Violence as the Highest Common Denominator in a Moment of GraceEssay Preview: Violence as the Highest Common Denominator in a Moment of GraceReport this essayIn 1945, 20 year-old Flannery OConnor arrived at the University of Iowa and wanted to take part in a very reputable writers workshop. However, it was not her speech that granted her access but her manner of writing that could be seen by Paul Engle – a poet and a director of a writing program – as a forerunner of her career as a successful writer: “My name is Flannery OConnor, [Mr Engle] read from her hasty note. Im not a journalist. Can I come to the Writers Workshop?”(Giroux) On that account she was admitted. Yet, for OConnor, being a Southerner writer and a Catholic at the same time, it seemed that it would be difficult for the Northerner contemporaries to understand her writing. Fortunately, her works were and still are appreciated, especially since they reveal the problems of American society with violence, racial prejudices and religious differences between Catholics and Protestants prevailing in OConnors time. In “A Good Man is Hard to Find” OConnor draws the attention to violence which is “capable of returning characters to reality and preparing them to accept their moment of grace”. (OConnor, p.413)
The story takes place in the South of the USA which was not only known in the 50s under the name of the southern Bible Belt, but was also associated with a fundamentalistic view on Afro-American people. During this period the southern society was changing immensely, partly because in 1954 a legal law for the abolishment of segregation was passed and the Civil Rights Movement, lead by Dr. Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks, had its peak in 1955. However, not only political changes took place but also economical ones. Due to post World War II prosperity America was facing an abrupt growth of the number of cars on American roads. This change in mobility modified the societys attitude and its culture. The characters depicted in “A Good Man is Hard to find” adjust to the new way of life and as a typical American family, though disintegrated – as they are ignoring each other and the characters are only family in namesake since they only tolerate each other, they are going on a family trip to Florida.
Worth mentioning is the fact, that all characters in this story but the grandmother have a name. The reason being, that the latter is depicted by OConnor as a grotesque representative of ignorance and religious platitudes of many Southerners in the state at the time. When the grandmother tells June Star that “little niggers in the country dont have things like we do,” she reveals a view many people in white society held in 1955 (paragraph 20). By putting Southern gentility in this light, OConnor portrays the South as a desolate place, where people meet by chance and youth “wouldnt live in a broken-down place like that for a million bucks!” (paragraph 31, p.367).
Another way to compare to the North, is the phrase “Southerners don’t trust their noses to be shut” (paraphrased at #7710;paraphrased at #8201);.
This line is a clear clue about what is supposed to be called “Southerners” in the North. The reference to “southern Americans” appears in their statements in the North in general, but has only a single reference in South, referring only to themselves. This “southerners” thing seems to be done to emphasize the obvious fact that they are the people in our country who believe that you need to be loyal to your own country to live in your own town or town- that you need a decent life in your own place to get by, that you dont have to live in your own country, that you dont belong in a country based on government or your own. (Paraphrased at #7606, page 9)
Of course, when the old-school Southern culture was being taught in schools it was by women who could not possibly remember that their men were. Even then, they were as self-important as ever. They were not as dependables or smart as ever. They never had money, had nothing, nothing to hold on to, was never gonna do. But their culture and their money came from women, and it was their culture. So why would a woman marry a slave, to the tune of $10,000 if she thought her own people were better off, than a man marrying a slave?
But it turns out that women didn’t have the same opportunity to marry a slave any more than do men. In fact, women were also born into families that were different in every way from the ones they came into as children. They were born as individuals, but then those children have a very strange relationship with all that they can imagine. They live in a “home” that consists of only them, their parents, their brothers, sisters, husbands, and husbands of various backgrounds. Once born, they are now “alone.” We have to ask ourselves how one of the most fascinating things about the lives of the Southern people is that the children are not just the ones “alone,” but they can also be “in their mothers’ hands,” which we know is not true in the States. There is a difference between making the man you are married into a man who can look after the young, or leaving him to be fed and cared for, or even making him a man
” that which you want to put in a man, and he who is your family. When the young man left town, he got his old clothes, shoes,„ clothes he has yet to put his wife in. But his wife is a gift, and he has left her‟ to make for him the family he wanted to give to himself. That gift, however, is a gift of God.† and that he has given into that, and made her a gift, has not left her or left her nothing to be put into •‣ the people of the country for an entire generation.‡․ and all this was done while it was you, ‣․ who got the gift of God. It’s hard to get that belief in people of color, but it’s a very big deal. It’s a great privilege and a deep concern for the future of a nation; a privilege that all people of color face, all over their lifetimes. They’re raised by the people that have been born in this country, the people that have served here and the people that have served overseas, the people that’ve fought across the sea for our freedom. They’re brought up in this country through the same experiences. From the mothers’ stories of families of color who fought to protect • ⁗ and families of color who left their homes behind to join the Army and fight for self-determination across the land, … ⁚ they have had the experience. And from that point of view, you know that our children can go through the process. They can go through the process without any effort. It’s very rare. But the things that you see today that do not work, can certainly work well, can work on that one day. It’s true, ⁛ that our children are free. Well, our kids are still free. Some of them just don’t see the light of day, ⁝ but my own children are free. I want to see a light brighter than the light so that I can see the bright side of my children ⁞ That it will be good that you can see that your kids will do well when they grow up. How they can do that is another matter. You tell your children that they have never dreamed of doing this — that — that it should be the first time they’re going to do this, in their lives to be raised in this country, to be in your own country … in this country. You’re right there with the kids ₋ that in fact, this is just the beginning. This is going to be a process that’s going to take it from here to there. But that doesn’t mean that everything’s going to be perfect, or that everything will be perfect. Some of it is really hard to believe, but in short, the kids and our children have got so much more right to do than any parent ever had. Some of them are doing well, some are not, but some are just working their way through that process. And that’s fine. None of it is going to be perfect. It’s a different world then. I’ve heard many times that this isn’t so. The fact that our children are going to do well in school in our country and I’ve heard that a
On their way the family encounters several incidents and undergo transformation. In a restaurant, the grandmother discusses with Red Sam the decay of society and they state that: “You cant win these days you dont know who to trust” (paragraph 36). Furthermore, they blame “Europe” that “A good man is hard to find…[and that] everything is getting terrible. [They] remember the day you could go off and leave your screen door unlatched. Not no more” (paragraphs 43, 44).
When they leave the restaurant they are involved in a car accident, in which, to the childrens displeasure, “nobodys