Throughout the works of Flannery O’Connor, one literary technique that is used time and time again is the physical manifestation of character traits and emotions of characters in the form of symbolic imagery. This is an important aspect of Flannery O’Connor’s works for a first-time reader to be aware of AND explore BECAUSE as Patrick Galloway, an author and critic, said, one must be “INITIATED to her trademarks when reading any of her two novels or thirty-two short stories.” This initiation process is what I aim to take you all through today, focusing on the prominent symbolic icons of Flannery O’Connor’s works.
The first and most important thing to understand about Flannery O’Connor is her religious view on the world. Upon first reading her stories, they can seem inhospitable and unemotional, and riddled with blatant violence. Often we find that a story will end in the horrible death of a character or their emotional downfall. This is often misconstrued by her readers as the author’s way of expressing existentialist tendencies and a true belief in the idea that evil prospers over good; however, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Ms. O’Connor merely recognizes the reality of violence in the world. In the words of Flannery O’Connor, “I have found that violence is strangely capable of returning my characters to reality and preparing them to accept their moment of grace.”One critic, Peter Hawkins noted that “For O’Connor, the ordinary vulgar world is sacramental: it is the place where God is present… This world is profane only when it is viewed as independent of its source.”
Insights such as these are crucial in order to successfully digest Flannery O’Connor’s works. As Joann McMullen claims, because O’Connor offers no explanation of symbols carrying through each story, she places an added burden upon the reader to decipher her actual intent. It is this back and forth action between O’Connor and her readers that makes the use of such ambiguous forms of symbolic imagery both effective at capturing the readers attention and challenging for all of her readers, offering room for interpretation almost every step of the way.
O’Connor’s realistic view on the world lends itself to spawn one of her most prevalent forms of symbolic imagery in her works. That is the physical attributes of the characters. Laurence Enjolras analyzed the physical attributes of the characters in “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” in one of his books by saying that O’Connor does not represent glamorous, idealized characters. Instead, she depicts the “ordinary” human being, notwithstanding flaws or deformity. Examples of this can be seen in O’Connor’s description of the grandmother as having a “leathery thin face” and Red Sam whose “stomach hung over his trousers like a sack of meal swaying under his shirt.” Cases of symbolic imagery such as these create a sense of reality in the work, while also painting an unsettling image of the characters within the readers mind. The distorted imagery, although unsettling brings her characters to life unlike that of most other authors. Rather than idealizing, Flannery O’Connor realizes.
The physical attributes of characters also serve the symbolic role of indirectly characterizing. What do I mean by this? Well, in the case of The Artificial Ni&&er O’Connor describes Mr Head as looking like an ancient child and Nelson looking like a miniature old man. O’Connor later goes on to describe the artificial Negro statue in the same way, saying that “it was not possible to tell if the artificial Negro were meant to be young or old.” O’Connor utilizes juxtaposition here to give deeper meaning to the symbolism of the characters’ outward appearances. Their appearances can be viewed as a comprehension of their moral selves. They both share the same incomprehension and rejection of the alien, but Nelson struggles with justifying his emotions, having never seen a negro in his life. This is why when he looks at his reflection, he is ugly, matching the grotesque imagery that is so common in Flannery O’Connor’s literature. The images of youthful age and old youth contradicts the worth of proposed truths. Examples of proposed truths are the stereotypes that Mr. Head taught Nelson about Negroes. Because of the oxymoronic nature of this idea, it is a poetic way of summing up the mutual realization that Mr. Head and Nelson have, recognizing their resemblances, and reuniting. Ironically, it is the black statue that serves as the catalyst for their moment of insight, representing the redemptive quality of Negroes suffering for us all.
The next icon of Ms. O’Connor’s that I will touch on is the symbol of the monkey. To understand the use of monkeys as symbols in Flannery O’Connor’s works, it’s necessary to have a Christian background. In Christian literature and art, monkeys symbolize degraded humanity, those who are distorted by sin and spiritual blindness and ugliness. They represent sinners trapped and distracted by the devil. To demonstrate this to you and to highlight the deeper meaning that is unlocked in the text with this key piece of insight, I’ll give you some examples. In the story, A Good Man is Hard to Find there is a gray monkey about a foot high, chained to a small chinaberry tree at Red Sam’s establishment. When the children jump out of the car and run toward him, the monkey springs back into the tree. The chinaberry tree is a fruit-bearing tree which helps the reader to conclude that the scene is meant to represent the Garden of Eden with the young brother and sister serving the roles of Adam and Eve and the monkey serving the role of the devil. The children’s attraction to the monkey could be meant to symbolize their non-Chrisitan morals, foreshadowing their inevitable downfall. The monkey retreats as a way of showing that the devil need not intervene and that instead the children are on an unholy path already. Just like the layers of an onion that have to be peeled back to reach the center, O’Connor builds her stories with layers of symbolism that require some prior knowledge and creativity to decipher. The use of the monkey is merely one example of this.
