"A Good Man Is Hard to Find"

Anything by Flannery O’Connor, including this short story published in 1953, should come with a warning label: “Proceed with Caution,” or something to that effect.  Especially if you are inclined to see the best in people and to view life with a more sunny than grim outlook, you might want to gird your loins before entering into her world, which has been variously described as “gothic,” “cynical,” and downright “grotesque.”  That this world is represented in a rather matter-of-fact manner makes it all the more hair-raising.

The title of this story actually comes from a popular blues song, performed by the likes of Bessie Smith, lamenting her no-good, cheating, abusive man and urging those who are lucky enough to have a “good man” to “Hug him every morning, kiss him ev’ry night…Cause a good man nowadays sure is hard to find.” 

In Flannery O’Connor’s story, the line is stated by Red Sammy, the owner of a barbecue spot, who laments that “These days you don’t know who to trust”:  “Everything is getting terrible.  I remember the day you could go off and leave your screen door unlatched. Not no more.”

An ordinary family, husband and wife, three children, and a grandmother, are on a road trip to Florida.  When they stop for lunch, the grandmother and Red Sammy commiserate together about the sad state of the world.  Earlier, when the family vacation is being planned, the grandmother warns against heading to Florida.  A escaped convict, called The Misfit, is “aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida.”  Overruled by the rest of the family, the grandmother, dressed in her best clothes, takes her seat in the back seat of the car.  “In case of an accident anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady.”  At Red Sammy’s the grandmother once again brings up The Misfit.  “I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t attact this place right here,” says Sammy’s wife.  Everyone seems to agree, “A good man is hard to find.”

Except for a sideways glance at her husband when Sammy’s wife states, “It isn’t a soul in this green world of God’s that you can trust…And I don’t count nobody out of that, not nobody,” everyone seems to agree that the law-abiding, upstanding, respectable family vacationers and roadside business owners are among the “good” people on God’s green earth.

Yet, throughout the story, the family members are disrespectful, rude, and downright mean to each other.  The children talk back to their grandmother and the parents do not scold or correct them; the parents ignore the grandmother, who is herself a shallow, petty, and vain woman; Sammy interrupts his wife and bosses her around.

What does it mean to be “good”? 

Later, after a series of mishaps the family has a car accident and crosses paths with The Misfit.  Murder and mayhem ensue accompanied by a bizarre conversation between the grandmother and The Misfit, in which the grandmother tries to convince him that he truly is a “good” man from “good” family.  (He is not even wearing a shirt.)  “Nome, I ain’t a good man,” The Misfit tells her politely and begins to relate his history.

“I was a gospel singer for a while,” The Misfit said.  “I been most everything.  Been in the arm service, both land and sea, at home and abroad, been twict married, been an undertaker, been with the railroads, plowed Mother Earth, been in a tornado, seen a man burnt alive onct…I even seen a woman flogged….”

He begins to emerge as a kind of Everyman.  Grandmother tells him to pray.  He says he was imprisoned for killing his father, but claims he did not do it, or, at least, does not remember doing it.  Having lost all faith in justice, he has decided it doesn’t matter what he does or how he lives.  The grandmother begins to murmur “Jesus, Jesus,” but it’s not clear if she is praying or cursing.  Such is the ambiguity of the story.  Is the Misfit truly an innocent man who has been twisted into evil by an unjust system of justice?  Is the grandmother truly a faithful Christian woman trying to save a sinner or is she using religion to manipulate a murderer in order to save her life?

In a sudden moment when The Misfit seems close to tears as he claims if only he had known the truth about Jesus, “I wouldn’t be like I am now,” the grandmother reaches out to him, exclaiming, “Why, you’re one of my babies…You’re one of my own children!”  The Misfit recoils “as if a snake had bitten him and shot her three times through the chest.” 

We know from O’Connor’s own testimony that her work is a representation of her Catholic theology; as such, this scene is interpreted as a moment of divine grace when The Misfit appears to show remorse and the grandmother, recognizing his capacity for salvation, expresses compassion for his soul.  In this interpretation, the grandmother, despite the foolishness and superficiality of her life, reveals her own capacity for salvation.  The image of the grandmother “in a puddle of blood with her legs crossed under her like a child’s and her face smiling up at a cloudless sky” is taken as evidence of her final deliverance into the arms of God.  The Misfit, on the other hand, has rejected the offer of grace, reacting to the grandmother as if she were an evil “snake” and reverting to his own evil, murderous ways.

