Episode 277: “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor

Summary

The Literary Life Podcast Summary Episode 277: “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor
Release Date: May 20, 2025
Hosts: Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks
Guest: Lifelong reader Cindy Rollins

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Introduction

In Episode 277 of The Literary Life Podcast, hosts Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks delve deep into Flannery O’Connor’s renowned short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” Joined by lifelong reader Cindy Rollins, the trio embarks on an insightful exploration of the story’s themes, symbolism, and its place within 20th-century literature.

Angelina Stanford (00:18):
“This is not just another book chat podcast. Lifelong reader Cindy Rollins joins teachers Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks for an ongoing conversation about the science, skill, and art of reading.”

Contextualizing Flannery O’Connor

Angelina emphasizes the importance of understanding O’Connor within the broader literary movements of her time. This episode is the second in a series focusing on O’Connor, building upon insights from the previous discussion.

Angelina Stanford (03:18):
“We are here to talk about Flannery O’Connor's short story, A Good Man is Hard to Find. This is the second episode in a series on Flannery O’Connor, and I would strongly recommend listening to last week’s episode for necessary context.”

Commonplace Quotes and Symbolism

The episode begins with sharing of commonplace quotes that set the tone for the discussion.

Thomas Banks (06:28):
“I was reading Samuel Johnson's Lives of the Poets... 'He who courts his mistress with Roman imagery deserves to lose her.'”

Angelina Stanford (08:37):
“This is a quote by Flannery O’Connor on this story. She says, 'There's a lot of violence, but no one gets hurt. I will explain that.'”

Analyzing the Story’s Surface and Depth

Angelina and Thomas dissect the initial perceptions of the story, addressing common misconceptions and highlighting O’Connor’s intent to challenge superficial interpretations.

Angelina Stanford (12:15):
“If you take an American literature class, this story will probably be included. It’s not necessarily my favorite, but it’s a good representation of what she's about.”

Thomas Banks (16:45):
“Flannery interacts with criticism and provides interpretive keys through her letters and essays, offering profound insights into her storytelling.”

Character Dynamics and Themes

The hosts analyze the characters, particularly the grandmother and the Misfit, exploring themes of superficial Christianity, nihilism, and grace.

Angelina Stanford (27:07):
“She is a Southern, middle-class, respectable woman whose superficial Christian values are about to be shattered.”

Thomas Banks (52:20):
“The Misfit sees through the grandmother’s facade, recognizing the superficiality of her outward goodness.”

Symbolism and Foreshadowing

The discussion delves into the rich symbolism within the story, such as the car accident representing the disruption of superficial values and the journey symbolizing a spiritual quest toward death and revelation.

Angelina Stanford (20:17):
“They’re on a journey to death. The car accident symbolizes life’s unpredictability and the collision of modernity with traditional values.”

Thomas Banks (22:44):
“Passing a large cotton field with graves foreshadows the impending tragedy, making the confrontation with death inevitable.”

Climactic Encounter and Revelation

The hosts break down the pivotal encounter between the grandmother and the Misfit, highlighting the moment of grace and the collapse of superficialism.

Angelina Stanford (73:52):
“The grandmother realizes she too is a sinner, a moment of grace that transforms her perspective in the face of death.”

Thomas Banks (86:34):
“The Misfit represents nihilism, challenging the grandmother’s superficial Christian values and exposing her true self.”

Conclusion and Reflections

Angelina and Thomas reflect on the story’s impact, O’Connor’s literary craftsmanship, and the profound moral and spiritual questions it raises. They encourage listeners to engage deeply with O’Connor’s works to appreciate the layers of meaning and the subtle interplay of violence and grace.

Angelina Stanford (89:45):
“Flannery O’Connor is a very important 20th-century figure. This story is a masterful blend of symbolism, character development, and thematic depth that challenges readers to look beyond the surface.”

Thomas Banks (92:08):
“Her stories are spiritual allegories, intentionally crafted to reveal the true nature of her characters through moments of crisis and grace.”

Key Takeaways

• Superficial Christianity vs. True Grace: The grandmother embodies superficial Christian values that crumble in the face of genuine crisis, leading to a moment of true repentance.

• Nihilism and Modernity: The Misfit symbolizes the existential and nihilistic threats of modernity, challenging traditional moral frameworks.

• Symbolism and Foreshadowing: O’Connor employs rich symbolism, such as the car accident and the journey, to foreshadow the story's tragic outcome and deeper moral lessons.

• Character Mirroring: The interactions between the grandmother and the Misfit reveal their inner truths, highlighting themes of sin, redemption, and the human condition.

Recommended Listening

For those intrigued by this episode, Angelina recommends exploring more of Flannery O’Connor’s works and participating in their specialized classes for a deeper understanding.

Angelina Stanford (90:54):
“If you want to dive deeper, check out our Flannery O’Connor class at HouseOfHumaneLetters.com. We explore her letters, essays, and a variety of her stories to uncover the profound spiritual allegories she weaves.”

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Notable Quotes:

• Angelina Stanford (73:52):
  “Everything about her is surface. And superficial and sentimental.”

• Thomas Banks (86:34):
  “The Misfit represents nihilism, challenging the grandmother’s superficial Christian values.”

• Angelina Stanford (89:45):
  “Flannery O’Connor is a very important 20th-century figure.”

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Additional Resources:

• Website: HouseOfHumaneLetters.com
• Sister Podcast: The Well Read Poem
• Classes Highlighted:
  • Flannery O’Connor Class
  • Harry Potter: Gateway to the Literary Tradition
  • Five Victorian Figures
  • Fairy Tale Reading Skills

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Closing Remarks:

Angelina and Thomas encourage listeners to immerse themselves in literary exploration, emphasizing that understanding great works like O’Connor’s requires looking beyond surface narratives to uncover deeper truths about humanity and spirituality.

Angelina Stanford (90:56):
“Keep crafting your literary life because stories will save the world.”

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This summary captures the essence of Episode 277, providing listeners with a comprehensive understanding of the discussion around Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” For a more detailed exploration, listening to the full episode is highly recommended.

Transcript

[Angelina Stanford]

This is not just another book chat podcast. Lifelong reader Cindy Rollins joins teachers Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks for an ongoing conversation about the science, skill and art of reading. Well, explore the lost intellectual tradition and discover how to fully enter into the great works of literature. Learn what books mean while delighting in the sheer joy of imagination. Each week we will rescue story from the ivory tower and bring it to your couch, your kitchen, and your commute. The literary life is for everyone because in the words of Stratford Caldecott, to be enchanted by story is to be granted a deeper insight into reality. Join us for an ever unfolding discussion of how stories will save the world. This is the Literary Life Podcast. Welcome back to the Literary Life Podcast. I'm Angelina Stanford, and here with me is a man who is in no way a misfit.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, that's good to know. The mysterious misfit. Not on the run from the law. Definitely not. I think my crimes would have been more boring than his anyway.

[Angelina Stanford]

Like a boring serial killer, you know?

[Thomas Banks]

Well, more like white collar, sort of just, you know, dull stuff.

[Angelina Stanford]

The theft of ancient manuscripts.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, yeah. Misappropriation of funds.

[Angelina Stanford]

Just run in the mill, White car.

[Thomas Banks]

Well, no, I have actually thought, like my dream. My dream type of. Well, no, not seriously, but thief. You know, I think my dream job, if I were a thief, would be something like the National Treasure Movies, like stealing priceless manuscripts and stuff like that. However, I have thought that it's too, like, America specific, the National Treasure Movies. And there need to be more like international treasure type movies where you steal things. More like, you know, I don't know, a charred manuscript from Pompeii. Herculaneum. That would be more my type. Someone should get a hold of Nicolas Cage.

[Angelina Stanford]

I would totally be your girlfriend. The Bonnie to your Clyde.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, there you go.

[Angelina Stanford]

Absolutely. And I see, I have thought, and I've actually posed this to my students. I think we should pull off the heist of the millennia and rob the Library of Congress. Like, nobody would see it coming.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Would they even notice if some of these books went missing? No one checks them out.

[Thomas Banks]

That's true.

[Angelina Stanford]

I feel like we have a solid plan here.

[Thomas Banks]

No, that's a. That's actually a very good idea. Shake on it. Now that it's been broadcasted for the world to know, probably. You know, FBI agents will come, you know, busting through the doors for us, unwisely plotting our theft for all the world to hear.

[Angelina Stanford]

There you go. Well, no one said we were masterminds of criminals.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, we'll stick to what we know.

[Angelina Stanford]

We are here to talk about Flannery o' Connor's short story, A Good man is Hard to Find. Now if you have, let's just imagine this is the future and you have googled A Good man is Hard to Find, help me understand what this crazy story means. And you have been led to this podcast. I should point out that this is the second episode in a series on Flannery o' Connor. And I would strongly recommend that you listen to last week where we introduced her and put her in the context of the larger 20th century movement of literature. We'll be referencing some of that, but you def. Much, much needed important information in the previous podcast episode, so I would definitely recommend that you start there. And I should also mention that I previously taught a mini class on Flannery o' Connor and we went through her stories and her letters and her essays. And if any of you are going to be intrigued at the end of this episode, it's like, okay, okay, you've sold me. There's something amazing going on here and I want more. You can go to our website, HouseOfHumaneLetters.com and you can purchase that Flannery O' Connor class. And before we jump in, just a quick reminder as well about what we've got going on with our summer classes. We mentioned the full schedule last week. We've got another fantastic music webinar by Karita Thompson. We've got another fantastic summer class by Dr. Jason Baxter. But I wanted to point out today that you and I have. We have our thing. So you're going to be teaching a class on five Victorian figures.

[Thomas Banks]

Five Victorian lives in various professions and walks of life. And all of them are public figures. And yeah, with, with a good deal of sort of historical portraiture of the age itself. That's kind of what I want to do.

[Angelina Stanford]

And I will be continuing with my series on Harry Potter, gateway to the literary tradition, which those of you who took the first class know that it's not. It's a graduate level class on Harry Potter, but it is for all ages because I'm pretty good at breaking things down. So we had middle schoolers and we had middle aged people and everybody was enjoy it. I really got a kick out of the parents and kids that took it together and watching their faces come to life. So we've already covered Harry Potter book one on the podcast that was last summer. So that one's free for you. It's free class there. And I'll probably mention something again about that at the end of the podcast. And then I taught the class on books two and three last summer, which again is available in our store. If you missed that, you have time to listen to the podcast, buy that class, and be ready to jump in with books four and five, the last two weeks of June with me. So, again, all this information about our complete summer lineup is at HouseOfHumaneLetters and you.com and you can also find out about our previous catalog as well as our year long classes. But we finally, we finished the school year, so congratulations to us. And we don't. There's no, no rest for us. We're jumping right into our summer classes and then we'll have our full schedule back up in the fall. So check out that if you want to go deeper with us on any humanities topic. All right, well, let's kick this off by sharing a commonplace quote. Do you have a commonplace quote?

[Thomas Banks]

I do indeed. I was reading this past weekend some of the chapters in Samuel Johnson's Lives of the Poets, which incidentally, was pretty much the first book of literary criticism that I really got into. My dad gave me a copy when I was 18 or 17 or something like that. And anyway, I quite like it. So, Samuel Johnson, in his Lives of the Poets, writing about some obscure figure of his day who's basically been forgotten, says he that courts his mistress with Roman imagery deserves to lose her, for she may with good reason suspect his sincerity.

