[In the following essay, Brewer asserts that O'Connor's use of Christ and Satan symbolism in her work proves her thorough understanding of Southern Protestantism.]

In her introduction to Sister Kathleen Feeley's book on Flannery O'Connor, Caroline Gordon reports that O'Connor once remarked “she could wait fifty, indeed a hundred, years to have one of her stories read right.” Unfortunately, it is true that she has been widely misread, despite the probability that no other “Southern” writer has ever written of her own country with more perspicacity and scrupulous realism. It seems paradoxical, but it is undoubtedly her acumen and accuracy that has prompted the misreading of her fiction. The tensions, the complexities, the convolutions, indeed, the contradictions in her work form the warp and the woof of the South itself. One cannot read about the South with the same calm that one reads of, say, New England, or of the Rocky Mountain states. The Southern region of this country is a land of violent contrasts and contradictions, indeed, of violence.

Therefore, in order to “read right” O'Connor's driven characters—Hazel Motes, Rufus Johnson, The Misfit, Joy-Hulga Hopewell, Tom T. Shiflet, Parker, Mrs. McIntye and many others—one must understand what W. J. Cash calls “the mind of the South” and Allen Tate dubs “Uncle Sam's other province.”¹ And the greatest obstacle to that understanding arises out of one of the greatest difficulties in accepting O'Connor's portrayal of the South as true—Southern Protestantism. For all her Catholic orthodoxy, nowhere is her profound understanding of her country more evident than in the unerring delineation of Protestantism through her Christ and Satan symbolism.

It is O'Connor's own background of religious, Celtic, generational and environmental influences that equips her with such singular insight and allows these symbols to work in a “Christ-haunted” South where the “territory is held largely by the devil.”² Through her devotion to Catholicism, she shares the obsessions of original sin, redemption through Christ and the last judgment with the typical Southerner, to whom the human soul is a battleground for Christ and the devil. In the short story, “The River,” the Reverend Bevel Summers enjoins his listeners to “‘Believe Jesus or the devil! … testify to one or the other!’”³

This either-or doctrine and the imminence of both Christ and the devil are typical of Bible Belt Protestantism and fundamental to O'Connor's work. The sinner makes the final choice, but not without a great deal of pressure from both sides. Hazel Motes' grandfather declares that Jesus “‘would chase him over the waters of sin! … Jesus would have him in the end!’” (Three [Three by Flannery O’Connor], p. 16). And that is exactly what happens. No matter what poor Haze does, nor where he turns, he cannot escape his eventual redemption, even when he tries to follow the devil, as faithful a tempter as Jesus is a Saviour: Signs of 666 constantly appear on the highways he travels and he desperately essays the establishment of “The Church Without Christ”; Sabbath Hawks and Leora Watts are more than willing ploys of Satan; Hoover Shoats is willing to promote Haze and make him rich. In other words, Haze is exposed to the same temptations as was Christ in the wilderness—power, sensuality, money—but as his grandfather predicted, Jesus “has him in the end.”

The concept of Christ and the devil as pursuers is endemic to Southern Protestantism, as exemplified in many gospel songs, even those ostensibly for children:

One, two, three, the devil's after me,
Four, five, six, he's always throwing bricks,
Seven, eight, nine, he misses every time,
Hallelujah, hallelujah, amen!(4)
Nine, eight, seven, I'm on my way to heaven,
Six, five, four, he's knocking at my door,
Three, two, one, the vict'ry has been won,
Hallelujah, hallelujah, amen!(4)

A variation on the ending—Three, two, one, the battle's just begun—recalls O'Connor's statement that “The good is something under construction” (MM [Mystery and Manners], p. 226). It is also a common regional perspective. The contest does not end with the sinner's choice, but rages on until he is safely inside the pearly gates. Sermons and altar calls are liberally sprinkled with exhortations to “pray through,” “get refilled,” or “reconsecrate.” Surprisingly, this holds true of Baptist services, though “eternal security” is preached. The tradition of “backsliding,” too strong to deny, is reflected in testimony services:

That old sneak came around today. I said, “Lord, hurry. And He did.”

Right before I started, the devil jumped on my liver with both feet, and I knowed he was up to his old tricks. So I said, “Get thee behind me, Satan,” and came on. And, praise God! I feel just fine and on the Lord's side.

O'Connor expresses this facet of Protestantism in the Misfit's remark about the grandmother: “‘She would of been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life’” (Three, p. 143). He perceives that the old lady's revelation was prompted by fear of damnation, not by a “thirst after righteousness.”

Preoccupation with the devil as a real personality may seem a bit like a rerun of the medieval mystery plays, but there is indeed a terrible primitivism in Southern Protestantism. Belief in hexes, conjuring and demons is found not only in Appalachia and the uneducated community, but literally everywhere. The population of the South is largely Celtic in origin, “of all Western strains the most susceptible to suggestions of the supernatural.”⁵ O'Connor's Irish heritage links her more closely with the non-Catholic South than with a Frenchman, say, from Louisiana.