So, why does O’Connor present this message with such ambiguity?  From another perspective, The Misfit is merely toying with an old woman’s desperate religious appeals and the grandmother’s supposed moment of compassion is yet another attempt to use religion to manipulate The Misfit into sparing her life.  Her image in death could just as well be seen as evidence that she is just as ridiculous dead as she was alive.

“She would have been a good woman…if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life,” the Misfit says.  Is this his recognition that it takes the shock of extreme circumstances to open a shallow person to divine grace or is it just evidence of his own perversion? 

When his companion Bobbie Lee says, “Some fun!” and The Misfit replies, “Shut up, Bobbie Lee…It’s no real pleasure in life,” is that evidence that he now renounces an earlier statement that there is “No pleasure but meanness” or is it a nihilistic rejection of any form of value in life, even the value of “fun.”

The one thing Flannery O’Connor is not ambiguous about is the sad state of the world and human nature.  It is a fallen world, a perversely fallen world in which there is not only the obvious evil of violence and murder but the everyday evil of foolish pride, petty meanness, and shallow faith. 

Why is she so ambiguous about the possibility of redemption?  If we take her at her word, then perhaps her fiction is intended to provide a shock of extreme circumstances designed to test our own capacity to recognize the potential for divine grace available to even the worst of us.

Another possibility is that underlying her own Catholic faith is the doubt and fear that there is no hope of redemption for this truly fallen world.

In any case, Flannery O’Connor uses dark humor and grotesque comedy to make this fallen world, redeemable or not, highly entertaining.   A few years ago there was an ad for fitness equipment that used the slogan, “A Hard Man Is Good to Find.”  That’s what happens when English majors go to work for advertising companies.  One imagines that O’Connor would have enjoyed that ad immensely.

  

The Tempest in Tucson

On January 1 a new law went into effect in Arizona prohibiting K-12 classes that “promote the overthrow of the U.S. government, promote resentment toward a race or class of people, are designed primarily for pupils of one ethnic group, or advocate ethnic solidarity.”  The purpose of the law is to eliminate the ethnic studies curriculum in Tucson public schools.  (Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/2011/01/01/20110101arizona-ethnic-studies-ban.html#ixzz1kVeUY0j5.) 

 Among the works that is taught in this curriculum is Shakespeare’s The Tempest.  Though the Tucson administration denies the book has been banned, high school teacher Curtis Acosta was told not to teach the play using the “nexus of race, class and oppression” or “issues of critical race theory.” 

 “What is very clear is that ’The Tempest’ is problematic for our administrators due to the content of the play and the pedagogical choices I have made,” Acosta said in an interview. “In other words, Shakespeare wrote a play that is clearly about colonization of the new world and there are strong themes of race, colonization, oppression, class and power that permeate the play, along with themes of love and redemption.”

(http://www.salon.com/2012/01/18/tucson_says_banished_books_may_return_to_classrooms/singleton/#comments)

 This stunning violation of academic freedom and crude imposition of ideological control over public school curriculum spurred me to reread Shakespeare’s mysterious final play and review some of the history of its critical reception and interpretation.

 Since its first production in 1611 (just four years after Jamestown was founded) The Tempest has been read theologically, mythically, aesthetically, biographically, psychologically, as well as politically.  One of the earliest political interpretations of the play is found in Leslie Fiedler’s 1973 essay “Caliban as the American Indian.”  However, the connections of the play to its historical context would have been recognized by its contemporaries.

 Its allusions to contemporary travel narratives of a Virginia Company expedition to Jamestown in 1608 are well established in scholarship.  The flagship of this fleet was separated from the rest and, having failed to arrive in Jamestown, was presumed to be lost.  Nearly a year later the admiral and sailors of the flagship arrived in two small boats, having run aground on the island of Bermuda, where they found food, shelter, and wood to build their boats, despite the site’s reputation as an “Isle of Devils.”  This adventure became sensational news in England, and in Act I, scene ii, of The Tempest, Ariel makes explicit reference to “the still-vexed Bermoothes” (always-stormy Bermudas).