[Angelina Stanford]

I love that quote. It's so you. But at the same time, I'm feeling a little panicky. I mean, didn't you court me like that? What does that say?

[Thomas Banks]

Roman imagery. Yeah, I know. I guess, once again, being the exception that proves the rule. Maybe, but. But yeah, he's talking about, I mean, to contextualize that quote, he's talking about a sort of pastoral poem that this fellow wrote, comparing himself to a shepherd and his love to a shepherdess in some sort of classical arcadia, you know, like. Like you do, you know. And that was a type of writing that Samuel Johnson had no patience for. He did not care for pastoral eclogues. I mean, I'm sure he made an exception for Virgil, of course, but other than that, he thought it was just.

[Angelina Stanford]

A lot of bad versions.

[Thomas Banks]

I mean, he was actually very. A very popular type of poetic writing in the 17th, 18th centuries. Kind of died out in ours. But Samuel Johnson basically says that. Yeah, so he, of course, typically threatens to die if, you know, she does not marry him in the poem in this kind of overstated language. And who could blame such A woman for refusing. So there you are. He who courts his mistress with Roman imagery deserves to lose her.

[Angelina Stanford]

I love it.

[Thomas Banks]

Samuel Johnson has spoken. The great cham himself.

[Angelina Stanford]

There you go. All right. So for my commonplace quote, I am doing something out of character. Last time I read the world's longest commonplace quote from Alice Walker about Flannery o' Connor in her work. This time, I'm going the opposite direction. I have a pithy remark.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, it's too bad I was able to take a lunch break the last time. You read your commonplace.

[Angelina Stanford]

No, you'll have to pay.

[Thomas Banks]

Well, I'll just have to pay attention this time.

[Angelina Stanford]

Put that hamburger away. It's cold. Because I have a lot to say in this episode. This is a quote by Flannery o' Connor on this story. Okay, so this is her responding to this story, she said. Or either, rather, her responding to people freaking out about this story. She says, there's a lot of violence, but no one gets hurt. I will explain that.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay.

[Angelina Stanford]

As we get going, that's my tease. There's a lot of violence, but no one gets hurt. Now, you were excited rereading this this morning and saying that I enjoyed the story in a second. Yeah. She's on, I think, future reads because you can kind of wrap your head around what she's trying to do. And I was also laughing just thinking about, you know, actually, I'll just say what I told you right before we came in here to record. I said, I am going to knock your socks off.

[Thomas Banks]

All right. All right. You frequently do, so I don't doubt.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, I am so excited to just blow this story open for you. So she. We actually have an essay of her talking about this. So this is an early story, 1953. And because it's you, as actually, a lot of ways you can tell, it's an early story. Less use of dialect. So she's much more dialect in the later stories. And the ending. So this is still early in her career. And the ending is pretty enigmatic. So if you were at home saying, what on earth did I just read? You know, you're not the only one to feel like that. In later stories, she makes the endings much, much more explicit. But however, with this story, she wrote an essay on it. It's Flannery o' Connor on her own work. And she talks about how this is the most Sophoclean of her works. So she's got that reversal and recognition. She also said that she hoped the proper response to this would be pity and terror. Yes, A very.

[Thomas Banks]

She does evoke both of those emotions.

[Angelina Stanford]

I think a great ancient Greek thing. You recall last week we talked about Thomas Merton comparing her to Sophocles. She also. Well, I mean, she. I think if you did not see the death coming, maybe you want to think about how you read, because it's really heavily foreshadowed, as we'll see. But she is not an author going for shock value. And so she gave a speech, this on her own work, where she just blurts out the ending and then explains it and doesn't think that that's a flaw. She feels like if you know the ending of the book, it's actually going to help you to understand more what she's trying to do.

[Thomas Banks]

She said she didn't write for shock value. Do you know if you're more familiar with the critical, the interpretive tradition regarding her work than I am, but have a lot of people refused to take her at her word?

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, I mean, we talked about that last time. A lot of people misunderstand her. Even her fans misunderstand her. They definitely throw her into that category with those other writers. But I think if we look really carefully at what she's done here, we're going to see that it's something different. So I chose this story for a number of reasons. It is probably the most commonly anthologized of her stories. Like, if you take an American literature class, this will probably.

[Thomas Banks]

I looked that very fact up. Yes.

[Angelina Stanford]

It's not necessarily my favorite story of hers. And I'll talk about what that is when we get to the end, if we want to talk about where should you go from here? But it is one you're going to very, very commonly run across.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, I think that's important. I think it's. When you want to know a writer, sometimes the book which represents them best is not necessarily their finest achievement, but just trying to get a sense of what they can do, what they're trying to do, the milieu, their style, the fictional world they move in. So this is a very good sample of.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

[Thomas Banks]

If you read this story, you know what she's about as a novel, and.

[Angelina Stanford]

Especially after today and we explain it, I think that you'd be able to take this and then read her other stories and be able to kind of, you know, get sorted about it. But, yeah, it is very commonly anthologized. I also feel like in the Facebook group, it's always like just a few. Few weeks go by before somebody says, okay, I heard y' all talk About Flannery o' Connor. I picked up a story, A Good man is Hard to Find. I'm horrified. What did I just read? Or I'm disgusted or I'm angry. Or I never want to read this again. And that's why, actually, we're doing this episode, because I just felt like I needed to defend my girl. Like, you guys are misunderstanding this story. So. Yeah, right. You sit down and you read it. And it's got this cliche, very intentionally cliched title. A Good man is Hard to Find. And then she proceeds to do nothing cliche. The first time I ever heard of this story, I thought it was a love story. Oh, well, it sounds like that, right? Like a good man's heart.

[Thomas Banks]

That's what she concluded. What she concluded. After many months on Christian Mingle.

[Angelina Stanford]

That was it. That was exactly it. Match.com. and she was like, a good man is indeed hard to find. Yeah. So, I mean, anybody else who might be, like, misled by the title is going to be for a heck of a shock that they open it up and it's actually a story about a serial killer murdering an entire family.

[Thomas Banks]

I know. Just thinking, reflecting on that makes me think that she's so lucky that she died before the age of Amazon reviews. Because I bet you any. Like, I don't know this for a fact, but I'm going to bet you that there is someone. Yeah, I don't think there are actually any good men in this story. Giving it two stars. Totally misleading.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

I mean, it's. Yeah, exactly. I thought she was going to introduce, like, at least one. I mean.

[Angelina Stanford]

But no, actually, I think Flannery o' Connor would love that review and she would say, you read it correctly, there are no good men in this story. That is exactly it. But. So we're going to just jump right in then. All right, so just the very topic of the story, A serial killer murders a whole family. And if you read it and you're like, this just felt like a random act of violence, then it would seem like she belongs with all those nihilistic writers we talked about last time or.

[Thomas Banks]

Like some sort of more sensationalistic Stephen King type of.

[Angelina Stanford]

Right. But I think if we pay careful attention as we go through the story, we're going to see that she's actually undercutting that in a number of ways. And this is not a meaningless act of violence. It's not random. You know, you have the. You have almost that Greek chorus of the kids yelling over and over where we've been in an accident. We've been in an accident. But of course, in the universe, you know, as a hillbilly, Thomas, as she calls herself, there are no accidents. This is a divinely ordered universe, and you're going to see that this is not. This is not an accident either. I remember. Emily Rabel, I'm going to call you out right here. So about five years ago, I took. I. I took some members of our Patreon through this story about five years ago. And Emily Rabel, our dear friend, friend of the podcast, our friend, she had never read Flannery o' Connor before. And so she reads A Good man is Hard to Find in preparation for my teaching. And then she messages me, and she's mad. She's mad at me. She's mad at Flannery o' Connor. She's like, I angry. Cried through this whole thing. I cannot believe you made me read this horrible thing. And then she was like, okay, you know, I'm gonna. I'm gonna try to trust you, and I'm gonna come to this class where you're teaching it, but, I mean, I can't believe you made me read this horrible thing. Right? So I go and I lead her through the class, and I'm gonna be saying the same sorts of stuff here. And then when it was over, she messaged me and apologized. She's like, I should have never doubted you. And I love Flannery. Now. She ended up taking the whole Flannery o' Connor class and becoming a big fan. But you do have to, I think, orient yourself to her and realize what she's doing. And once you sort of catch her vibe, all of her stories start to make sense. And like I said, this is an early story. What she's doing is a lot more hidden. It's almost like you can imagine a creative writer teacher saying, don't spell it all out. And she doesn't. And then people are confused. In later stories, however, she very much more spells it out. And of course, we have an essay where she spells it out so we know if we're reading it correctly.

[Thomas Banks]

Given the number of letters of hers where she talks about the craft of fiction and other nonfiction writings of hers that we have, she probably gives us the interpretive key to her stories more than probably most.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, she definitely does.

[Thomas Banks]

Major writers.

[Angelina Stanford]

She definitely does. She interacts with the criticism, and she's writing to people. And of course, she's writing to Caroline Gordon back and forth a lot about her work. And Caroline is giving her tips, and they're talking back and forth and editorial suggestions. And one of the sort of gifts of her being stuck at home in her illness is that she lives through her letters. And so we just have such a profound amount of her correspondence. You know, we don't, we don't have that. Now, you and I joke about the collected texts of different people, but, you know, thank God. Thank goodness she couldn't FaceTime with Caroline Gordon this way. We have, we have all this documentation. We could see her whole. Her whole process here. But all the elements of all Flannery o' Connor stories, they're right here. And again, because this is so often anthologized, I figured, let's just start with this one, because this is almost always the one people start with, you know, Flannery also responded about the violence in the story. Again, I think you're going to see it has meaning, but this is very Greek. She said the violence happens all off stage and they're not tortured. And that. I think that's, that's an important distinction.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. If you were to film this, I guess. I mean, I guess the grandmother is shot for all to see.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, but then nobody can see that. No, we'll definitely see that. We'll definitely see that. All right, well, why don't we just start at the beginning, because we already mentioned we have a cliche title, and then she's going to do absolutely nothing cliche through this entire thing. And one of the things that I notice about reading a lot of Flannery o' Connor is she always sets up everything in the first paragraph.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, okay.

[Angelina Stanford]

These stories are very, very.

[Thomas Banks]

I did not know that.

[Angelina Stanford]

So what do we see here? First paragraph. The grandmother doesn't want to go to Florida. Right. So we have. We have an adult child and he's living with his mother, and she's dominating the family. Her desires, her needs, what she wants to do. Her vision of the family is completely dominating. The grandmother and the daughter in law don't have names and the daughter in law doesn't talk.

[Thomas Banks]

And the baby.

[Angelina Stanford]

The baby also does not have a name. Right. And the daughter in law does not talk. That's true.

[Thomas Banks]

She's not much of a presence in her own family.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's right, because the grandmother is just dominate. She dominates the entire family. Okay.

[Thomas Banks]

And you said that this is kind of common in her story.

[Angelina Stanford]

It's kind of common.

[Thomas Banks]

An overbearing parent who's.

[Angelina Stanford]

It's a little bit of a reversal here because usually you have the single adult child living under the care of the mother. And Here it's reversed, and the mother is living under the care of her.

