On Reading Flannery O'Connor's "A Circle in the Fire"

In “A Circle in the Fire,” Flannery O’Connor initially relies on idle gossip to once again dwell into the pain of everyday existence. Here we have Mrs. Cope and Mrs. Pritchard, two women fighting to stay negative yet seemingly positive, interested, and some ways relevant as they tend to the yard. Mrs. Pritchard prattles on about visiting a wake in which she calmly relays the spectacle of seeing a woman interned with her deceased child, a child conceived and born while the mother was in an iron lung. At the same time, Mrs. Cope praises her very existence, taking on the familiar debonair haughtiness found in much of O’Connor’s writing. This woman, while our focus, is barely likeable in that she feels that she occupies a sphere of greatness above all others: “‘I have the best kept place in the county and do you know why? Because I work. I’ve had to work to save the place and work to keep it” (178). Thus Mrs. Cope repeatedly shows just how much better she is, just how proud. The farm, her Negros, her life is hers and hers alone, her creation, but as she often mentions here fear of fire, said creation is in fact seen as tenuous. Further, in her mind, she stands as deserving due to her innate gratitude, one that she freely shares with the world around her: “‘All I got is four abscess teeth,’ she remarked. ‘Well be thankful you don’t have five’” (177). Because she works, because she is thankful, Mrs. Cope deserves rewards, position, and spiritual acclaim.

These rewards explode with the arrival of a former Negro farmhand’s son, Powell, and his two friends, each of whom upsets the gossip filled balance. Here stands three boys, starved, but unwanting of anything but the ability to have a run of the farm and live out the fantasy of Powell’s childhood memories riding horses and being free. These three boys stand as outsiders beyond Mrs. Cope’s grasp and understanding. Not only can she not control them, they fail to grasp the idea of control. Their rebellious spirit jabs at her, fueling the flames. Further they represent pure danger, for as Cope fears fire, their wild ways could ignite a blaze at any moment, not only on the farm but also in the innocence of her child, a character that exists seemingly as only a set of meek eyes in the background for the first half of the story until it becomes clear to the ladies that the boys are not just passing through and that their presence comes in the form of joyous lechery.

The boys treat the farm as their playground—they ride the horses, steal milk and food, lie about leaving, release the bull, and that is just the start. As O’Connor so often does, she forces a full hearty character in Mrs. Cope to face one thing she can’t control: people who lack the will to be controlled. Try as Mrs. Cope does to cope and control, the boys are faster, sneakier, and looking for something the woman seems unwilling to give: unbridled freedom. Thus she darts about in hopes of stopping an unstoppable force, the very hurricane she predicted could come at any moment during the story’s opening pages: “‘We might all be destroyed by a hurricane. I can always find something to be thankful for’” (177). These boys exists as the storm, arriving without notice and plunging her life into despair. While she worked to control every facet of her farm, the boys split hairs and push her buttons in their discord: “‘I think I have been very nice to you boys. I’ve fed you twice. Now I’m going into town and if you’re still here when I come back, I’ll call the sheriff’” (189). While the threats seemed to work, and the boys vanish, the tone remains ominous as the eye of the storm passes over. It is through the eyes of the child playing in the woods that the reader comes to see the end of Mrs. Cope’s security, the death of her hard work, and the realization of her biggest fear: fire.

Favorite Lines:

• “He had on a sweat shirt with a faded destroyer printed on it but his chest was so hollow that the destroyer was broken in the middle and seemed on the point of going under” (179).
• “She worked at the weeds and nut grass as if they were an evil sent directly by the devil to destroy the place” (175).
• “They looked as if they were used to being hungry and it was no business of hers” (180).

Other posts on the The Complete Stories include “The Life You Save May Be Your Own,” “The Geranium,” “The Barber,” “The Wildcat,” “The Crop,” “The Turkey,” “The Train,” “The Peeler,”“The Heart of the Park,” “A Stroke of Good Fortune,” “Enoch and the Gorilla,” “A Late Encounter with the Enemy,” “The River,” “A Circle in the Fire,” and “A Good Man is Hard to Find.”  If the book interests you, please use the link in the first paragraph or click the picture to support my efforts when you purchase the text.