 It would have also been widely recognized among educated contemporaries that “Caliban” is an anagram of “cannibal” (not necessarily meaning eater of human flesh in this context), and that this sub-human character constitutes a refutation of Montaigne’s well-known essay “Of Cannibals,” translated into English in 1603.  This essay is now widely understood as a source of the “noble savage” image of American Indians and the utopian view of the “New World,” in which American Indian society is represented as a kind of ideal state.  Gonzalo’s description of his ideal commonwealth in Act II, scene I, of The Tempest echoes the very same language of Montaigne’s description.

 In addition, at a time when the transatlantic slave trade is at its height, Shakespeare presents both Ariel and Caliban as slaves to Prospero.   It is difficult to deny the connection between Shakespeare’s play and the larger historical context.  In order to avoid “the nexus of race, class, and oppression” must teachers in Tucson avoid teaching The Tempest, ignore history entirely while teaching it, or distort history by treating the “New World” metaphor strictly in positive terms and Prospero as a benevolent slave owner so as to avoid creating resentment against white Europeans? Presumably, the malevolent, revengeful characteristics of Caliban, an indigenous creature enslaved by Prospero, would have to be ignored in order to avoid creating resentment against racial groups that have been historically enslaved.  In other words some of the most obvious features of the text would have to be distorted.

 Like most European literature of Shakespeare’s time, The Tempest is Eurocentric, aristocratic and patriarchal in its world view.  Under the Arizona law, that world view could presumably not be critiqued for fear of creating resentment toward Europeans, European-Americans, aristocrats, and men.  On the other hand, that world view could not be approved for fear of creating resentment toward non-Europeans, non-European-Americans, commoners, and women.  Pity the poor teacher trying to navigate those shoals!  Better to avoid the text entirely than create one’s own pedagogical shipwreck in the classroom.

 Not surprisingly, The Tempest is a far more complex and ambiguous text than any crude political ideology, and it offers a study in power that Arizona legislators, Tucson administrators, and teachers could learn from.

 First, it accurately reflects two competing European visions of the “New World.” On the one hand, it is a Utopia, as Montaigne described—a new Eden, a Promised Land, a “land flowing with milk and honey.”  On the other, it is a “hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wild beasts and wild men,” as William Bradford described Plymouth upon the Pilgrims’ first landing—“a wild and savage” place, primitive, barbaric.  If the magic island where Prospero and Miranda are exiled represents the new world, then the sub-human creature Caliban represents the savage view, while the airy spirit Ariel represents the idyllic view.  Ariel had been left imprisoned by Caliban’s witch-mother until Prospero arrived after her death, freed him, and then enslaved both Ariel and Caliban.  If Prospero represents the Europeans, then, allegorically, does this mean that Europeans have power over both the worst and best of the New World? When Prospero frees Ariel at the end of the play, having used him to achieve a redemptive resolution to the injustice done him by his enemies, does that mean that Europeans will bring out the best in the New World? By keeping Caliban enslaved at the end, does that mean that Europeans will keep the worst of the New World under control?  If so, then the play reinforces the contemporary European idea that western conquest had the providential purpose of improving the conquered lands.

 Perhaps, but Caliban’s grievances against Prospero are sympathetic, given Prospero’s harsh treatment of him. 

             This island’s mine by Sycorax my mother,

            Which thou takst from me.  When thou cam’st first,

             Thou strok’st me, and made much of me; would’st give me

             Water with berries in’t; and teach me how

             To name the bigger light, and how the less,

             That burn by day and night. And then I loved thee

             And showed thee all the qualities o’ th’ isle,

             The fresh springs, brine pits, barren place and fertile.

            Cursed be I that did so! All the charms

            Of Sycorax—toads, beetles, bats, light on you!

            For I am all the subjects that you have,

             Which first was mine own king; and here you sty me

            In this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me

The rest o’ th’ island.  (Act I, scene ii)

And later Caliban expresses his Ariel-like, spiritual side:

                Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,

               Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.

               Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments

                 Will hum about mine ears; and sometime voices

                 That, if I then had waked after long sleep,

                 Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming,

               The clouds methought would open and show riches

                 Ready to drop upon me, that, when I waked,

                 I cried to dream again. (Act III, scene iii)

 Thus, if Caliban represents the indigenous people of the new world, then the play does not entirely represent them in an unsympathetic light.