[Thomas Banks]

And she has to come with them because, you know, she goes where they go.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, well, that's what she says. But that juxtaposition. Well, we'll get to that in a second. The first paragraph's always significant of Flannery o' Connor story. And if you notice the juxtapositions, like what does she put next to each other is also very, very significant. So in the first paragraph, she's like, she says, right, We. I was just reading the newspaper right here. We can't go to Florida. There's a serial killer there. So immediately, you know, these two are on a collision course. Right, sure. Metaphorically, literally, they're about to meet one another. Right. And. But then she says, I wouldn't take my children in any direction with the criminal like that. A loose in it. I couldn't answer to my conscience if I did so right out of the gate. She's spiritually manipulative. Okay. So this is going to be. This is going to be important.

[Thomas Banks]

So any road trip with this woman is probably also going to be a guilt trip.

[Angelina Stanford]

Wow. Correct, though. Yeah, correct though. She also bullies them. She spiritually manipulates. She bullies. Okay. So we've got this dynamic here. And, you know, the, the grandchildren are very interesting because they, they just blurt out true things. Right. Like, well, if you don't want to come, don't come. And then the girl says, oh, she wouldn't miss it. She wouldn't miss it. Right. And she wouldn't miss it because if she stayed home, she'd be afraid she'd miss something. Right. So this is. Well, let me put it this way. I'll use a story to explain about this grandmother because you're not from the South.

[Thomas Banks]

No.

[Angelina Stanford]

And you don't have a Southern grandmother.

[Thomas Banks]

I don't.

[Angelina Stanford]

So I shall explain. There was a, There was a. There was a scholar at the time who read this story and decided that the grandmother was a witch and that's why she had a cat. Oh, I know, I know, I know.

[Thomas Banks]

Because all cat people, obviously.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah. So she's a witch. And Flannery pushed back on that and was like, she's not a witch only. And she said, only a Northern person would think this is a witch. Like, every Southerner has met this woman, this, this, this, this Southern lady who's spiritually manipulative and a bully and, you know, sugar wouldn't melt in her mouth.

[Thomas Banks]

But not a bully in an obvious sort of way.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's right.

[Thomas Banks]

In more of a. Her bullying has, I guess, an air of refinement about it.

[Angelina Stanford]

Exactly.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

As we'll see what Flannery is going to do with that. So it's kind of a, you know, I'm gonna complain and say I don't wanna go and act like I have to go, but really I want to go. And so the grandkids sort of see right through that. Oh, she's afraid she'll miss something. The next morning, the grandmother was the first one in the car ready to go. All right, so that's the juxtapositions I'm talking about. She just went from, well, I don't wanna go on this trip to I'm the first one ready. She's sitting in the car, she's waiting on everybody, she wants to go.

[Thomas Banks]

And she also has. We pick up on this as the story goes along, but she also is a person of a certain age who is always comparing the past and the present to the advantage of the former.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, yes, we're gonna talk about that.

[Thomas Banks]

People aren't nice anymore.

[Angelina Stanford]

We're absolutely gonna talk about that. Because that's very important to Flannery's whole thing that she's got going on here. So you might have taken note of the fact that they're going on a three day trip. Hello, symbolism. Well, we'll get back to that in a second. And you noticed the name of the cat?

[Thomas Banks]

Yes, Pitti. Seeing. And of course, fans of Gilbert and Sullivan will know this already, but in the Mikado, Pitti Singh is one of the three little schoolgirls, along with Peep Bo and Yum Yum.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah. So of course she's got a. She's got a cat named Pitti Singh, but she. She has snuck the cat into the car.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes.

[Angelina Stanford]

Bailey would not be happy if he knew this.

[Thomas Banks]

Chekhov's cat.

[Angelina Stanford]

It is totally Chekhov's cat. It's also Chekhov. Serial killer.

[Thomas Banks]

Weaponize this cat.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's exactly what's gonna happen.

[Thomas Banks]

I was thinking that actually one thing that had not occurred to me the first time I read this story, but it's an example of a very accomplished writer making a very impressive work out of kind of. I don't want to say bad, but I'll say maybe inauspicious materials. Because you could imagine a bad pulp writer telling the same story that follows the same arc with the same characters, but not making nearly as much of it. So. Yes, Anyway, so that was another thing I picked up on this time around.

[Angelina Stanford]

So as we get into the story, just to quickly remind you of some of the important things that we said last time. We talked about how she is very deliberately pushing back against nihilism, that she appears to be a nihilistic writer, but she's going to show us that life is not a series of random, meaningless events. And if you're a nihilist, kind of all you're left with is power. Right. So she rejects all of that. And we also need to remember that she thinks the fundamental problem with humanity is that we are fallen. That's the fundamental problem. And so that puts her at odds with, you know, the greater culture at the time. And she's also showing us characters who are visible souls. You might recall that from last time. Right. Their insides are on the outside. Okay, so let's see what's going on here. So next they're in the car and like, this lady has dressed to the nines. Okay. This is 1953. She's a Southern mom. A Southern grand. She's something. I should say. She's a Southern.

[Thomas Banks]

She doesn't go outside without a hat.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's right. So she's got her hat on, her gloves. But not only that, she's drawing attention to that. Right. And it's contrasted to the daughter who is wearing the 1953 equivalent of yoga pants and a sweatshirt and her messy blind. Like, she's. She's got babies and kids and she's in the car and she falls asleep immediately. And she's not dressed for town, as my grandmother's.

[Thomas Banks]

Was my response. Correct. I found the children quite annoying.

[Angelina Stanford]

I think you are supposed to.

[Thomas Banks]

We're supposed to find them annoying. Okay, good. I hoped I wasn't being too judgmental there.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay, so. So she. It's a big deal for her to be respectable. So she's going out in public and she's going to be respectable. Of course, that's going to be a part of the conversation she's going to have with the guy at the diner later about the whole, like, kids today, am I right? Like, they don't dress to go out. It's a shame. But then she says she dressed up in case of an accident, and anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady. Okay, now, two things about that. One, as a Southerner and anybody who's Southern, we have been told that.

[Thomas Banks]

Really?

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, my gosh.

[Thomas Banks]

I can't even tell you that's not an exaggeration.

[Angelina Stanford]

That is not.

[Thomas Banks]

Wow.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay, this is where the Southern Girl has to explain to her Northern husband that this is not an exaggeration. Honey, this is going to freak you out. I'm pretty sure at least once a week of my entire upbringing, my mother would say to me, make sure you have unclean underwear, because if you get in a car accident and die. And then she wouldn't even finish the sentence. But I would think to myself, you think there's a chance I might die today? And the number one thing on your mind is you don't want to be judged when I'm. When my corpse is brought in that I don't have on clean underground. And. But right now, I'm telling you, all these Southern women are cackling and hauling at hearing this because they're saying, yes. That is what my mother and grandmother said, too.

[Thomas Banks]

I did not. An older woman of a certain age, may she rest in peace, who. She gave it as her opinion that women should not leave house without their gloves. This was not a woman who grew up with any sort of advantages or anything like this. And she was not a Southerner. But maybe it's also. Yeah. Anyway. That is fascinating that this woman is not really an exaggerated caricature.

[Angelina Stanford]

Not at all. So a couple of things. Okay. Death is being foreshadowed. She is, in fact, going to die today. And what she is thinking about is superficial things. I want to. I. And what will people think? I want people to know that I'm a lady.

[Thomas Banks]

I kept up appearances until the end.

[Angelina Stanford]

Appearances, exactly. So she. Disrespectable veneer. We're going to see that this respectable veneer is going to be undercut by Flannery o' Connor. But clearly this woman thinks of herself as a model person. Right? She's a. She's a good person. We also see that she is a cautious rule follower. She's very concerned about manner. She's a literal backseat driver.

[Thomas Banks]

Correct. All of these things.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay.

[Thomas Banks]

Can I tell you. Actually, I. I told you this already, I think. But this was a realization I had which has absolutely no literary value. But it amused me to make it. This is basically National Lampoon's vacation because you remember in the first one, they had the. The aunt or the grandma who no one likes and who complains the whole way and dies, I think, halfway in the trip. Anyway. So this is basically National Lampoon's vacation. If it took a turn for the worse, what really happened to the Griswolds?

[Angelina Stanford]

Exactly. So. Exactly. So. All right. And we notice that the stuff she's saying while they're in the car is just one cliche after another. I wouldn't talk about my native country like that. When I was a child, we didn't talk about things like that. Right. So it's just all cliches. In my time, children were more respectful of their native states and their parents and everything else.

[Thomas Banks]

The world and everything in it except me is going to hell, basically.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes, people did right then. Oh, look at that cute little pig in it. I know.

[Thomas Banks]

Like some of. Just some of her. Like these flabby generalizations. People were nicer back then.

[Angelina Stanford]

It's right. Right, but we don't want to miss this juxtaposition. She just said, when back in my day, children were more respectable. People did right then. Oh, look at that cute little piccaninny. Okay, so you not being a Southerner, that is what you call.

[Thomas Banks]

I know.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay, a small blacktop. So here's Flannery o' Connor's juxtaposition. She just said, back in the good old days, people did right. Oh, look. Now here's. Here's one of many references to slavery in the Old south through the whole story, undercutting that respectable veneer people did right back then. I mean, yeah, there was that whole little slavery thing, but basically, people did right back then, right? So o' Connor is undercutting that. Like, maybe this woman's respectable veneer is not what it appears to be. Especially when she says, oh, look how cute. I'd make a picture of that. Okay, so what we see is that she has this fantasy world of the Old South. It's a fantasy that's gonna actually cost them their lives and a couple pages in the story. But not dealing with people as they really are, but just dealing with the.

[Thomas Banks]

Idea of them and where certain people are sort of decorations for the world as I might like it, right? Whether it's the barefooted black child on the plantation.

[Angelina Stanford]

Child says, but he doesn't have any pants on. And she says, oh, well, he's probably poor. So what this means is she's actually looked at generational poverty and said, isn't that so cute? Let's take a picture. Right? So she doesn't deal with the real world at all. She's trapped up in this fantasy that in the past we had it right, and everything's going to hell now. Now, she does use the N word in here, and I want to address that. Okay, so Flannery o' Connor does do it, and she does it for two reasons. One, she says for realism. But here's the bigger Thing. Okay? She just put that word in the mouth of a woman who for three pages has been telling us what a respectable lady she is. And so the point is, a respectable lady thinks that that is respectable language. So that is another way that she is undercutting this. This veneer that she's got. Right? And. And Flannery says in a few other places, like she. She wants the reader to be shocked by that. She wants the reader to think, I can't believe a woman who would not go out without a hat and glove would think nothing of using that kind of language. Okay, so that. That's. That's clearly a problem. Now, in a lot of her stories, those kinds of racial elements are much more the focus. They're not really the focus of this story. It's just kind of one line. But, you know, it definitely points to something she develops in other stories. And she just keeps saying, again, oh, if I could paint, I'd paint that picture. So she does not see these children as real people. They're just like so much landscape to her. Right. There's just background to this fantasy that she has. All right, so they keep driving along, and they passed a large cotton field with five or six graves fenced in the middle of it. Okay? Boom, boom, boom. Foreshadowing. Because how many people in the car? Five people and a baby. How many graves are there? Five or six. Right. This is a little on the nose. They are. They're going. They're on a journey to their death. Now, she calls herself a hillbilly. Thomas Flannery o' Connor is so rooted in the Middle Ages. Right? And every journey story is the journey of the soul to God. It's the journey to meet death. Right? And she is foregrounding that. Right, right here in this apparently nihilistic story. This is about a people on a journey.