The Irish were historically concerned with demonology; Saint Patrick himself exorcised the demons from the land in order to make it habitable. Irish priests were hired to exorcise the devil as much as to invoke Christ. The superstitious Scotch-Irish South inherited the legacy, and O'Connor's “mystery” perpetuates it:

To insure our sense of mystery, we need a sense of evil which sees the devil as a real spirit who must be made to name himself, and not simply to name himself as vague evil, but to name himself with his specific personality for every occasion.

(MM, p. 117)

The “devil as a real spirit” in “Parker's Back” takes on the form of apocalyptic animals tattooed on his skin. They symbolize Parker's demon possession, an obsession in the Protestant South. It is not at all uncommon during a prayer service for the leader to ask everyone to close his eyes and take heed that the exorcised demons do not enter another. Parker's tattoo of the Byzantine Christ is obviously an effort to rid him of his demons, but it is not until he avows his biblical name, Obadiah Elihu, that he feels “the light pour through him.”⁶

The second part of the mystery is that it is his demons that drive him to this moment, just as it is the demonic city, a symbol of alienation from God, that drives Mr. Head to cry: “‘Oh help me Gawd I'm lost!’” (Three, p. 211). The devil or his demons must be present as catalysts in order for revelations to be made.

St. Cyril of Jerusalem, in instructing catechumens, wrote: “The dragon sits by the side of the road, watching those who pass. Beware lest he devour you. We go to the Father of Souls, but it is necessary to pass by the dragon.”

(MM, p. 35)

Thus, a sense of original sin is necessary for redemption, but like everything else in the South, the awareness must come in an exaggerated fashion, with violence and earthshaking drama. “What our Southerner required was … a faith to draw men together in hordes, to terrify them with Apocalyptic rhetoric, to cast them into the pit, rescue them, and at last bring them shouting into the fold of Grace … of primitive frenzy and the blood sacrifice.”⁷ And the demons that provoke that terror become, as they did in medieval mystery plays, instruments of divine revelation, agents of grace. Therefore, the symbols of Christ and the devil sometimes become confused.

The Misfit in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” is directly responsible for the grandmother's “conversion” because he is there to shoot her. There is a curious thing in this paradox; that is, that there is a saying amongst Southern Protestant preachers that “it would be nice if you could shoot the new converts while they are at the altar, so you could be sure that they would stay saved.” It does not seem likely that O'Connor was ignorant of this statement.

In Wise Blood Hazel Motes becomes both murderer of Solace Layfield and his vicarious redeemer, “leaning his head closer to hear the confession” (Three, p. 111). He also “functions as a catalyst to bring about Enoch's religious initiation,”⁸ and the final scene of the novel suggests that he may function in much the same manner for Mrs. Flood, whose final vision recalls Roy Acuff's song, “I Saw the Light.”

It is the demonic boys in “Circle in the Fire” who bring about Mrs. Cope's revelation, and here O'Connor pushes the connection between forces of good and evil. In the final scene the evil boys are seen “as if the prophets were dancing in the fiery furnace, in the circle the angel had cleared for them” (Three, p. 238).

In “Good Country People” it is the reprobate Bible salesman, Manley Pointer, who “points” the way to Joy-Hulga. Her seduction scheme is an exorcism of the demon in reverse; she is trying to prove that the sin does not exist, but her attempt results in the possibility for her conversion. God's sure and immediate judgment forces her to face what she claimed to believe and may make her realize her true status as infidel. Whether or not she chooses Christ, the devilish Pointer has pointed out her sin.

It is difficult to say whether the Christ/devil symbolism is better drawn in the character of Hazel Motes or in that of Rufus Johnson in “The Lame Shall Enter First.” Rufus reveals the way to Christ to Norton, and indirectly becomes responsible for his death, at the same time he reveals Sheppard's sin and unbelief. Like Haze, Rufus is running from God and declares: “‘If I ever repent, I'll be a preacher’” (CS [The Complete Stories], p. 476). However, his club foot recalls the cloven hoof of Satan, and at one point arouses revulsion in Sheppard:

The boy's club foot was set within the circle of his vision. The pieced-together shoe appeared to grin at him with Johnson's own face. He caught hold of the edge of the sofa cushion and his knuckles turned white. A chill of hatred shook him.