 Still, Ariel earns his freedom at the end of the play by obeying Prospero’s orders, while Caliban must do penance for his plot against Prospero, and, perhaps if he reforms himself, can earn his freedom as well.  Liberty, it seems, is not a natural right but a privilege to be conferred by one of greater power.

 Prospero, himself, had lost his freedom, when his brother, Antonio, usurped his throne as King of Milan and cast him, with his daughter, Miranda, away on the sea to die. Even royalty cannot rest secure in either their liberty or their power.  Prospero and Miranda survive, however, having been shipwrecked on the magic island, where Prospero continues with his studies of the magical arts, educating Miranda, and using Caliban and Ariel as slave labor.  When Prospero uses his powers to cause the shipwreck of his brother and his co-conspirator, the Duke of Naples, and bring them under the control of his magic on the island, he does not seek revenge.  On the contrary, he arranges for the Duke’s son, Ferdinand, and Miranda to fall in love, and then, after allowing the others to believe Ferdinand has drowned, arranges for a reunion and for the redemption of his enemies through the power of his forgiveness.  In the end the impending marriage of Ferdinand and Miranda symbolizes the restoration of both family and political harmony, as Prospero resumes his “proper” place on the throne.  Of course, Shakespeare’s version of family and political harmony is based on what in his day was considered the natural order of gender and class, a patriarchal and aristocratic “great chain of being,” with men ruling women, and aristocracy, with its own ranking order, ruling commoners.

 The treatment of power in the play relies on this hierarchical world view.  Order in the world depends upon each level in the great chain of being keeping its place.  When a lower level seeks to dominate a higher level, disorder and destruction break out.  Thus when Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo allow themselves to be ruled by their physical craving for wine, they become foolish, greedy, vengeful, and violent.  It was   selfish ambition that led Antonio and Alonso to overthrow Prospero from his rightful throne and establish an alliance that maintained their political rule.  On the other hand, it was Prospero’s neglect of his political responsibilities that contributed to his downfall.  Prospero’s restoration to his rightful place partly depends upon his recognition of having neglected “worldly ends, all dedicated/To closeness [seclusion] and the bettering of (his) mind….” (Act I, scene ii)  Each place in the great chain of being has a responsibility appropriate to that place and failure to execute that responsibility likewise results in disorder.  Prospero’s pursuit of knowledge, however, leads to the development of his intellectual and magical powers, which in turn enable him to regain his political power.  In addition to physical, social, and intellectual power, the play demonstrates the power of romantic love as Miranda and Ferdinand fall under each other’s spell, the power of filial devotion as Alonso refuses to give up Ferdinand for dead and insists that his compatriots help search for him, the supernatural power represented by Ariel and the island’s barely heard music that even Caliban responds to, and finally the power of compassion, forgiveness, and redemption, as Prospero, once he has his enemies in his power, pardons them rather than taking revenge.

 Today, democratic notions of equality and freedom have replaced the Shakespearean aristocratic world view, but we do expect individuals to earn their place in the world, as Ariel had to earn his freedom and Propero had to earn back his throne, and we distinguish between the kind of freedom that causes harm to others and the responsible exercise of freedom that contributes to the well-being of all.  Similarly, though we still live in a social hierarchy, we value power-sharing and the appropriate use of social control such that it benefits the general welfare, not the individual wielder of power.

 Do teachers of The Tempest appropriately use their power in the classroom to convey the full complexity and ambiguity of the play or do they use the play to advance a narrow ideological agenda?  Do Tucson administrators respect the work that teachers have done to earn their positions and their academic freedom? Do they have the right to dictate a teacher’s pedagogy and curricular choices in order to advance their own narrow ideological agenda? Do Arizona lawmakers have the right to deny an ethnic group the opportunity to learn its history and cultural traditions, again, to advance the interests of another ethnic group that happens to have more social power?  If their goal is social cohesion among ethnic groups, do they promote that cohesion by the raw exercise of social control?

 There are lessons in The Tempest for all parties involved and for all who would read, learn, and act with wisdom and compassion rather than with ignorant authoritarianism.

*Tortilla Flat* and the Ambiguity of Literature

What distinguishes “literature” from “ordinary” language? It’s not just a matter of fiction vs. non-fiction or poetry vs. prose. Fiction can be based on fact and non-fiction can be written in a “literary” style; prose can be poetic and poetry can be prosaic.