[Thomas Banks]

She's a woman who. Flannery is obviously someone who, like you said, has a mind rooted in, you know, the metaphysical systems of the Middle Ages and was, you know, fluent in its great philosophical works. Did she ever write any historical fiction at all or. All of her writings are contemporary. Okay, yeah, that's what I thought. I didn't know.

[Angelina Stanford]

However, look at that graveyard. The grandmother said, pointing it out, that was the old family burial ground that belonged to the Pantane plantation. Okay, so two things about that. One, she thinks it's romantic that an entire family was buried together. And that is exactly what is about to happen to her. And it's not going to be that romantic. Right. And the Second thing was that's the, all the romance of the Old south, right? It's a plantation. Oh, where's the plantation? John Wesley asked. Going with the wind. Haha. Okay. So we contrasted the perceived sentimentality of Gone with the Wind with what Flannery o' Connor is doing in the last episode. And I mean here there's a little nod to that, right? So the grandmother is very much caught up in the romance and the sentimentality of the Old south. And o' Connor has already showed us that is not rooted in reality. So she, she, she continues on about the whole sentimental thing, right? And what's proper and not proper. She's very focused on manners. The kids, they stop for lunch, don't throw the trash out the window. Like we're good people, we're respectable middle class people, we don't do that. She then starts telling a story about her past, which of course the kids don't get. I know I was courted by a fine man and he was a good man. And she tells that story and he.

[Thomas Banks]

Had stock in the Coca Cola company, which means that he even. That's kind of a flaw in the surface of her romanticized retelling of her history because that would mean that he wasn't a member of the old Southern aristocracy, that he was a new money type of guy probably.

[Angelina Stanford]

No, that's good, that's good. But she calls him a good man, right? And why? Because he was a gentleman.

[Thomas Banks]

So, so he, his manners were good.

[Angelina Stanford]

He has manners, he has a name.

[Thomas Banks]

He never installed anyone by accident.

[Angelina Stanford]

There you go. So he has, he has a name. He has, he comes from a good family and he has manners, right? And that's. So that's her. Check, check, check. He's a good man. We're going to see that.

[Thomas Banks]

He came from good people.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's for Leonard. He's going to flip this on it on its head. But this is definitely, you know, again, middle class, Southern, respectable woman. So they stop to eat at any, you know, any generic roadside down diner in the South. And you may have noticed that the story has primarily been told from the grandmother's perspective. And that is very cleverly done. It is an omniscient narrator. But we don't know what the other people are thinking and feeling. This is all from her perspective and that is rightfully done because she's dominating this entire family. What she wants, what she feels, everything. So she sits down at the diner and says to herself that her son doesn't have a naturally sunny disposition like she does.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, yes, I know. Yeah, it's funny. Like, everyone around me in sort of a bad mood all the time. Why would that be? Yeah, yeah, it's a mystery.

[Angelina Stanford]

It is a mystery. Now, we mentioned last time that Flannery thought her stories were hilarious, and I think we, we missed the humor.

[Thomas Banks]

Actually, this one does have a few funny moments.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, there's some naturally sunny disposition like me, because that's hilarious. Now, the little girl then says, okay, so again, you're not Southern, so maybe this seemed weird to you. I can tell you that this is this weird Southern charm thing where adults will say, oh, I'm gonna take you home. I'm gonna kidnap you, I'm gonna eat you up. Or weird things like I took your nose. I don't know why adults think any of that is charming, but they do.

[Thomas Banks]

And so I think that kind of transcends region.

[Angelina Stanford]

So we have this little playful moment, and the little girl says, you know, well, I wouldn't, I wouldn't want anything to do with you. Right. Okay, now, there's a couple things going on. One, the children definitely see through the grandmother's veneer, right? With her whole like, yeah, you don't really want to stay home. You just want to complain. You want to go. But they're also kind of bratty, right? So the grandmother's not wrong to be embarrassed. But her response is interesting because the child has broken the social code where we just, we don't. It's not polite to point out that this is a shabby place. We have to pretend that this is not shabby. That was something I struggled with a lot as a child, those little social niceties. It felt like a lie to me. So I can understand this, but let's take a look at her response. Aren't you ashamed? Hissed the grandmother. She hissed it like a snake. Which comes back later in the story. There's another.

[Thomas Banks]

That's right, that's right.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay, so she's hissed it.

[Thomas Banks]

I actually noticed. I, I, Wow, I didn't pick up on that.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, there you go. All right. So then she has this chit chat conversation with the, the owner of the diner. It's all like, oh, people today, am I right? Kids today, the world's going to hell in a hand basket.

[Thomas Banks]

The owner of the diner is Red Sam. Is he supposed to be someone that they have met before?

[Angelina Stanford]

No, that's just Southern hospitality. Southern, South.

[Thomas Banks]

They seem to be on familiar terms with each other really quickly or something.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's the South.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, I, that passage confused me because I Was like, are we supposed to know who this guy is or did they?

[Angelina Stanford]

So let me just tell a story about when you, my, my northern husband moved down south to marry me. And you were so perplexed about this all the time. Do you remember, like, we'd go to the grocery store and the butcher would chat us up and, oh, what are you gonna make with that tonight? Oh, that sounds good. And how did you enjoy the shrimp last week? And you said to me, no, I've.

[Thomas Banks]

Got used to that now.

[Angelina Stanford]

But at the time you turned to me and you said, so how long have you known that guy? And I said, I've never seen that guy before in my life.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, I don't know, maybe I have an approachable air about me or something like that, but I've had people come up to me like, I mean, okay, we'll use the grocery store. This is a few years ago. But someone I never met just started when I was standing in line with him, started looking at the stuff in my basket and asking what my wife was making me for dinner. And like, oh, wow. And he was joking, but like, you should have us over. That looks really good. Cause it was cool. We were going to make jambalaya or something like that. And anyway, it was, yeah, things like that, that once again, in Montana, everyone kind of keeps their distance.

[Angelina Stanford]

Somebody somewhere is yelling, montana's not the north. Okay, fine, it's the non south.

[Thomas Banks]

The non south. I came from the non South.

[Angelina Stanford]

But yes. Okay, so they're, they're chatting about that now. It's so funny, right? They're talking in cliches. And she, well, first of all, she says, well, you're a good man. That's why you get taken advantage of because you're such a good guy. And he's like, I am. I am a good guy. Now that you say it. Right. Well, a good man is hard to find, right? So we have that.

[Thomas Banks]

This little self congratulation and the cliches.

[Angelina Stanford]

A good man is. Is hard to find. Now he and the grandmother then discuss, discuss better times. Did you catch flannel? God, Flannery's amazing. She's amazing. Did you catch in this conversation where they place the blame on the, the world going to hell in a handbasket?

[Thomas Banks]

I, I don't think I did.

[Angelina Stanford]

Europe.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, yes, of course, yes.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay, Europe. Europe. All right, so there's a few different things going on. First, Flannery is.

[Thomas Banks]

That's right, that's right. They say that. They act like we're made of money.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, it's always Europe. It's Europe. Okay? So there's a few different things going on here. One, Flannery o' Connor is poking fun at the idea that still lingers very much in the United States that the problem in America is not an American problem, it's outside influence. It's Europe. Right, okay. And that's just part of being an American. And she's poking at that because really, if you want to know what's wrong with our country, you need to look right here. But she's. She's also tipping her hat a little bit because a lot of the isms we talked about last time, right? Existentialism and nihilism and, you know, modernism, absurdism, all the things that are dominating the 20th century, those things did come out of Europe. Okay? So there's a little. Little tip of the hat to there as well. And it's clear in this conversation that not only does the grandmother think that. That this man is a good man, she thinks that she is a good woman.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, yes.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay, That's.

[Thomas Banks]

There's no doubt on that point.

[Angelina Stanford]

All right? And, yeah, she's just. She's just romanticizing all of this stuff. Okay? So they get back in the car and grandmother falls asleep. She falls asleep. Okay. So I'm just going to tell you. I'm going to take you through the whole story and tell you what I think it means, but shoot. I would say about the last three times I've read it, by the way.

[Thomas Banks]

How many times have you read this story? Would you say half dozen?

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, maybe so. Okay, maybe so. Probably not more than that. Probably not worth. Well, let's see. Yeah, probably about six. Six, we'll say six or seven times. The last few times I've read it, though, what has stood out to me is this thing where she falls asleep. So she. The grandmother falls asleep and she wakes up and she's confused, right? She gets confused. She's. She's so confused, she's in the wrong state. Right. Okay. And that's how they're going to get lost. And. But then the misfit comes in later and he said. He's described as talking dreamily to her. And again, I've never read anybody saying this. I'm not saying this is correct. I'm just saying there is the possibility that everything that happens after this is a dream. And it connects, I think, with medieval dream literature. Like you have this kind of prophetic.

[Thomas Banks]

Dream, like Pierce Plowman or something.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, like Pierce Plowman. Okay. Now, even if she's not actually asleep. There is a huge theme in literature of man's essential problem is that he has fallen asleep and he needs to wake up. Right. So. So there is. There is something. There's no question to me that the second half of the story, there's a dreamlike quality. There's confusion and a dreamlike quality. Whether it's a literal dream or just Flannery O' Connor pointing out that there's something unreal about the 20th century existence that we live like, it's. It's definitely there. It's definitely there. All right, so she wakes up. Do you notice the town they're in when she wakes up?

[Thomas Banks]

Tombsville.

[Angelina Stanford]

Tombsboro. I mean, that's a little on the nose. They're going to their tomb. They're going to death.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay. It's for. I mean, she's. It's dripping with the foreshadowing. All right, so they're in Tombsboro and they're on the way to meet death. To me, this just is like a medieval cautionary tale. Right. We get in a journey, and we're going on our way to meet death. All right, so she again, wants her way. Right. She wants to take a side trip and go see an old plantation.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. If only she hadn't made this particular request, you know?

[Angelina Stanford]

So this fits in with the idea that she's. Cap. She's caught up in the romance of the old south, which, again, is a dream. Okay. That's not a real thing.

[Thomas Banks]

And her attachment to a false vision.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes, exactly. Right.

[Thomas Banks]

To relive some trivial moment from her past responsible for their death.

[Angelina Stanford]

I mean, this is Flannery on the nose about what this nostalgia will do to a culture.

[Thomas Banks]

Right.

[Angelina Stanford]

It will kill you. You have to live in reality. And she's very deliberate here.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, she's very decisive. Even though she doesn't know where she's going.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's right. She thinks she does, but she admits to herself in the narrative that she's lying. Oh, there's a secret passage, and there's this and this that. Because she's manipulating them to get their way. And of course, she gets them really, really excited. She craftily, she says to them, craftily, not telling the truth, but wishing that she were right. That. That fits in so perfectly with. I know I'm not really telling the truth about the Old south, but I wish I was. Okay, so she's romanticizing all. And then even being like, come on, it'll be so educate. Really. It'll be educational to go see the slave Quarters or whatever. Like, see, she's just. She's just grasping at straws here. So she bullies the sun because at first he's like, no. And then they all start throwing a fit, and he's like, fine, but this is it. This is the one thing I'm gonna do. And, you know, she says, well, you have to go back about a mile to dirt road. And he's like, a dirt road? Like, of course it is. Right? This is. We're going into the past. But then he says to her, as they're, you know, traveling down this dirt road, you know, you can't go inside the house, right? And she says, we'll just sit in the. We'll sit in the car. Okay. So I think what that is about is you. So she's been talking about paintings, right? So the Capturing that romance of the Old south, going to see an old plantation home. I think when he says, you know, you can't go in that house. Right. Is him saying, you can't enter into that world. Okay. Like, whatever it is you're hoping to recapture here, you can't actually recapture it. And she says, no, I know.