On Reading Flannery O'Connor's "The River"

Flannery O’Connor’s “The River” stands as a classic slow build narrative. For the longest time, one struggles to know where it is going and what the payoff will be. Topically, the narrative revolves around Mrs. Connin serving as a babysitter for young Harry. Mrs. Connin is a commoner so to speak—she is poor, she has hogs, and she floats in the midst of faith healing common in the American South. The bible, the good book that Harry will later pilfer from her, stirs her soul and stands not just as her moral center, but also as the center of her life. She is entranced in the gothic nature of the religious revival—the river is where it is at, where she strives to be. Thus she looks forward to visiting the preacher by the river and taking part in the culture of healing and baptism, the center of the religious conservative base that still dominates the South today.

Harry for his part, denounces his name, opting to be called Bevel. He is a sad boy, victim to alcoholic, socialite parents who pawn him off on a stranger by day in order to sleep off their hangovers. Bevel doesn’t lash out per se, no more than any other young boy would. Yes, he will dump and ash tray over and rub the debris into the carpet, but he does so not for attention, but because he is little, ignored, and untamed. Thus he changes his name, thus he seeks new adventure. As Bevel, Harry steals the bible from Mrs. Connin, as Bevel, he confronts religion with a fleet of ignorance: “He had found out already this morning that he had been made by a carpenter named Jesus Christ” (163). Whether through alternate views on the religion of the poor masses or through the same absentee parenting that had made Bevel who he was, he had avoided religious instruction. Ignorant to such facts, desperate to belong, Bevel opts for Baptism in the river.

The preacher of choice, also named Bevel, views himself as a symbol of God, a character above all others through his ability to speak with Jesus: “‘If you just come to see can you leave your pain in the river, you ain’t come for Jesus. You can’t leave your pain in the river … I never told nobody that’” (165). He will baptize, he will indoctrinate, but you, the individual are culpable for your actions and will thus either fall victim to your sins or pursue the light of God. Bevel greets this prospect, this chance to belong and feel as if he matters to someone, something, somewhere: “‘If I Baptize you,’ the preacher said ‘you’ll be able to go to the Kingdom of Christ … Do you want that?’ ‘Yes,’ the child said, and thought I won’t go back to the apartment then, I’ll go under the river” (168). A dip in the river gives him courage, gives him soul, gives him freedom.

It is here that we find the beauty and craft in O’Connor’s writing. Once confronted with the remains of another of his parent’s high class, drunken parties, Bevel longs for the river, longs to belong, and go under. Living a neglected life where breakfast consists of discarded crackers cannot appeal to anyone, especially this boy who has newly been welcomed into the religious light. The slow build explodes to the surface as Bevel returns to the river, gulps at the water, gasping for freedom, gasping to belong, and despite the best efforts of an onlooker to save him, Bevel willfully drowns to meet the kingdom he has been promised.

Favorite Lines:

• “‘Didn’t you have your breakfast?’ ‘I didn’t have time to be hungry yet then” (159).
• “‘You’ll see him today at the healing. He’s got cancer over his ear. He always comes to show he ain’t been healed’” (162).
• “He shut his eye and heard her voice from a long way away, as if he were under the river and she on top of it” (170).

Other posts on the The Complete Stories include “The Life You Save May Be Your Own,” “The Geranium,” “The Barber,” “The Wildcat,” “The Crop,” “The Turkey,” “The Train,” “The Peeler,”“The Heart of the Park,” “A Stroke of Good Fortune,” “Enoch and the Gorilla,” “A Late Encounter with the Enemy,” “The River,” “A Circle in the Fire,” and “A Good Man is Hard to Find.”  If the book interests you, please use the link in the first paragraph or click the picture to support my efforts when you purchase the text.

On Reading Flannery O'Connor's "“A Late Encounter with the Enemy"

“A Late Encounter with the Enemy” follows the interaction of Sally Poker, an aged woman about to graduate from a teacher’s college and her Civil War veteran grandfather General Sash. Focusing on pride, the story digs deep into the many facades that drive Southern Tradition. More than anything, the Old South lives through the collective focus on social perception and appearance. People dwell on the past, attaching themselves to both tradition and their lineage as if it is a form of nobility, a fact O’Connor never fails to spotlight.