Literary language is heightened language, elevated, more figurative, connotative, and ambiguous. Even literature that uses colloquial language does so in a way that sets it apart from everyday speech. Similarly, a literary narrative, whether fantastic or realistic, is larger than life, more selective, more concentrated, and/or more grandiose. Even “realistic” fiction requires certain elements of romance in order to give it compelling interest. And literary non-fiction uses language that is more expressive than factual.

Another characteristic of literature that distinguishes it from ordinary language is ambiguity. Non-literary prose is more denotative, transparent, and communicative of a clear message, whereas literature is more opaque, more figurative, and more open to multiple meanings.

Sometimes those multiple meanings seem to completely contradict each other. A Deconstructionist would say that all texts inevitably, irresolvably contradict themselves, but literary texts (ironically) are more obviously ambiguous, whereas non-literary language appears at least to be more definitive.

Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck is a work of fiction that presents a group of California “paisanos” in a humorously sympathetic light and simultaneously mocks them by comparing these unlikely heroes to King Arthur’s knights and by satirizing their elaborate rationalizations for sloth, drunkenness, lust, deception, and violence, to name a few of their typical behaviors.

When Danny returns from World War I to discover he has inherited some property, he attracts a number of hangers-on who create a community of irresponsible, pleasure-seeking, though largely harmless, wastrels. Danny’s property, like Arthur’s Round Table, becomes the center of this all-male community for whom women are either sexual objects or damsels in distress.

Ironically the burden of being a property owner leads Danny to depression and possibly suicide. With Danny’s death comes the end of the community and the camaraderie, as the paisanos disperse and “no two walked together.” Property is thus the basis for both the beginning and the end of their temporary social utopia. The fleeting enjoyment of freedom, community, and pleasure is followed by inevitable decline and fall.

Is the novel a socially conscious celebration of the paisano underclass or is it a satire on their wasted lives and their ambivalent relationship to property? Does Danny’s apotheosis as a mythic hero in the local imagination represent a redemptive conclusion or is it a satire on the human ability to create a grandiose fantasy out of a mundane and paltry reality?

Can the novel be read as a modern retelling of ancient myth, with its cycle of creation, fertility, quest and triumph, followed by decline, death, and rebirth, or is it a kind of mock epic that makes the paisanos look ridiculous by comparison to the mythic heroes?

The issue of whether such questions represent the irresolvable contradiction of textuality, as the Deconstructionists would have it, or the complexities of human experience captured in literary form is yet another ambiguity at the heart of literary study.

Daisy Miller and Doubt

Now that I have Netflix, I’ve been watching a lot of movies, some of which remind me of famous books (see previous post). This time it was the 2008 film Doubt about a very severe nun who accuses a priest of child abuse on very flimsy, though compelling, evidence. The priest resigns his position, which the nun takes as his confession, but in the end she breaks down and confesses to another nun that she has “such doubt” about his guilt.

Most friends that I talked to about the film thought the priest was guilty, but I was not so sure; indeed, at the end of the film, I leaned toward his innocence, at least in this case.

The film is deliberately ambiguous, as are many great works of literature. I was struck by the theme of gossip and the use of the wind blowing around the autumn leaves as a symbol of suspicious talk, speculation, and allegations about others based on ambiguous appearances.

I was reminded of the 1878 novella Daisy Miller by Henry James about a young American woman in Europe who is destroyed by malicious gossip about her sexual activity, gossip that is based on unconventional, but completely harmless, behavior.

Daisy dies of malaria, which she catches while out at night unchaperoned with a man at the Roman Coliseum. Literally, “malaria” means “bad air,” a symbol, like the wind in Doubt, of malicious gossip. Like those who were sacrificed in public at the ancient Coliseum, Daisy serves as a modern-day sacrificial victim of social judgment.

Whenever I have taught the book, it has stirred heated discussion, some seeing Daisy as an innocent victim, others seeing her as a shameless “flirt” and “tease,” if not entirely a “slut.” Some readers complain about the ambiguity: “Why can’t he say what he means?” “Why leave us in such doubt?”

Indeed, what is the value of ambiguity and doubt, whether it be in literature or film? My answer is that the fictional situation is a rehearsal, if you will, or reenactment, of our actual life experience, so often full of ambiguity and doubt, despite our frequent, sometimes desperate, clinging to certainty.