[Thomas Banks]

We can revisit it in a touristy sort of way.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, exactly. We can be a tourist about it. Which is kind of how she's been. Just, again, I think we should see, she's surface level in every possible way. She speaks in cliches. She's got a romanticized view of the past. Now, as they're going down, she has a realization. Okay, now here's where we're gonna. We're gonna dip into this visible souls idea. Flannery is very, very deliberate with her symbolism, and so let's let it come to the surface here. They're on a journey which, if you know anything, if you know anything about me, this podcast, House of Humane Letters or stories, you know that journeys are all journeys of the soul, right? So she's on a journey of the soul, and all of a sudden she realizes something. We're on the wrong road.

[Thomas Banks]

It's kind of the blind leading the blind here.

[Angelina Stanford]

Very much so. Right. We're on the wrong road. But is she willing to admit the truth of that? No. Okay, so it is her. She has this thought in her mind where she's like, I'm not going to tell him.

[Thomas Banks]

And they're way off course. Right. It's in a. She realizes that it's a different state. Yeah. It's not like it's a town away or something.

[Angelina Stanford]

She was confused. It's Actually in Tennessee. It's not in Georgia. Right. So she's not a proper guide for her son. She. She doesn't know the way anywhere. They're lost. Right, okay. But she. It's. It's. Check this out. Right? It's when she makes the deliberate decision to not tell the truth about the realization that she's on the wrong road, that that's what causes the accident.

[Thomas Banks]

Irrecoverable disaster happens.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's what causes the accident. Okay, so. So here we are, right? We're going to look at all of this. We know from the first paragraph that she and the misfit are on a crash course, but we've got to figure out what do they represent? What is symbolically happening, Right? What is. What is. What is it that the grandmother is about to encounter here? So first, let's take a look at the car accident. Of course, it's the stupid. It's the stupid cat, right? So she upsets the cat and the cat jumps out, and that causes the accident. The children were thrown to the floor and their mother, clutching the baby, was thrown out the door onto the ground. The old lady was thrown into the front seat. The car turned over once and landed right side up in a gulch off of the side of the road. So they're in a ditch. A good book students, I was going to say.

[Thomas Banks]

Like the blind leading the blind. They will both end up in a ditch.

[Angelina Stanford]

There you go.

[Thomas Banks]

That's. Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Bailey remained in the driver's seat with the cat. Okay. The car turned over. They got flipped upside down. Let's just let that sink in. So last time we talked about how Flannery o' Connor believes violence precedes grace. Okay. And I gave the example of St. Paul on the road to Damascus. Right? Like, that's a violent moment. He's walking down the road and suddenly he's struck blind. And he has to be struck blind to physically blind to show him that he has been spiritually blind all along. Right? So that's what she's going for here. They're on the wrong road. The mother won't admit it. The grandmother won't admit it. Sorry. Sometimes I call her mother because she's Bailey's mother, but she's the grandmother. And then the car turns them upside down. All right, so here's what's going on, right? Flannery o' Connor is literally showing us this woman is upside down. She has been upside down the whole time. Where she puts. Her values are in the wrong place. Everything about her is surface. And superficial and sentimental. You're going to watch what she's going to do with this. It's going to blow your mind. And so she starts this entire sequence by flipping the woman upside down. This is wrong with modernity. We are upside down and we need to be flipped right side up. And that of course, is violent. And it tosses them all out. Now the mother is legitimately hurt. She's got a broken shoulder. Yeah, Kids are bleeding. The grandmother comes out and thinks, what? I am not gonna tell him about Tennessee. Cause he will kill me. And she says, I really hope I'm injured. Cause if I'm not, he's gonna kill me.

[Thomas Banks]

No. And doesn't it say that all that's really happened to her? I mean, she has a few bumps and bruises, but her hat is broken.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, yes.

[Thomas Banks]

So that's kind of a humiliation. That's the real tragedy right there.

[Angelina Stanford]

But we see how self focused she is, right? Like, wouldn't a normal mother in that situation be running around to take care of the grandchildren? But she's only thinking about herself, right? She's thinking, he's gonna kill me. I'm not gonna tell him that the whole thing was a mistake. And they're bleeding on the ground. The mom's arm is like falling off of her and she's like, I think I've injured an organ. Okay, so she's again self focused, making it about herself, about to clinically diagnose this woman here. Okay, so they're sitting there and then here comes the cliches, right? I'm sure it's going to be fine. And a car is going to come along. And here comes the car and symbol alert. It's a black hearse. Okay? Right. So they were on their journey to death and they got derailed and death came to them. This is, you know, I could not stop for death, so death kindly stopped for me. Emily Dickinson. Right? So here it comes.

[Thomas Banks]

Also, I think actually this just how fateful this entire journey has been from the moment they left. I think actually it works well that she mentions the misfit in the first paragraph. Man, I hope we don't run into the misfit out there. Which I mean is. You can see that's like kind of on the nose, but at the same time it makes the whole story feel kind of providential.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, exactly. And you can see why she said it's Sophoclean.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, right.

[Angelina Stanford]

Like it's like Oedipus Rex where you're, you know, this is the way the story Is moving here. All right, so they. Here they come in a big, black battered hearse, like automobile Flannery, I adore you. All right, so these guys come out and the misfit is described as being older and having hair beginning to gray, and he wore silver rim spectacles that gave him a scholarly look. Okay, this is very deliberate here. Why on earth is this serial killer being described? And almost like a professor, I will tell you why.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, that actually confused me, too.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay, so just. So just hang on. The first time I read this, I was like, oh, because he's about to school her. And he is about to school her. But that. You're gonna find out what the misfit represents. Okay? And the kids, to me are less so. Like a Greek chorus, they just keep yelling, we've had an accident. We've had an accident.

[Thomas Banks]

We can't disagree.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes. Right. And we're going to find out it's not.

[Thomas Banks]

And they're commenting on the disaster as it proceeds. Even though they're not, obviously they can't do anything about it themselves.

[Angelina Stanford]

Right, Right. Okay. The grandmother had the peculiar feeling that the bespectled man was someone she knew. His face was as familiar to her as if she had known him all her life, but she could not recall who he was. So if you read a lot of Flannery o' Connor stories, you find out that she uses a lot of doubles. You got to pay attention. In this story, it is very clear at the beginning that the grandmother and the misfit are being doubled. So they're on this collision course to meet each other, and they're being doubled. Like his face was as familiar to her as if she had known. Like. Yeah, like a mirror. It's like looking in a mirror. Right?

[Thomas Banks]

Like he's a long lost family member.

[Angelina Stanford]

Precisely. Precisely. Okay. Okay. So it's like he's. She's looking. She's looking at her own face. Now the first thing she does is lie to him. We turned over twice. Once he said, I saw it. Okay? So here we are. We're gonna figure out what the misfit represents. He's wearing glasses. My Good Book students know what that mean, right? He can see. He can see. And so he sees right through her. So the first thing she does is lie. To exaggerate, to get sympathy. It's what she's been doing all along. She's manipulative. Right. We. We flipped. I think I have a injured organ. And we flipped over twice, and he goes, nope, once. I saw it. Okay, so he sees Right through this woman. And he sees the truth honestly. Like, this little thing right here kind of sets up their entire interaction. This is it. She's going to keep saying things, and he's going to keep seeing through them.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay, now here's a question. She says out loud, you're the misfit.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, well, a little bit from. Now, I'm not there yet. But she recognized his.

[Thomas Banks]

I mean, we don't know. I mean, it's one of these hypotheses contrary to fact. But is it necessarily the case that they would have killed this family if they hadn't known that one member of it had recognized them?

[Angelina Stanford]

Maybe not.

[Thomas Banks]

So, like, again, she could have. She keeps, like, making the situation worse.

[Angelina Stanford]

She does, and I agree with that. And that's why Bailey gets so mad. I think, though, I think they're not going to escape this. Because if you read between the lines when he says, we met a family and they gave us some clothes, they killed somebody else on the road, too. And so I think.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, that's true. Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

I think he asks if you can fix this car because they're going to switch vehicles and they're going to kill them and they're going to take their clothes and take the clothes. That's a good call. That's how I. But you are right that he's. She ruins it. And that's why Bailey says that to her. Like, he knows. That's it. You've killed us all. You've killed us. Okay, so look at the narrative line here. The description. So they're meeting the misfit. Behind them, the line of woods gaped like a dark, open mouth. Okay.

[Thomas Banks]

That kind of sends a shiver down your spine.

[Angelina Stanford]

It is. Right, so they're in Tombsborough. And they're.

[Thomas Banks]

And they're about to be swallowed.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, exactly. They're about to be swallowed by death. The dark, open mouth of death. This is it. This is what this story is about. Now, let me just pause right there for a second. Flannery o' Connor is somebody who lived her adult life in the light of knowing she was going to die quickly. Right. And she said that she thought that was a gift. And that is a medieval tradition. Right. Memento mori. So the idea is that if you. If you think about the fact that you're going to die, it's going to change the way that you live. And that in the moment of death. This is a big theme in this story. In your moment of death, your true self is revealed. So think about, like, Macbeth, Shakespeare, when the saying of Cawdor is executed, he repents. And they said nothing became his life like the leaving of it.

[Thomas Banks]

It.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay, so that idea in. In the face of our death, who we truly are is going to come, right? Are you going to repent? Are. Are you going to be that person? Are you gonna make other choices? And in modernity, we spend a whole lot of effort trying to forget that we're going to die, right? We remove dead bodies. We don't think about that stuff. They go somewhere far away to die. They go to nursing homes to die and hospitals to die. And. And we mostly spend our lives, even with our obsession with trying to pretend like we're 21 years old, our entire lives, basically just ignoring the fact that we're gonna. We're gonna die.

[Thomas Banks]

Those are the most depressing words in the English language, by the way. Forever 21.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, you're right. No, completely. I would not go back to that for anything.

[Thomas Banks]

Basically. Hell.

[Angelina Stanford]

So they're on this encounter to death. It is very clear, because this is the journey everybody's on. We're all on the journey to death, right? So this isn't going to be random violence annihilus. This is a spiritual journey. This family's on a spiritual journey. How are they going to respond to meeting their death? And of course, by extension, how are we going to respond? But so obviously the misfit represents death, but that's not all he represents. And we'll let that come. Come to the surface of the story. All right, so then you're right. She says it's the misfit. And he says, oh, it would have been better for you if you didn't. But then how's this? Okay, so Bailey says something, right? And he knows it's something bad because he knows she's just killed him. And the misfit apologizes for Bailey's language. He's got a lot of exaggerated manners. Did you pick up on that? So much exaggerated manners and chivalry. He keeps Apollo his leg. Ma' am, if you wouldn't mind, could you.

[Thomas Banks]

No. He was very soft spoken.