Thus General Sash follows in a long line of O’Connor’s aged, southern males, men fixed in their racist, proper ways. These men stand above others and establish themselves through their self-importance and ability to not only be the best, but to also look the part: “he would be expected to sit on stage in his uniform …there wouldn’t be anything equal to him in his uniform” (134). The General, a man who eschews false teeth, because well, they make him look bad, isn’t even a general. A foot solider at best, over his hundred and four years he’d forgotten his rank and the war itself, leaving his pride to stand on the shoulders of false pretense, traits that O’Connor’s fiction seems to both bask in and treasure: “He had not actually been a general in that war. He had probably been a foot solider; he didn’t remember what he had been; in fact, he didn’t remember that war at all” (135). But he has his new uniform, his new title, his sword, and most importantly his ego.

Likewise, Sally Poker strives to be better than the rest. She is graduating at the age of sixty-two with a degree in education despite having a career in the field. She approaches graduation with a grand reluctance, ananger over having been forced to attend school in the first place: “For the past twenty summers, when she should have been resting, she had had to take a trunk in the burning heat to the state teacher’s college; and though when she returned in the fall, she always taught the in the exact same way she had been taught not to teach, this was a mild revenge that didn’t satisfy her sense of justice” (134-135). These words ring with the very same spite as the General’s, and while they detail anyone’s anti-tenure argument, they speak to the family tradition of haughty arrogance. This is the woman who regrets attending a gala because she forgot to put on her fancy shoes—forget the fact that her grandfather was crowned a fictional general at the Confederate Ball. This is a woman who turns her nose up at the system, but parades her symbol of excellence out at the system's celebration. Yet Sally can’t stand up to grandfather, once pretending to sleep in fear upon waking up to find him staring at her naked except for his general’s hat. Such an encounter would have shredded not only her respect, but the general’s, a deed that would crush both proud characters.

Sally needs him whole, for he is her trophy, her beacon of self-worth: “If he had died before Sally Poker’s graduation, she thought she would have died herself” (139). He exists to make her proud, a fact she again voices at the ceremony itself, unaware of the man’s true fate: “she glanced at the General and saw him sitting fixed and fierce, his eyes wide open, and she turned her head forward again and held it a perceptible degree higher” (144). He is her symbol in a symbolic event.

The graduation itself, is well, a graduation. People speak, clap, stand, walk, sit, and wait. No one has fun at these, not the speakers, not the teachers, not the graduates. This is not to say that the event is not dignified and important, but rather, that the event is about the pomp: the show. The General exists as a pawn in the game as he is put on display for all dignitaries. He should love it, yet he feels lost, and confused, a victim to his age and lack of comprehension on the world: “The figure was telling him something about history and the General made up his mind he wouldn’t listen, but the words kept seeping in through the little hole in his head” (142). History contorted, existence as well, the General cannot avoid his greatest advisory: time. Time degraded his brain, brought on confusion, and thus, through a symbolic hole he endures the torment of the graduation ceremony in his own way. Names barrage him, music assails him, and unable to control his facilities, too proud to ask for help and reach out beyond the pain, the General falls, passing away in the sea of black before him. His habit of life comes to an end as a useless symbol to his granddaughter’s misplaced pride.

Favorite Lines:

• “Living had got be such a habit with him that he couldn’t conceive of any other condition” (134). So poignant and telling—these words show the reader so much about a character as he is just being introduced.
• “The past and the future were the same thing to him, one forgotten and the other not remembered; he had no more notion of dying than a cat” (139). Here O’Connor confronts the malaise of life the General is living through, much the same as Old Dudley from “The Geranium,”and thus is set up for a fall.
• “The graduates in their heavy robes looked as if the last beads of ignorance were being sweated out of them” (141).

Other posts on the The Complete Stories include “The Life You Save May Be Your Own,” “The Geranium,” “The Barber,” “The Wildcat,” “The Crop,” “The Turkey,” “The Train,” “The Peeler,”“The Heart of the Park,” “A Stroke of Good Fortune,” “Enoch and the Gorilla,” “A Late Encounter with the Enemy,” “The River,” “A Circle in the Fire,” and “A Good Man is Hard to Find.”  If the book interests you, please use the link in the first paragraph or click the picture to support my efforts when you purchase the text.