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Expect the unexpected

I knew the name of the author and title of the story, but nothing more. I assumed it was about trying to find a suitable husband. It’s not!

Before reading this, I learned that O’Connor wrote Southern Gothic, with a Grotesque slant, and that she was a devout Roman Catholic. This story starts with the first and ends with the latter.

From the very first word, it’s clear this is a waspish satire about a somewhat dysfunctional family:
��THE grandmother didn’t want to go to Florida.��
Not “Grandmother��, or “the children’s grandmother��, let alone a name. Then, very soon after, “The children’s mother��. Again, no name, and unlike the grandmother, she doesn't even speak. Such detachment. The grandmother lives with her son, his wife, and their three children.

Despite her objections, they go on a roadtrip to Florida. The older two children, John Wesley and June Star, are snarky brats, and the grandmother is a selfish and manipulative snob, anxious to be seen as a good southern lady. It’s a little clichéd but quite amusing, and there’s some careful foreshadowing. As the grandmother pontificates, it becomes clear she has attitudes that fit the time and place:
��‘Oh look at the cute little pickaninny!�� she said and pointed to a Negro child standing in the door of a shack. ‘Wouldn’t that make a picture, now?����

They stop at a roadside diner, and the grandmother and proprietor reminisce about better times:
��‘A good man is hard to find,�� Red Sammy said. ‘Everything is getting terrible. I remember the day you could go off and leave your screen door unlatched. Not no more.��...
The old lady said that in her opinion Europe was entirely to blame for the way things were now.��

Then there’s a sudden change of setting, tone, and genre: (view spoiler)[ to horror then religion (hide spoiler)].


Image: The Misfit (spotlight on one stick figure that is unlike the others) ()

And the moral is��

I wasn’t really sure, but it sure was preachy, and that’s not my thing. I couldn't decide if O'Connor was highlighting God’s love and forgiveness, exposing the hypocrisy of the desperate, or both. It’s often said that flattery will get you everywhere, but will it get you into heaven?
��I know you’re a good man. You don’t look a bit like you have common blood.��

I found the final three lines the most baffling and they make the story hard to rate, hence a neutral 3*. That fits the symbolic recurrence of the number three in the story, echoing famous Bible passages.

O’Connor explained somewhat in an essay about the element of suspense in the story, . However, I was most struck by the opening words:
��A story really isn't any good unless it successfully resists paraphrase, unless it hangs on and expands the mind.��
On that basis, perhaps I should have awarded it more than 3*.

The following week I read another story of hers that was similar in many ways, but dialled down a little. It seemed an anti-racist story, until I read how O'Connor identified with the protagonist. See my review of Revelation HERE.

Quotes

�� “A young woman in slacks, whose face was as broad and innocent as a cabbage and was tied around with a green head-kerchief that had two points on the top like rabbit’s ears.�� [innocent cabbage?!]

�� “The trees were full of silver-white sunlight and the meanest of them sparkled.��

�� “I ain’t a good man�� but I ain’t the worst in the world neither.��

Short story club

I read this as one of the stories in The Art of the Short Story, by Dana Gioia, from which I'm aiming to read one story a week with The Short Story Club, starting 2 May 2022.

You can read this story .

You can join the group here.