[Angelina Stanford]

And I don't have a shirt on. I know this is not respectable, but, you know, I lost my clothes and. Okay, so this exaggerated manners and chivalry here, at this point, they all realize they're about to die. And she weirdly says, you wouldn't shoot a lady. Okay, now let's think about this. She doesn't say you wouldn't shoot women and children. She doesn't say you wouldn't shoot women. She said, no, she doesn't really seem.

[Thomas Banks]

She doesn't really seem concerned for the group.

[Angelina Stanford]

No, she does not. Right. It's just her. She's trying to save her own skin by appealing to some kind of code of chivalry, some kind of Southern manners. Okay, again, manners. Superficial Christianity. Here, that's what you want to see. And then he responds, I would hate to have to. So immediately now she starts pouring out the cliches. I know you're a good man, you're a good man. You don't have a bit of common blood, but here's the thing. He knows he's not a good man. Yeah, he knows he's not a good man. So let's see what happens. Then he starts talking about the weather and she's like, yes, it's a beautiful day. Right. All right. Should I just blurt out what I think is going on?

[Thomas Banks]

Fire away, Miss Stanford.

[Angelina Stanford]

Should I? And you can never decide when I'm teaching it. Should I just wait till it Nationals? I should just blurt it up.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay, get the fire hose ready.

[Angelina Stanford]

Here. Here's what's on the collision course in this story. The grandmother is modern, superficial Christianity. I mentioned this in the last episode. Flannery o' Connor thinks that in. In a Christ saturated south where everybody goes to church and, and being a Christian is like equivalent with being American and middle class, that it's very hard to convince people that they need the gospel when they feel like they're surrounded by it. When Christianity becomes equated with middle class values and superficial manners and politeness and chivalry in the old south, that that's not a living faith and that it's very easy to mistake those things. So the grandmother, everything about her, superficial Christianity. I mean, if you wanted some examples of it, how about the generic do you pray? That's what she says to him. Do you pray? That is so generic. She doesn't say, do you pray to Jesus. Notice she doesn't pray. She is about to die and she's. And she doesn't pray.

[Thomas Banks]

This is the first indication really that we've had that she's at all a religious woman.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's right. And it's. But it's. But it's cliche. It's like if she was like, you gotta have faith. Well, you gotta have faith in what? Like that's just this generic thing. Right? So she's superficial Christianity and she's on a crash course with what? Nihilism. Nihilism, which Flannery o' Connor felt was the great Threat to the world. Of course, it comes from Europe. So there was nod there. And he's got his scholarly professor, you know, glasses and gray hair. Because the threat of nihilism came from professors. It comes from the university and. But all those speeches he gives, that's nihilism, right? There's no meaning to life, just power. I'm just. I can do whatever I want. Nothing means anything. So we've got nihilism on a crash course. Collision course with superficial Christianity. And superficial Christianity cannot defeat nihilism. So watch what's going to happen here. That's what's going on here. So she keeps appealing to things.

[Thomas Banks]

What is it that he says that strikes you as particularly nihilistic?

[Angelina Stanford]

We'll get to it.

[Thomas Banks]

And also another question. Is he supposed to be sane? I couldn't even tell. Because, I mean, much of what he says.

[Angelina Stanford]

Seems he's saying he's a nihilist. You'll see. You'll see his speeches.

[Thomas Banks]

Hold on.

[Angelina Stanford]

We'll get to his speeches. We'll get there. We'll get there. So it all starts off, you know, she's a. All this clip. You shouldn't call yourself the misfit. You're such a good man. You're such a nice man. He's like, I appreciate that. Appreciate that. Now, look at all this politeness. All right? Take a half hour to fix the car. All right, well, first you and Bobby Lee, get him and that little boy to step over yonder with you. The boys want to ask you some. Would you mind stepping back in the woods with them? Okay. All very, very polite, right? And Bailey's like, listen, we're in a terrible predicament. Nobody realizes what this is. And his voice cracked, okay? Now, Bailey and John Wesley are about to be murdered. The grandmother reached up to adjust her hat brim as if she were going to the woods with him. But it came off in her hand. She stood staring at it, and after a second, she let it fall on the ground. Okay? You rightly pointed out the hat was the symbol of her demureness. Superficial Christianity. Her superficial, you know, veneer. And it breaks in the face of death, right? Remember, death is gonna show you who you really are. In the face of her son's death and her grandson, she immediately wants to adjust her hat, right? Like this is the not polite thing, but it falls off of her head. And so they go.

[Thomas Banks]

There's another story where a hat is a significant symbol of.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes, well, someone's social standing that rises must converge.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes.

[Angelina Stanford]

Now you'll Notice in this story, the only two characters wearing a hat are the misfit, the grandmother. That's another way that they're doubles.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay, so just.

[Angelina Stanford]

Just wait for that. Okay, so let's take a look at Bailey's response to facing his death. He holds his son's hand and says, I'll be back in a minute, Mama. Wait on me. All right? That is so noble. I want to be just. Just to weep. Bailey and the mother, they are so noble in the face of this. They Keeping their children calm. They know what's about to happen, but they are very calmly facing death. They are facing reality. It's the grandmother who's not facing reality. Okay, so that's grace for the whole family. I'll be. I'll be back, mama. Right? Keeping everybody calm. And his mother yells, shirley, come back this instant. Right? So here's. She's been in control of this boy and control of the situation. She's bullied everybody. She doesn't have control of the situation. Bailey, boy. The grandmother called in a tragic voice, but she found she was looking at the misfit. Okay, so now we got another double. This time, it's Bailey and the misfit. I just know you're a good man. You're not a bit common. Okay, now notice when she says you're a good man, she means you come from a good family. You don't have common blood. You're not poor white trash is what she's saying. Right. There's no spiritual appeal here. And again, that's a. That's a really superficial thing to say. And a serial killer is about to kill you, and you're just like, I know you come from good family.

[Thomas Banks]

Your mother's a daughter of the Confederacy, too, isn't she?

[Angelina Stanford]

And he says, no, ma' am, I ain't a good man. All right, so Flannery would say the misfit is in a better spiritual state than the grandmother because he knows he is not a good man. And she does not.

[Thomas Banks]

Took that away. Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

She does not know that she is not a good woman. So, you know, she's going to spell out here that the grandmother is an everyman, the heroine of this story. The grandmother is in the most significant position life offers the Christian. She is facing death. And to all appearances, she, like the rest of us, is not too well prepared for it. She would like to see the event postponed indefinitely. Right? So the grandmother, she's an everyman of modernity. She is about to face death, and she is not prepared for it. Just like the rest of us, she goes on, it is true that the old lady is a hypocritical old soul. Her wits are no match for the misfits, nor is her capacity for grace equal to his. Yet I think the unprejudiced reader will feel that the grandmother has a special kind of triumph in this story, which instinctively we do not allow to someone altogether bad. Okay, and I'll talk about that more in a second. So let's see. Let's see what happens. Just takes my breath away. No, ma' am, I ain't a good man, the misfit said after a second, as if he considered her statement carefully. But I ain't the worst in the world neither. My daddy said I was a different breed of dog from my brothers and sisters. You know, Daddy said it's some that can live their whole life out without asking about it. And it's others has to know why it is. And this boy is one of the latters. All right, let me pause there. The misfit have said there's two kind of people in their life. They're the people who can just live their life, never asking the deeper questions. And there's other people that need to know, why am I here? What is the meaning of all this? The misfit is in that category. He has been asking the right questions, but he has concluded the wrong thing. Right.

[Thomas Banks]

He sees through everything that's right.

[Angelina Stanford]

So like Annihilus, he asks the question, what is the point of all this? And he concludes, there is no point. I can just do whatever I want. Right? The grandmother is in the other category. She's in the doesn't ask questions. She's in the don't make a fuss. That's a Southern virtue. Don't make a fuss. Can't we just get all along, don't make a scene. Right? So just having this. Don't ask hard questions like what is the meaning of life? Or am I about to die? Just smooth things over and have your hat and your gloves and everything's fine. Then he put on his black hat. Okay, so he puts on his hat in undertaker mode. Yep, that's right. He puts on his hat. And she takes off her hat. Okay? And he looked up suddenly and then away, deep into the woods, as if he were embarrassed again. And then he says, look, I'm sorry. You know, we. We buried our clothes. That's why I'm not wearing anything. We borrowed these from some. Some folks we met. Now, obviously they met some people and killed them already. That's perfectly all right. The grandmother said, maybe Bailey has an extra shirt in his suitcase. Okay, so she. She's offering him her son's clothes, which is again going to further connect them. Finally, the mother speaks. Where are they taking him? The children's mother screamed. And the miss. It keeps saying, ah. Daddy was a card himself. You couldn't put anything over on him. He never got in trouble with the authorities, though. Just had the knack of handling them. Okay, so. So when he starts to tell the story of his life, and boy, this is so on the nose for, like, career criminals. They always tell the story of. The problem is I just didn't get away with it. The system is against me, right? So he doesn't say his daddy's a good man. He just says, my daddy knew how to handle the authorities. I unfortunately got caught. The deck was stacked against me. So here comes the grandmother. You could be honest too, if you'd only try, said the grandmother. Think how wonderful it would be to settle down and live in a comfortable life and not have to think about somebody chasing you all the time. Okay, this is so good here.

[Thomas Banks]

You could be middle class like the rest of us.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, honey, very good. And so what happens is, right, this is. This is European nihilism that says nothing means anything. I can just do whatever I want. The only thing that matters is power. And she's like, but you could also be a middle class class person. Okay, but to him is that nihilist.

[Thomas Banks]

And middle class are like opposites or antonyms.

[Angelina Stanford]

But also she's middle class superficial Christianity trying to. Trying to meet nihilism, right? And that's the best superficial middle class Christianity can offer, is you can just settle down and be a middle class person too. And he's like, why would I want that?

[Thomas Banks]

True.

[Angelina Stanford]

I'm a nihilist. Why would I want your comfortable little house? I can just. I can kill people. And okay, so she's like, wouldn't it be nice not to have somebody chasing you all the time now? Because he can see through everything he says to her, but somebody's always chasing you. And he's right. Death is always chasing you, right? And middle class, superficial Christianity is not going to protect you from death. It's coming. So now she gets to the. The generic cliched spiritual thing. Do you ever pray? He shook his head, no. There was a pistol shot from the woods, followed closely by another. Then silence. The lady's head jerked around. Okay, they've just been shot. And she's asking him, do you ever Pray she doesn't start praying. And, And I don't want to belabor it too much because I think it's obvious. Like, you know, I don't know any woman that wouldn't have run after them, thrown herself in front of the bullet, like. Like, well, if they were dead, I'm dead, you know, But. But pleading for her life as her family is taken off into the woods and murdered one by one, like, this is. This is. This is something, okay? He says, I was a gospel singer for a while, okay? So talk about superficial things. Like, you know, I. I traveled all of these things, right? So he goes through his whole list of all the things he's been. And she just keeps saying, pray, pray. Just. Just pray. I never was a bad boy. That I remember of the misfit, said an almost dreamy voice. Remember that dreamlike stuff, right? Somewhere along the line, I done something wrong, got sent to the penitentiary. I was buried alive. Okay, he was buried alive. He, too is dead, right? And that's part of that, that parallel, those mirrors. And she says, now notice again, classic, classic lifer in. In prison. I did something and got sent to the. Like, he doesn't acknowledge what he does. I did something. That's when you should have started to pray. What did you do to get sent to the penitentiary that first time? Turn to the right of his wall. Turn to the left. It was a wall. He's talking like he's Oedipus Rex, right? There's nothing I could have done. The deck is just stacked against me. Look up at a ceiling. Look down. It was a floor. Oh, I forget what I'd done, lady. I sat there and sat there trying to remember what it was, and I ain't recalled it to this day. Once in a while I'd think it was coming to me, but never come. And she says, well, maybe they put you there by mistake. Oh, no, it wasn't a mistake that they had papers on me. Okay, let me skip down. She says, well, you must have stolen something. The misfit sneered slightly. Nobody had nothing I wanted, he said. It was a head doctor at the penitentiary. Said what I had done was kill my daddy. But I know now for a lie. My Daddy died in 190719 of the epidemic flu. I never had a thing to do with it. He's buried in the Mount Hopewell Baptist Church. You can go there and see for yourself. Okay. This woman is so good. This probably was what made you think he was crazy, that he's in prison for killing his daddy.

