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Examines O'Connor's use of Christ as hero, medieval folk art as a template and views her characters as symbolic gargoyles..., July 19, 2008
This review is from: American Gargoyles: Flannery O'Connor and the Medieval Grotesque (Paperback)
Finds the roots of O'Connor's grotesque fiction "located in medieval folk art." Describes the purposes of grotesque art, and focuses on its "comic shock treatment." Contends that the climactic scene of "The Artificial Nigger" serves as a key to understanding O'Connor's grotesque style.
Describes O'Connor's art as mocking and challenging "a restricted point of view," that of idealized beauty or propriety, only to be labeled "ugly and evil." Suggets that her use of "deranged fundamentalists" serve as freakish, crippled gargoyles who "measure `a grotesque distance' between their Christian subculture and that of `the liberal secular' world."
Outlines her use of Christ as the ideal behind her satire, an ideal "that must be degraded as well as exalted if it is ever to be a living presence in the physical world." Then, offers evidence to support Stanley Edgar Hyman's claim that "Christ is the real hero" of O'Connor's fiction.
Discusses, in this context, her novel Wise Blood, "The Displaced Person" ("an ironic passion play"), and "Parker's Back" (a sacrilegious, "Punch-and-Judy show about the difference between religion and faith").
Finds her regard for the body reflective of a medieval outlook and unique in American fiction "distinguished by its candor and unflinching realism." Sees her characters as "both beautiful and ugly, impressive and ludicrous." Discusses, in this context, Mrs. Shortley of "The Displaced Person," Ruby of "A Stroke of Good Fortune," Hulga of "Good Country People," the twelve-year-old girl of "A Temple of the Holy Ghost," Tarwater of The Violent Bear It Away, and Nelson of "The Artificial Nigger."
Examines The Violent Bear It Away, focusing on Francis Marion Tarwater, "one of O'Connor's grimmest protagonists, so serious that he is unintentionally funny." Finds the work to be a mixture of "prophecy and satire, holy seriousness and unholy flippancy." Reads "A Circle in the Fire" as "a disturbing religious story" in which "the meek inherit the land by burning it," and reflective of O'Connor's "complicated humor" derived from demonic elements. Considers "The River," an illustration of how blasphemy and grotesqueness can serve the same satirical purpose. Offers a twenty-eight page explication of "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," seen as O'Connor's "little masterpiece" and "a crash course in the grotesque."
Sees O'Connor as a chronicler of the collapse of the subculture of the white American South, who leaves Southern literature "`demythified.'" Discusses, in the context of this contention, O'Connor's narrator, her use of the role of carnival, and offers readings of The Violent Bear It Away, "A Late Encounter with the Enemy," "The Partridge Festival," "The Enduring Chill," "Judgement Day," "Revelation," and "The River."
R. Neil Scott / Middle Tennessee State University
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