O Connor and the Moment of Grace Research Paper

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Race in the Short Stories of Flannery O'Connor

While O'Connor stated that "The Artificial Nigger" communicated everything she had to say about race, it was not the last story of hers that took race as at least an indirect subject. "Everything That Rises Must Converge" was another that used race as a launching point from which O'Connor could deliver a more, as she felt, pertinent message. For O'Connor, race and racism were facts of life, which meant that they were tools for the fiction writer -- aspects of society and reality -- that she could use to deliver to her reader "the indication of Grace, the moment when you know that Grace has been offered and accepted," as she wrote to another writer in 1959 (O'Connor Habit of Being 367). These moments were always the endpoints of O'Connor's fiction, "prepared for" by the clash of wills and the setting up of a final showdown, so to speak, between the main character and God (O'Connor Habit of Being 367). In some cases these moments were achieved through generational conflict, as in "A View of the Woods," sometimes through sexual conflict, as in "Good Country People," and sometimes through race, as in "Judgment Day." The fact that race appears frequently as a theme in O'Connor's stories indicates that racial conflict was, after all, a matter of fact -- both in the South where she lived and in the larger cities of the north, where she had had some experience prior to the onset of her illness. This paper will examine how O'Connor uses race in her stories as a triggering device for the "moment of grace" that she, ultimately, seeks to deliver to her characters in the stories.

As Ralph C. Wood states, "the idea of race is largely a product of the Enlightenment" (93) -- and it is false "enlightenment" that O'Connor seeks to overcome in her stories. The most obvious example of the idea of "race" being overcome in a spiritual sense is in O'Connor's story entitled "The Artificial Nigger." "Nigger" is a term that is used in O'Connor's work (mid-century) at a time before it took on the significance that it has today. As the story shows, a racial charge was running like an electric current through the heads of most of her characters in the South, characters who barely even understand what it is that they themselves are so on guard for.

"The Artificial Nigger" tells the story of Mr. Head, the old guardian of the young Nelson: the two are alike in many ways but are also night and day when it comes to religion. Mr. Head wants to teach the obstinate Nelson that the straight and narrow path to God is the best path to follow: that he views Nelson as obstinate and sinful and himself as "Vergil summoned in the middle of the night to go to Dante or better, Raphael, awakened by a blast of God's light to fly to the side of Tobias" (O'Connor "The Artificial Nigger" 1). And just as Vergil leads Dante through the Inferno, Mr. Head is going to lead his young ward through the city, where "it'll be full of niggers," as Mr. Head tells Nelson. Nelson has no idea what a "nigger" is and in fact is surprised to have it pointed out to him when the they are on a train together to the city and Mr. Head points to a sleeping African-American in their car. Nelson is surprised because the "nigger" looks no different from any other man, just with slightly browner skin. Nelson is puzzled by this because he was anticipating something monstrous and grotesque from the way Mr. Head always spoke venomously about "niggers." It is a surreal moment for Nelson, as J. Oates Smith notes, and marks the beginning of Nelson's "harshly and defiantly spiritual" journey through an O'Connor "parable" on suffering and redemption (Oates 545).

As the story unfolds, Mr. Head and Nelson switch roles, so to speak: the guardian denies the ward, just as Peter denied Christ.

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The occasion is one in which Head, in an attempt to teach the young boy how badly the child needs the older man, it into his mind to show Nelson what it would be like to be on his own in the city. The proud old man, in other words, is trying to teach the proud young man to be humble. It happens this way: Nelson is distracted by matronly African-American woman (the boy has no mother-figure in his life and is drawn to her quite naturally). Not watching where he is stepping, he causes an accident on the sidewalk and an officer approaches to assess the matter. Mr. Head refuses to acknowledge that he knows the boy, which deeply shocks and offends Nelson -- who gradually makes Mr. Head pay for this betrayal -- and Mr. Head does feel sorry for it, especially as he becomes more and more lost in the city with the child following at a safe distance behind. Finally, Mr. Head admits his mistake, crying out to a stranger passing on the street: "I'm lost!" he called. "I'm lost and can't find my way and me and this boy have got to catch this train and I can't find the station. Oh Gawd I'm lost! Oh hep me Gawd I'm lost!" (O'Connor "The Artificial Nigger" 10). Mr. Head and the child are given directions -- and it is at that moment that they see the "artificial nigger" in the front lawn of a home.

At that moment, both Mr. Head and Nelson are also humbled -- and the object that brings them together in their cry of need for saving is the "artificial nigger" -- a lawn ornament. For O'Connor, the "artificial nigger" was a symbol, for Mr. Head and Nelson are re-united before the symbol in a spiritual way: "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" (O'Connor "The Artificial Nigger" 10). The grace the two characters receive comes by way of their recognition of the "wild misery" of the "artificial nigger" -- because it is a reflection of their own and yet in a mysterious way a symbol of a much greater suffering than they have ever known -- a symbol of their redemption, too. As O'Connor puts it in Mystery and Manners, the moment of grace for Mr. Head and Nelson is accepted as they look on at the artificial nigger, which is "the working of grace for the characters" (O'Connor Mystery and Manners 116).

O'Connor's use of race is not quite as mystical in her other stories as it is in "The Artificial Nigger," where the ignorant racist attitudes of Mr. Head and Nelson are, if not wholly removed from them, at least made to accept the fact that they are essentially in the same boat as the "niggers" they objectify and look down on. This sense of all being in the same boat is explored by O'Connor in other stories as well -- in particularly in "The Enduring Chill" and "Everything That Rises Must Converge." The former is a story of a proud, young student who wants to preach equality to the Negro workers on his mother's dairy farm (the irony being that he does not really believe in equality, since his attitude towards them is so condescending and inauthentic). The latter is a story about an older woman who must be accompanied….....

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