Another example of the monkey being used as a symbol in O’Connor’s works is in the story Enoch and the Gorilla. In the story, the man who is originally wearing the monkey suit is the one who ushers Enoch into the world of jealousy and wrath by insulting him in front of the large crowd of spectators. Flannery is able to clue the reader in to the fact that the gorilla is a bad character even before his character acts by representing him as a monkey in chains. Much of O’Connor’s work is structured in such a way that you can make accurate predictions about the characters based on the imagery that she uses on them in the early parts of the stories. when Enoch puts on the gorilla suit at the end of the story, the reader can finally conclude that his character has transformed into a sinner. This transformation ties back to the comment I mentioned earlier by Flannery O’Connor. The circumstances in Enoch and the Gorilla show very effectively how O’Connor exposes her characters to violence in order to prepare them to accept their moment of grace. This is a perfect example of how prior knowledge about Flannery O’Connor’s thinking can aid the reader in comprehending the text. The character of Enoch fits perfectly into O’Connor’s view on reality.
The third and final characteristic case of symbolic imagery utilized by Flannery O’Connor is the use of weather to symbolize what’s going on internally for the characters in the story. This tool is especially effective for Flannery O’Connor because it is able to take emotions that the characters are feeling that may be impossible to relate to for your common reader and project them on the setting in such a way so that the entire scene becomes an analogy for what the character is experiencing emotionally. The same way that thunder strikes and wind howls when a character in a horror story is introduced; the sun shines and flowers bloom at the entrance of a fairy tale princess; and rain falls over a saddened funeral processional, O’Connor is able to foreshadow and characterize by simply describing a scene for her readers–A powerful way for any author to show their readers rather than tell their readers the important parts of the text. In doing that, Flannery O’Connor is able to help her readers to relate to the emotions of the characters even if they have no experience with a similar issue. A perfect example of this is in the story The Life You Save May Be Your Own. When Mr. Shiftlet and Lucynell Crater get into the car and head off to what is supposed to be their honeymoon, Mr. Shiftlet is still morally clean, having not done anything harmful yet to Lucynell. This is reflected by the weather. “The early afternoon was clear and open and surrounded by pale, blue sky. Then, after abandoning Lucynell at The Hot Spot, his conscience is beginning to spoil and he is beginning to head down the unrighteous path. To match this, O’Connor constructs the scene such that, deep in the sky a storm was preparing very slowly and without thunder as if it meant to drain every drop of air from the earth before it broke, which is meant to closely parallel the moral transformation of Mr. Shiftlet. The moment at which all is lost for Mr. Shiftlet is when the hitchhiker throws himself out of the car door. “There was a guffawing peal of thunder from behind and fantastic raindrops, like tin-can tops, crashed over the rear of Mr. Shiftlet’s car. By simply describing the approach of an oncoming storm, Flannery is able to give deeper meaning to her text and give her readers something relatable to their own lives so that they can imagine what is going on internally with Mr. Shiftlet.
In the story, Enoch and The Gorilla weather is used to represent the emotions of Enoch in the opening scene. When Enoch decides to insult the ape, he is under the impression that Divine Providence given him the opportunity to do so. He feels conflict between his built-up reservations about his lack of self-worth and the power that he feels from getting to insult the gorilla. This causes cognitive dissonance for Enoch which is the incongruent relations among cognitions. This assessment can be based partly off of the passage “Usually he didn’t have any trouble with this kind of composition but nothing came to him now. His brain, both parts, was completely empty. He couldn’t think even of the insulting phrases he used every day.” but it is mostly supported by the heavy rain which is pouring around Enoch–rain being used to represent the disordered thoughts that are racing through Enoch’s mind. Especially for emotions as complex as cognitive dissonance, readers have a difficult time pinpointing what certain emotions feel like or even realizing what emotions the character is experiencing in the story. That is why projecting the emotion on the outside world is such an effective way of helping the readers to understand what the character is feeling.
Although some may see Flannery O’Connor’s use of symbolic imagery throughout her works as a burden, a more appropriate way to view it is as a unique defining characteristic of Flannery O’Connor’s style. O’Connor is among the small group of authors who do more showing than telling and more realizing than idealizing. This unique blend is what has turned Flannery O’Connor into a model for modern authors, especially those who wish to seamlessly integrate their religious views into their writing style. Her repeated use of certain symbols throughout her works, ties together seemingly unrelated stories into a beautifully correlated collection. Now that you have been properly initiated into the thought process of Flannery O’Connor and have been introduced to three of her most prominent forms of symbolic imagery, the beautiful meanings of her stories will begin to materialize as you read the text and you will find more meaning than ever in her eloquent, well-crafted stories.