[Thomas Banks]

But he's like he went to a prison psychologist.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay? So here's what it is. A Freudian psychiatrist has told him the root problem of his issues is that he has daddy issues and he killed somebody because he was sublimating his desire to kill his father. So he symbolically killed his own father. Okay. And he's like, how could I kill my daddy? My daddy was already dead. This is stupid. Right? So against, okay, so what does she set up as against? Nihilism? Superficial Christianity, which she's about to make easy work out of that.

[Thomas Banks]

That.

[Angelina Stanford]

How about Freudian psychiatry? So Freudian psychiatry is modernity's answer to the problem of man. It says man's basic problem is psychological. You've got mama issues, you've got daddy issues. And Flanner o' Connor shows. This is ridiculous. This is, this is man's basic problem is that he's fallen and he's sinful and he's in need of repentance and a savior. Right? It's, it's not that he has daddy issues. Listen, if you, if you like, read all her stuff, just looking for all the places that she pokes at Freud. It's fantastic. It's fantastic. All right, so she goes back to, well, if you'd pray, Jesus would help you. Now, this is the first time she said something specific about who she's praying to. She's brought up Jesus. But, but mind you, it takes her a long time to get there.

[Thomas Banks]

It does.

[Angelina Stanford]

It takes her a long time to get there. Jesus would help you and he says. That's right. Well then why don't you pray? She asked, trembling with delight suddenly. I don't want no help. I'm doing all right by myself.

[Thomas Banks]

That's a great line.

[Angelina Stanford]

That is so good. And that is modernity in a nutshell. Right? I'm doing fine.

[Thomas Banks]

This guy and, and Hazel Moats.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes.

[Thomas Banks]

Wise blood have something in common. The, the sociopathically self sufficient man, or whatever you want to call him. I don't know, the. The man who doesn't need to be justified.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, yeah, that's a, that's a great line from Wise Blood, Church of Christ Without Christ Again, I'm asking myself, why isn't she praying? It's very obvious what is going to happen to all of them. Her son and grandson are dead. At the very least, why you're not praying over that. Crying out to God for mercy. Instead she's negotiating with this guy and she's trying to use Jesus as a negotiator.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, you get the impression that with her, Jesus is not so much Lord and savior as a mascot kind of.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, and I think she's also what Jesus saving her would look like as he'd save her life in this moment.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes, yes, exactly right.

[Angelina Stanford]

And not that my soul is about to meet my maker and I need to get. I need to get right again. She's still holding on to this. I'm on the wrong road, but I'm not going to tell the truth about that. Okay. And now. Oh, this. This takes my breath away. When he turns to the mom and says, she likes to go meet your. Join your husband and son. And she says, yes, thank you. She's so brave. She's so brave. She. She willingly goes and faces her death. And she keeps her daughter calm as they go to this. And the misfit says, help that lady up. So he calls her a lady. So mind you, the grandmother has been saying, I'm a lady. And she was not referring to the daughter in law as a lady. And he says, that's the actual lady. Right. So he sees again, he's got those glasses. He sees through the exterior. Yeah, she's in yoga pants and you know, her hair's not done up. But this is, this is a lady. She's got some real nobility and grace here at the end. Remember, because death reveals who you truly are. So it's revealed that the daughter and Bailey are. They're ready. They're. They are. They can face death. They're ready to face death. It's the grandmother who can't. Now. That's it. It's just the misfit and the grandmother. And now all cliches are stripped away. Alone with the misfit, the grandmother found that she had lost her voice. Boy, isn't that fantastic? This woman who has been dominating and manipulating. She has run out of things.

[Thomas Banks]

She's finally. Yes.

[Angelina Stanford]

In the face of death here. She has run out of things to say. Interestingly, she lost her voice at the exact moment that the daughter in law found hers. That's the one line she speaks in the whole thing.

[Thomas Banks]

I think you're right.

[Angelina Stanford]

It's two lines. Two lines. First, she speaks.

[Thomas Banks]

She's basically been silent.

[Angelina Stanford]

She's basically been silent. So she finds her voice here. She loses it. All right, so she's thinking, I've got to tell him that he must pray. But she opened and closed her mouth several times before anything came out. All right, so all of the cliches are failing her. Again, in the moment of facing your death, who you really are is revealed. Everything else is just burned off like so much dross, right? So the cliches are gone. The prey is gone. Finally, she found herself saying, jesus, Jesus, meaning jesus will help you. But the way she was saying it sounded as if she might be cursing. This is her heart being revealed. She's angry at Jesus. She's cursing at Jesus because he didn't save her. He didn't physically.

[Thomas Banks]

He didn't do his fill. His end of the contract.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's right. But he hears her rightly and says, yep, Jesus thrown everything off balance. It was the same case with him as it was with me, except he hadn't committed any crime. And they could prove I had committed one because they had the papers on me. Me, of course. He said, they never shown me my papers. That's why I signed myself. Now, I said long ago, you get you a signature and sign everything you do and keep a copy of it. Then you'll know what you've done and you can hold up the crime to the punishment and see do they match. And in the end, you'll have something to prove you ain't being treated right. I call myself the Misfit because I can't make what all I've done wrong fit what all I gone through in punishment. Okay? He is walking modernity. We are the misfit. We cannot make ourselves fit. Doesn't it seem right to you, lady, that one is punished a heap and another ain't punished at all? Okay? He says that right when they're hearing the screams from the woods. This is a very grim reaper lash judgment, right, should the punishment fit the crime. This is what he's asking her as she's about to go face down. How?

[Thomas Banks]

How? What would that look like?

[Angelina Stanford]

What would that look like? That's right where she should be thinking, I'm about to die. I should be praying to God. I should be getting my. I shouldn't be negotiating for. For my life here. I should. I should be getting my soul right? And she responds, jesus, you've got good blood. I know you wouldn't shoot a lady. I know you come from nice people pray, Jesus, you ought not shoot a lady. I'll give you all the money I've got. Like. Like every, every. She just vomits everything she can think of. You won't shoot a lady. You've got manners. I'll give you my money. Jesus will save me. Just. She's grasping at straws here. It gets so intense, lady. There never was a body to give the undertaker a tip. All right? So what he's saying is, everybody dies. Everybody dies, lady. All right, two more pistol shots, and then he says, this Jesus was the only one that ever raised the dead. Okay?

[Thomas Banks]

He did. He, like. Because he. He. Well, then we'll get there.

[Angelina Stanford]

But he brings up the Resurrection, not her, right? Okay. No, no, here's where it gets really good. Jesus was the only one that ever raised the dead. The misfit continued, and he shouldn't have done it. He thrown everything off balance. If he did what he said, then it's nothing for you to do but throw away everything and follow him. And if he didn't, then it's nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best you can by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him. No pleasure, but meanness. Okay? That's his nihilistic speech. Okay, Right. So if there's no meaning in the world, then we should just do whatever we want. Kill somebody, find pleasure. That's also existentialism, right? Just. We should just exist and experience things. But he absolutely gets to the heart of the question here. This is. This is it. This is the speech that is the heart of the entire story. This is Flannery o' Connor saying, you have two choices. Either the resurrection is true and that changes everything. That's why the misfit said. And so you. You stop. Stop what you're doing and follow him, or he didn't do it, and then you can just do whatever you want. I can kill people. I can live for pleasure. I can do whatever. Okay? Those are the two options. There is no third option for I can be a superficial Christian. It's either Jesus rose from the dead and so everything changes, or he didn't, and I can do whatever I want. And then she says, maybe he didn't raise the dead. That is quite a moment for her, right? Her faith is starting to crack. Her superficial faith is starting to crack. And when her superficial faith starts to crack, that is when we see her moment of grace. I wasn't there, so I couldn't say he didn't. The misfit said, wish I had been there. He said, hitting the ground with his fist. It ain't right. I wasn't there. Because if I'd have been in there, I would have known. Known. Listen, lady, if I hadn't been there, I would have known, and I wouldn't be like I am now. His voice seemed to crack, and the grandmother's head cleared for an instant. Okay? That is. That is Modernity saying I can only believe in Christ and the Resurrection. Proof. Yep. If I have proof, if I have evidence, of course, you know, the Gospels itself answers that. Well, you have the law and the prophets. If you don't believe them, you won't believe me. But you see, I mean, oh gosh, this is just so good. Right? So there he is, he's saying, this is it. I could believe it, but I don't have proof. That moment, the grandmother's. Claire's head cleared for an instant. So this is it. This is her moment of grace. She saw the man's face twisted close to her own as if he was going to cry. And she murmured, why, you're one of my babies. You're one of my own children. She reached out and touched him on the shoulder. The misfit sprang back as if a snake had bitten him.

[Thomas Banks]

One, one. Pause. He's wearing her son's shirt by this time.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay, yes, that's right.

[Angelina Stanford]

You're right. They bring the shirt and he puts it on.

[Thomas Banks]

So it's kind of like he is her son.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's right.

[Thomas Banks]

Kinda.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's right. So before we see what happens here, Flannery o' Connor says people want the happy ending, but they don't want the hard stuff. And the hard stuff is repentance. Right. So the grandmother has to learn that she is a sinner also deserving death. So she's been offering him cliches and platitudes, but this moment, when she looks at him, she says, we. She realized she too is a sinner. She too is a murderer in her heart. She too deserves death. We are the same. And that is the moment that saves her soul when she comes to realize she's not. She's not a good woman. We are the same. She reached out and touched him on the shoulder. The misfit sprang back as if a snake had bitten him. Okay, so back to the snake. And shot her three times through the chest. So this was supposed to be a three day trip. Again, three is the resurrection number, right? He shoots her three times. All of this indicates that this is a moment. She spells it out in the essay, but. But she totally intends that this is. This is the woman's moment of repentance. And you'll. You'll see it in the story here too. So he shoots her real fast, puts his gun down, took off his glasses and began to clean them. Hyram and Bobby Lee returned from the woods and stood over the ditch looking down at the grandmother who half sat and half Lay in a puddle with her legs crossed under her. There she dies with her legs in the shape of a cross, like a child. So she's, she's gone back to like a childlike faith. And her face is smiling up at the cloudless sky, Right? So she did meet death the right way. And it affects him. He saw something change in her. That's why he jumped back like it was a snake. He saw it without his glasses. The misfit's eyes were red rimmed and pale and defenseless looking. Take her off and throw you where you've thrown the others, he said, picking up the cat that was rubbing against his legs. She was a talker when she, Bobby Lee said, sliding down the dish with a yodel. She would have been a good woman, the misfit said, if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life. Okay, that is that medieval idea that if you live your life thinking about your death, it brings out the best thing in you, right? You're going to live your life in the light of eternity. Things I do now have eternal consequences. And that is what is going to make us be good, some fun. Bobby Lee said. Shut up, Bobby Lee. The misfit said. There's no real pleasure in life. And she tells us that she intend again in, in this ending. It's much more subtle and implied. She spells it out in other stories much, much more clearly. But she says in the essay she intends that the grandmother experienced a true moment of grace. She, she had repentance and he saw it and he was affected by it. And, and it's gonna, it's gonna go on with him.

