Copies de concours: Littérature Agreg Interne 2006 - Copie 1

Note obtenue: 5,5/20

Fragmentation in Flannery O'Connor's Complete Stories

At first sight, fragmentation seems to deal with the coming apart of a structure. To fragment is to put something into little pieces, so, to some extent, it presents a restricted or narrow picture of something. This is what Mrs Turpin in "Revelation" feels she is doing after being hit in the face in the doctor's waiting lounge: she seems to be looking "through the wrong end of the telescope", hence to be getting a very narrow vision of things. Moreover, fragmentation can also be understood as a way to dissect something strictly speaking, so as to analyse it. Therefore, what is being analysed in Flannery O'Connor's Complete Stories ? Judging by the fact that she used to live in Georgia in the south of the United States, it may seem logical that O'Connor should depict the southern society she lived in. As it seems, her short stories are full of fragmented families who are very often reduced to mere couples. What is more, even these couples somehow come apart due to disruptive elements such as the arrival of intruders who pave the way for a lack of communication and throw everything off balance. The aim of this essay will be, first, to analyse these shattered families, then to make a parallel with a similar fragmentation of the society O'Connor portrays in the stories. Last, it will be interesting to determine what sort of worlds are set apart, while bearing in mind that O'Connor was a Catholic.

 

Flannery O'Connor's short stories present a wide set of fragmented families who are reduced to couples. Throughout the stories, the reader encounters fathers and daughters like in "The Geranium" and "Judgement Day", grandfathers and granddaughters like in "A View of the Woods", fathers and sons like in "The Lame Shall Enter First", mothers and daughters like in "Good Country People" or mothers and sons like in "The Comforts of Home". Some couples account for a missing element in the family such as a missing father in "The Comforts of Home" or "Good Country People" for instance, or a missing mother in "The Lame Shall Enter First". The families, reduced as they are, have to cope with reality and try to build a new life without the missing element. The task is hard owing to the fact that the efforts made on one side are often misunderstood by the other side. As a matter of  fact, both Dudley and Tanner in "The Geranium" and "Judgement Day" do not understand why their daughters have decided to take care of them: instead of feeling integrated in a new family nutshell, they cannot help feeling they have been uprooted from where they belonged, that is to say the south. On the other hand both daughters took this decision so as to fulfil their duty and not leave their fathers alone in their south. Hence, the families are fragmented through lack of understanding. This can be said, too, about Joy / Hulga ans her mother Mrs Hopewell in "Good Country People", since misunderstanding has become a habit between them, though not for the same reasons: in fact, Mrs Hopewell fails to understand why her daughter has chosen to be a philosopher. This has dug a huge gap between them. As it seems, those reduced families are very fragile and anything could shatter what is left of them.
In some of the short stories quoted above, the families have to face the arrival of an intruder, a disruptive element that rocks the boat and brings chaos. Sometimes, the intruders come on their own free willing as in "Good Country People" when Manley Pointer, the bible salesman, knocks on Mrs Hopewell's door. But in "The Lame Shall Enter First" and in "The Comforts of Home", the invader is introduced into the family by the parents. One may then wonder who the real disruptive element is: in "The Lame Shall Enter First", Norton's father, Sheppard, has decided to devote all his attention to Rufus Johnson, a young, disabled delinquent whom he believes he can help. Yet, by letting Rufus enter his family circle, which is already unbalanced since Norton's mother is dead, Sheppard is the one who sets everybody apart. He refuses to see that Rufus has a bad influence on Norton and instead reproaches his son for being reluctant to share his house with Rufus. However, Sheppard does not realise that the closer he gets to Rufus, the farther he goes away from Norton. Sheppard seems to have swapped sons. Norton, as a result, feels excluded. The same pattern is noticeable in "The Comforts of Home" with the arrival of Star Drake who is brought home by Thomas's mother. The consequence will be tragic for Thomas, just as it is for Norton: both stories end up with the death of one of the "couple", that is to say Norton's death in "The Lame Shall Enter First" and Thomas's mother's death in "The Comforts of Home". The scroungers, thus, shatter whatever was settled before, which emphasizes the fragility of family units. They usually take advantage of the flaws within the families, just as Manley Pointer does by stealing Joy / Hulga 's wooden leg. Being set apart seems to be Flannery O'Connor's characters' only possible fate, whether they choose it or not. Joy's changing her name into Hulga sets her apart for two reasons: first, the fact that she is disabled and wears a wooden leg, and second, the fact that she completely identifies with her handicap. Indeed, not only is Hulga ugly because of her difformity but she also acts ugly, hence the choice of her name which sounds alike. She has definitely chosen to belong to the category of freaks, as if she was rather proud to be disabled.  In fact,

