Copies de concours: Littérature Agreg Interne 2006 - Copie 4

Note obtenue: 9,5/20

 

Fragmentation in Flannery O’Connor.

 

The question of fragmentation in FOC’s Complete Stories is emblematic of the writer herself and of her life. As a Southerner who first studied social sciences, who detested the subject and who wanted to become a cartoonist at first, as a Catholic in the South and also as a person suffering from lupus, which limited her moves, FOC embodies the idea of fragmentation, i.e. breaking up and shattering, the result of which being a limited, partial and biased point-of-view.
The core of her work is made up of  short stories, each being a fragment of life giving us an insight into various facets of humanity. It is precisely this humanity, God’s composition, whole to start with, which FOC strives to fragment.
In other words, fragmentation is only possible in the presence of composition, the two aspects being like the two sides of a coin.
We will first see in what ways and to what extent fragmentation is present in FOC’s stories. Then we will analyze the writer’s narrative techniques of fragmentation.
Finally, we will question her aims and motives for doing so, from a writer’s standpoint as well as from a personal viewpoint.

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In FOC’s stories, fragmentation is present at several levels : fragments of people, fragments of view, fragments of places and events.
The people who are her characters are not whole or at least, they seldom belong to whole family units. They are often part of broken families, i.e. childless couples or single-parent homes with one child or two children at the most. The father figure is either absent -and consequently replaced by the grandfather, for example, such as Mr Head in The Artificial Nigger- or he cannot manage to have a loving relationship with his child, as is the case between Sheppard and Norton.
Happiness in families, when mentioned at times, is a thing of the past and only fragments of it still linger in the characters’ memories, e.g. when Sheppard remembers the family picnics on their lawn.
One family exception is Bailey’s family in A Good Man –he has a wife and three children- but then again, they do not live long.
We seldom learn a lot about their lives before we meet them, except when we are told about Mrs May’s husband or Mrs McIntyre’s, about Norton’s mother or Joy-Hulga’s accident which cost her her leg, details which play the part of fragments of information about the characters’ personalities.
The characters themselves are fragmented, whether physically like Joy-Hulga and her wooden leg, Rufus Johnson and his clubfoot or mentally like Mrs Hopewell who can fragment herself into several reactions and expressions, according to the situation.

Fragmentation is also evident in the characters’ partial views, they can only see what they want to see, especially when they are convinced of the truth and righteousness of their conceptions, from the vantage point of their choice. Indeed, Mr Head thinks he knows better, Mrs May is positive she is doing the only right thing in wanting to get rid of the bull, Sheppard believes he is the only one who can save Rufus and Old Fortune feels he is modern in selling his lands and woods for the sake of progress. For him, “a pine tree is a pine tree” and he does not realize how fragmented his view of the woods is, compared to his grand-daughter Mary’s.

The characters view events and places from the top of a hill or from the first floor of a house and in doing so, they mistakenly believe that they grasp the whole scene while FOC expertly manages to make us aware of the fact that they only hold a fragment of the wider picture and she does so through a selection of narrative techniques.

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Just like Mrs Shortley who, from the top of a hill, surveys the whole scene and then zooms in on the D.P.’s family as they are greeted by Mrs McIntyre, FOC zooms in on her characters’ specificities and the techniques she uses, whether it be humour, violence, the grotesque or metonymy, create echoes and a network of resonances, reinforcing the feeling of fragmentation.
In numerous instances and especially with children, FOC uses humorous details to give us the child’s fragmented view of things belonging to the world of adults, as when Bevel-Harry Ashfield (The River) tells the preacher that his mother is suffering from a hangover.
The negroes’ sly remarks, in The Displaced Person or Greenleaf or A View of the Woods are also another way to give us a different picture of the same reality. So are Powell’s remarks about property in A Circle.
When she resorts to violence, in violent deaths for example, FOC makes us aware that it is yet another fragment of the general picture, just like the grotesque of the freak in A Temple or the grotesque of Mr Paradise’s deformity in The River. 
To further illustrate the fragmentation present in her writing, FOC often uses metonymy to reduce her characters to one main element of their physical body, such as Joy-Hulga’s wooden leg, Rufus Johnson’s clubfoot, Lucynell Crater’s blue eyes, or one characteristic of their personality, whether it be an obsession with tidiness, order or duty.
Although FOC, like every other writer, wrote to be read, her specific writing style and talent make us wonder  about her aims and motives.

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What is the secret motive which lies behind the fragmentation she presents us with ? In her numerous lectures and letters, FOC has always made it clear that she did not write to entertain only and that she ultimately wanted her audience to react and reach a higher understanding of life.
She deplored the lack of spirituality she detected in her contemporary countrymen and she wanted to prove that they were somehow condemned if they only attached importance and meaning to the material world. So we can say that her stories are designed as parables and as such, they have to strike hard and deep.
Her characters have a fragmented perception up to a certain point, their own death, the death of someone they love or in some cases, an important shock, when that event triggers an epiphany.
And that is the moment when the characters get a whole view, an un-fragmented vision, a composed or re-composed vision once again.
There is the point where the writer and the Catholic person, present in FOC, come together again since what seems to be implied is that the picture can only be re-composed with the help of God’s Divine Grace.  

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One can argue that reading FOC’s stories from a religious standpoint is in itself an act of fragmentation.
But so is reading her from any other standpoint because the fragmentation present in her stories is such an internal part of life.
As we live each day and go through each phase in our life, do we not only get to see a fragment of life in general because we are but a fragment of humanity ?
Whether we believe in something, in someone, or not, do we not faintly perceive that the time will come when we will be given the opportunity to embrace our whole life in one final glance, at the time of our death, which we can think of as being the final fragment of our life ?

 

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