[Thomas Banks]

He was unsettled.

[Angelina Stanford]

He was unsettled by it.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, what, what do you think of that?

[Thomas Banks]

Well, I enjoyed it much more the second time I read it. I thought if I could venture a criticism, it probably, I think if the story were more slowly paced, it, I don't know, I, I, I think it might have gained something. Especially because it's, it's not a, it's not, that's all what, 10 pages? And she packs like so much incident and symbol into those 10 pages. It's, yeah, it creates kind of a breakneck effect. But I think that, yeah, I don't know. I think that if that story were maybe twice as long, that might have done something for it. It wouldn't have seemed maybe like she was in quite such a rush to get to the dramatic climax and that epiphany between the two characters. But no, I thought that was a.

[Angelina Stanford]

Very Fine story I'm so comfortable reading. Symbolically, I mean, it wasn't a problem for me. I kind of think the speed of it helps the idea that these two things are on a crash course. Modernity and nihilism and existentialism are a crash course with superficial Christianity, and superficial Christianity is not going to be able to handle it, and it's going to be destructive of. There's a few different places where Flanner o' Connor talks about. My stories are not puzzles to solve. They're mysteries to contemplate. And here's how she explains this. The grandmother is at last alone, facing the misfit. Her head clears for an instance, and she realizes, even in her limited way, that she is responsible for the man before her and joined to him by ties of kinship which have their roots deep in the mystery she has mirrored. Been merely prattling about so far. And at this point, she does the right thing. She makes the right gesture. I find the students are often puzzled by what she says and does here. But I think myself that if I took out this gesture and what she says with it, I would have no story. What was left would not be worth your attention. Our age not only does not have a very sharp eye for the almost imperceptible intrusions of grace, it is no longer has much feeling for the nature of the violences which precede and follow them. I have found that violence is strangely capable of returning my characters to reality. So again, remember, she was living this fantasy and preparing them to accept their moment of grace. Their heads are so hard that almost nothing else will do the work. The idea that reality is something to which we must be returned at considerable cost is one which is seldom understood by the casual reader, but it is one which is implicit in the Christian view of the world.

[Thomas Banks]

Do you think that Flannery o' Connor felt that she wrote the way she did because she was a Catholic? And not just a Catholic, but a very, you know, Thomistic sort of Catholic?

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes. I mean, she said, you know, in that line where she says, everybody's head is so hard, I can't think of any other way to get through to them than these violent moments breaking through. And there's other places where she basically says, you know, when the world is deaf, you have to scream to get their attention. And so I think there's a few different reasons that people read her and. And respond the way they do, sort of perplexedly, like one could just be. You might not be her audience. Maybe you're not deaf and so she just seems like, why is this person screaming? Right. So maybe you're not the audience for that. Sometimes though, I think that people are the audience and they feel offended. I, I, you know, like to find out the twist at the end of this is the grandmother's not any better than the serial killer. They're both sinners in need of salvation. You know, I think that might be a little, a little hard for those of us who are polishing our day pearls and putting on our gloves and think that we're kind of respectable. And then I think you can also make the mistake of not understanding what she's trying to do all the time in this. You read it thinking it's a bunch of nihilistic violence when it's the opposite of that.

[Thomas Banks]

The lady with the hat and the gloves. And for some reason I'm picturing the mom from Leave it to Beaver, June Cleaver. Yeah, yeah. If June Cleaver meets a serial killer. No, that's unfair. But, but no, no, I mean, you're, you were making a good point there, There is, I don't know, maybe every generation or every lifetime we need a good sort of alarmist writer who writes sort of apocalyptic parables to shake us away. I think Dostoevsky is kind of like that. Maybe. I think probably I would enjoy Flannery o' Connor more if I hadn't read Dostoevsky before I read Flannery o' Connor. Because every time I pick up Flannery o' Connor, I, I find myself thinking, oh yeah, that's kind of Dostoevsky. Ish, he did that better in this book. And then I, I don't know, that's just me, but admit that's a, Well, I mean, I, subjective preference.

[Angelina Stanford]

I, I, when I read her, I definitely feel like I know these people. Yeah, yeah, she, she, I would say.

[Thomas Banks]

I'm sure if I were actually from the South, I would probably respond differently.

[Angelina Stanford]

She does go after racism a lot in her stories, but I would say even more than that, she goes, goes.

[Thomas Banks]

After respect, complacency, respectable, self satisfied.

[Angelina Stanford]

She, she likes to pit characters who are very self satisfied, like you say, and put their trust in their middle class respectability. And she likes to pit them against kind of crazy, more desperate sorts of human depravity. She'll say, that person's closer to God than you are.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, that, that seems to be a conclusion to which her stories point. And again, of the few that I'm.

[Angelina Stanford]

Familiar with, not gonna like that. But they're so masterfully Crafted. And so, yeah, if you're wondering where to go from here, well, I think you should take my Flannery o' Connor class. That's what I think you should do. But like we said last time, you can dip into her letters. I love mystery and manners. Her essays, I cannot recommend those highly enough. Enough for me. That was where I understood her. But that's my mind. Like I said, Cindy met her in the letter. So I think different people are, you know, different. You probably.

[Thomas Banks]

Her letters are really, really good. That's actually. Yeah. That still remains my favorite thing of her.

[Angelina Stanford]

Right. As far as other stories to go through. So my favorite story of hers is Revelation, and that is the one where she makes it most clear in the story what she's about. Like, she literally has the veil pulled back and you see the spiritual reality behind things and you have a moment where the character is having a very clear epiphany. So she spells it out more in some of these.

[Thomas Banks]

Is that the one in the dentist's office?

[Angelina Stanford]

The doctor's office?

[Thomas Banks]

Doctor's office.

[Angelina Stanford]

You're a warthog from hell.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes.

[Angelina Stanford]

Again, a self respecting woman gets called a warthog from hell and she walks off and then saying, how am I? How am I a hog? How are me and a hog the same? I'm. I'm a. I'm a good woman. So, yeah, she. The biggest sin for Flannery o' Connor is self righteousness. Like, so she'll. She'll attack all kinds of sin, but in the end, she thinks self righteousness is the one that damns your soul to hell because it makes you think, makes you deny the fact that you're on the wrong road to use this.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, there you go story.

[Angelina Stanford]

So I would recommend that. Now, if you're interested, if this is the first time you've ever listened to this podcast and you're like, what are they talking about? Invisible souls and journeys of the souls. We have a lot of podcast series where we talk about that. I would definitely recommend the Dracula series we did, the Harry Potter series that we did. Our why read fairy tales? Why read pagan myths? You can dip into all kinds of things. The most recent Much Ado About Nothing podcast. So we've got lots and lots and lots of series where we are explaining, you know, what does that look like in stories? And of course, you know, we teach lots of classes about that. My how to read fairy tale class is all about learning how to read visible souls in a book and the long, long tradition that stands behind that. So My hope here is that we have demysified Flannery o' Connor, to use Alice Walker's word, because, remember, Alice Walker liked about Flannery o' Connor that she demysified the South. And this story is a great example of that. Right. The whole Gone with the Wind Southern lady thing, she pokes at that and says, you know, you need to get past that to reality.

[Thomas Banks]

She takes a strip. Some of the moonlight off the magnolia leaves.

[Angelina Stanford]

There you go. That's you. You're a poet. You.

[Thomas Banks]

We try.

[Angelina Stanford]

So, yeah, that's my. That's my hope for this series. I hope that you come to appreciate this story. I hope that you Learned something about 20th century fiction in general and where she fits into that and how she's pushing against it. I hope that maybe even if she's not your favorite now, you at least won't hate her or say things like, she's disgusting and gross. She. She is profound. You know, she was just writing at a time when Christianity was so under attack and the world was so lost. And, I mean, it's just as lost now, in some ways worse. And she was. She was responding to that, you know, in the milieu of her contemporaries, you know, taking their violence and their themes of alienation and isolation and fragmentation and kind of flipping it around like she does with the car accident. Right. Flips it upside down and. And shows you that the answer to those things is. Is in crisis, not in the places that we. We think it's going to be. Of course, I particularly love that dig at the Freudian psycho analysis. Yeah. So I hope that you're inspired to pick up more and give her a try. And if you pick up more and you're like, I don't get it. They're all crazy, you can take my class if you're interested, and I will guide you through quite a few of her letters, essays, and a bunch of her stories. So. So, yeah, I think Flannery O' Connor is a very, very important 20th century figure, and I thought it was about time we covered.

[Thomas Banks]

How many times does someone come up to you to say that? When I took your Flannery course, I wept. I think more than one. Maybe Flannery with tears is how.

[Angelina Stanford]

What.

[Thomas Banks]

You should retitle that course.

[Angelina Stanford]

I mean, going through that class was a bit of a spiritual journey. I think, for all of us.

[Thomas Banks]

Catharsis.

[Angelina Stanford]

It was. It was because you start to get her vibe and you realize all of these stories are spiritual allegories and very intentionally so by her. All right, well, I hope you guys enjoyed that. You can join us back here next week for the Literary Life of Natalia Testa, my Mini Me Me, one of our students who's going to come on to tell us all about her very short literary life because she's not very old, but she's packed a lot into that, so come back for that. And I will be very shortly posting our summer schedule. In fact, by the time this airs, I may have already posted it. But we've got some exciting things coming up this summer, so go to HouseOfHumaneLetters.com find that Flannery O' Connor class. Find my Fairy Tale class. Sign up for Harry Potter Sign up for the Victorian Live. Sign up For Karita's webinar Dr. Baxter's poetry class all the Things are over on the website. Stick around to the end of this podcast. Mr. Banks has got a special poem and a huge shout out to our Patreon, who is always just filled with the most amazing conversation. It's so much fun to watch you guys grow in your literary lives. So until next time, keep crafting your literary life because stories will save the world. Thank you for listening to the Literary Life podcast brought to you by our loyal patreon sponsors. Visit HouseOfHumaneLetters.com to find Angelina and Thomas and to sign up for our newsletter with podcast schedules and more. And keep up with [e-mail] Join the Conversation at our member only Patreon forum or our Facebook discussion group. Visit patreon.com theliterarylife to find out how you can sponsor this podcast and get great bonus content. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review and check out our sister podcasts, the New Mason Jar and the well Read Poem. And now for a poem read by poet Thomas Banks.

[Thomas Banks]

The Road Not Taken by Robert Herbert Frost Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both, and be one traveller long I stood and looked down one as far as I could to where it bent in the undergrowth, Then took the other as just as fair, and having perhaps the better claim, because it was grassy and wanted wear Though as for that, the passing there had worn them really about the same. And both that morning equally lay in leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day. Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh somewhere Ages and ages hence, Two roads diverged in a wood, and I I took the one less travelled by, and that has made all the difference.