"she was as sensitive about her leg as a peacock about his tail"

which shows some pride in being particular, just as peacocks are. Can it also be a way for O'Connor to assert her difference? It may be, since she was herself a sort of freak too, due to her illness: O'Connor suffered from lupus which in the end had considerably damaged her face. The choice of a name can, indeed, set people apart: this is what causes little Mary's death in "A View of the Woods" when she refuses to choose between Pitts, her father's name, and Fortune, her grandfather's name. Mary's head will be smashed on a stone by her grandfather which symbolises how fragmented this family has become. Comparatively, the machine digging on Mr Fortune's lands is said to be "gorging itself on clay" by destroying everything in the landscape.

 

So far, the human body seems to be the key stone at representing fragmentation, whether it be via its difformity, the violence assigned to it or through the description made by the narrator in some stories like "Revelation" or "Everything That Rises Must Converge" where characters are literally described from foot to head, hence put away into pre-established boxes, which is another sort of fragmentation. This is how Flannery O'Connor represents her characters who in turn account for the southern society of her time. As a matter of fact, the division of people into classes and categories along with the use of clichés and popular sayings reinforce the idea of fragmentation in the stories. O'Connor's characters live in a fragmented society engulfed in conservatism and narrow-mindedness.A battle between races has been going on since the Civil War and the southern society finds it hard to cope with a new present while forgetting, according to some characters of the stories, a glorious past. The bitterness existing between white and black people is omnipresent in stories like "The Artificial Nigger", whose title is rather telling, "Revelation", "Everything That Rises Must Converge" or "The Geranium" and "Judgement Day". Adults are the ones who long for the glorious past, and Mr Head, Nelson's grandfather in "The Artificial Nigger", is no exception: his aim when he takes his grandson to Atlanta is to teach him what a "nigger" is, yet Nelson fails to recognize one when he meets one on the train. Mr Head is the one to point out the "difference" to him, so in other words he is also the one who puts the barriers in place so as to make sure the division will go on. In fact, Martin Luther King's movement for the Civil Rights seems to have left sour souvenirs to praisers of the past like Mrs Chestny who, in "Everything That Rises Must Converge", can not bear riding on a bus with black people sitting around, or like Mrs Turpin who, in "Revelation", "would rather be a nigger than a white trash" while despising both all the same. Mrs Turpin pushes things as far as to classify people on a sort of "social-class ladder", putting so-called "white trash" and "niggers" at the bottom. Her getting confused while she realises that nowadays "niggers" can be land owners and thus move up a step in the ladder emphasizes the absurdity resulting from the classification of people. Yet, this is the main problem with the Southern society depicted by O'Connor: they seem to be quite contented with the fact that there should be pre-conceived "boxes" for each of them. That is why Mrs Freeman in "Good Country People" is so fond of clichés and popular sayings such as "some people have their own opinion, too". The title of this short story itself is a cliché. Indeed, who are those "good country people"? What makes a person be one? The only clue is that Joy / Hulga refuses to be part of this category. The idea of categorizing people is as ridiculous as observing their shoes as Mrs Turpin and Mrs Chestny do. No wonder Mrs Turpin feels like "looking through the wrong end of the telescope."
The fact that the southern society is narrow-minded and conservative also shows in the way big estates and properties are protected: whether they are Mrs Cope's property in "A Circle in the Fire" or Mrs May's in "Greenleaf", they are anclosed into very strict boundaries represented by barriers, fences or tree-lines. As a result, private properties are set into small spaces, or in other words fragmented . This focuses on the sacred of the property and the fear of invaders once more, though the fact that Mrs Cope's property is securely delimited – or so it seems – does not prevent Powell and his two friends from intruding upon her territory. As for Mrs May, she is forced to cope with a bull on her lands. Thus, this shows once more that fragmentation is not a good thing. In the same way, restricted views delimited by windows, telescopes – through the wrong end – or even glasses also account for the narrow-mindedness of southern people : not only are there limits around the houses but also inside. For instance, Sheppard's house in "The Lame Shall Enter First" is doubly divided, that is to say horizontally and vertically. In fact, at the beginning of the story the scene takes place in the kitchen which is split in two by a bar,on either side of which Sheppard and his son are sitting. From the very start, the reader gets a clue and is made to understand that there is a problem separating the two characters. Later in the story, the scene takes place either downstairs, in the kitchen or in the living-room, or upstairs in the attic. Once again, Norton and Sheppard are separated, the former being upstairs and the latter downstairs, which sets them apart even more. As a whole, the way space is divided represents the way characters are divided, and to a larger extent the southern society.

