, O‘Connor
depicts the inhumanity of racist people, but also makes a positive change in their attitudes
which promises a united integrated society.
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.