 

As a whole, it seems that an entire society is  fragmented and it is represented through different ways and symbols in Flannery O'Connor's short stories. Although reality is shown, the author may also have been willing to focus on another sort of fragmentation. As a matter of fact, enclosed properties and tree-lines have been mentioned before, but they may not simply be closed spaces. If the reader bears in mind that O'Connor was a Catholic, it may be understood that there is also a fragmentation between the known world – represented by the enclosed properties - and the world beyond, that is to say, unknown to the characters.This unknown world is the mystery of God, the one characters must be able to see so as to enter it. Yet, the limits such as tree-lines prevent them from seeing. To be able to see beyond the limits, O'Connor's characters must drop all materialistic aspects in their lives and receive grace. However, as Flannery O'Connor said herself, the characters' heads are very hard. Consequently, in order to put fragmented society back together into unity, they have to experience a shock. In Mystery and Manners, O'Connor also said that violence had a strange way to put her characters back to reality and to prepare them to accept their moment of grace. In other words, her fragmented characters are forced to open their eyes to face reality through violence. In fact, the ends of stories such as "Revelation", "Everything That Rises Must Converge" or, above all, "A Good Man is Hard to Find" are all violent: in "Revelation", Mrs Turpin is hit in the face by a book thrown at her, after she has been expressing her opinion about classes and categories; in "Everything That Rises Must Converge", Mrs Chestny gets punched in the face by a black woman; as for "A Good Man is Hard to Find", the family of the story is killed one by one by the Misfit, a dangerous criminal. It may be interesting to point out that all three titles depict the situations perfectly well : Mrs Turpin, indeed, gets a revelation when she realises in a vision that the "white trash" and "niggers" are the first to enter Heaven; Mrs Chestny has risen the black woman's anger which resulted in her fist converging into Mrs Chestny's face; as for the last characters, it may seem obvious that a good man is hard to find, but not a bad one. Nevertheless, and however horrible all three fates look, especially the family's, these characters share a common point: they realise something and, most of all, they give up the materialistic and fragmented world they live in. Through violence, they finally open up. This is what Flannery O'Connor may have aimed at: her readers may have been shocked by the violence described, but they may have been hit in the face too, like Mrs Turpin, and realised something as well.

 

After observing how fragmentation is represented in Flannery O'Connor's Complete Stories, one may conclude that she planned to present a mirror image of the southern society to her readers who were likely to be southerners as well. Her goal was to make them react by looking at themselves through her characters, and by looking beyond the limits too. Flannery O'Connor certainly suffered from exclusion because of her disease, so she may have found it natural to side with Blacks. Her own life, just like her characters', was fragmented: apart from her health, she had also lost her father – he had lupus too – and lived with her mother, which sometimes was difficult. Therefore, her own experience can be felt throughout the stories: they convey a message of courage and of wisdom. 

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écrit "species" le jour du concours! Shame on me...