(CS, p. 473)

Later, the boy appears as a small “black figure on the threshold of some dark apocalypse” (CS, p. 478). Thus, Rufus fits the Christ/devil symbol, but unlike Haze, he is not trying to deny Christ, but promote Him, or at least he reads and “eats” scripture. This, as well as the Christ/devil symbolism, highlights two other aspects of religion in the South. One is the curious dual nature of man, somehow larger than life in the Southerner, that allows him to combine both the Puritan ideal and its antithesis. As Cash writes, “The Southerner's frolic humor, his continual violation of his strict precepts in action, might serve constantly to exacerbate the sense of sin in him, to keep his zest for absolution always at white heat.”⁹

This conundrum is evident in Hazel Motes and The Misfit, even though they do not seem aware of it as does Rufus. Haze's progress from the desire to escape the “wild ragged figure moving from tree to tree in the back of his mind” to actual murder serves only to heighten his sense of guilt and need for absolution. Hence, his penitential observances. The Misfit's indulgence in the “pleasure of meanness” ends in the realization that there is no pleasure in killing if there is no sense of sin. If one is forgiven so easily, the fun is all gone. In each case, their actions “exacerbate the sense of sin.” In other words, Flannery O'Connor's “grotesques” are produced by the extremes of Christianity in the South.

Another significant factor which confirms O'Connor's knowledge of her region is the fact that in both the case of Haze and of The Misfit, the efficacy of grace is equal to, or greater than, the magnitude of the sins. The concept is not new; the Apostle Paul spoke of “grace greater than our sins,” as did Saint Augustine and François Mauriac, whom O'Connor often quotes:

Those who seem devoted to evil were, perhaps, chosen before others, and the depth of their fall determines the height of their calling.¹⁰

In Hazel Motes, this is indicated by the murderer-saviour tension. The Misfit is also an angel of death and of mercy, but O'Connor pushes the idea of grace even further with the repeated statement that “There was not a cloud in the sky nor any sun” (Three, pp. 138 & 141). The sun generally represents the Divine presence in O'Connor's work, so there is an obvious absence of God. On the other hand, the absence of a cloud possibly means that there is no judgment present either. Dorothy Walters claims that this means an absence of grace, because the commonly accepted biblical meaning of a cloud is grace or blessing. However, this does not hold true in the South, where a cloud is usually viewed as an evil omen or as synonymous with the wrath of God.

Whether O'Connor meant one or the other is open to question, but her intent in depicting grace as sufficient in direct ratio to sin, particularly heinous sins, points out one of the peculiar, and sometimes humorous, facets of Christianity in the South (Protestant or Catholic). That is, the greater the sins one has committed, the more evil one has been, the greater one has proven God's mercy and love to be. This appeals to the sensation-seeking, drama-thirsty nature of the Southerner. If one wants, for example, to draw a crowd to a revival meeting, it is better to invite as evangelist a reformed convict, one of the drug addicts made famous by Dave Wilkerson's book, The Cross and the Switchblade, or a Marjo Gortner. To advertise an evangelist who was raised in the Church and never committed any spectacular sin is certain failure for a revival. Crowds prefer one who can sing “I wandered far away from God,” or “The debt was very large and growing every day, for I was always sinning and never tried to pay.”

The second aspect of Southern religion highlighted by the Christ/devil symbol is the eschatological view that the major goal is salvation and redemption of the soul, and any means by which this is accomplished is the will of God. Therefore, any agent who acts as a catalyst for conversion, be he murderer, thief, deceiver or anti-christ, is acting as an agent of God's mercy.

Again, Hazel Motes, the Misfit, Rufus Johnson, and Manley Pointer fall into this category, and so, possibly, does Tom T. Shiflet in “The Life You Save May Be Your Own.” He is obviously a Christ symbol, albeit a questionable one. “His figure formed a crooked cross” (Three, p. 161), his “smile stretched like a weary snake” (p. 167), and he announces that “‘the law doesn't satisfy me’” (p. 167), a statement that may refer to either the law of the land or to that of God. However, Mrs. Crater is too blinded by her own greed to take notice. It is possible that she, like Mrs. Cope, will have an epiphany and repent after she realizes what Shiflet has done. If she does, the evil Shiflet will have worked the will of God.

To the Southern mind, salvation comes about directly as a result of the will of God. Viewing himself as a sojourner here on earth, the Southern Protestant goes to church and sings “I'm just a pilgrim stranger as I journey here below; A citizen of Heaven …” or “This world is not my home, I'm just a-passing through.” Since the only life that matters is the one in the hereafter, the means by which one is saved are not important. Indeed, “God works in mysterious ways His wonders to perform,” and if Lucynell must be abandoned in order to “wake up” Mrs. Crater, or Norton die so that Sheppard will be convicted of his sin and unbelief, it is all in divine order; the soul's salvation is the only reason for life here on earth.

However, though God's mercy seems boundless, there is a point beyond which one can go that will find him in outer darkness for eternity. Southern Protestants often quote the scripture, “God's spirit will not always strive with man,” and again O'Connor reveals her profound knowledge of her country in “The Displaced Person.”

It is readily apparent that Mr. Guizac, the Displaced Person hired by Mrs. McIntyre, is meant as a Christ-figure. He literally “has not where to lay his head.” Moreover, he is “pure” in the sense of Southern fundamentalism, because he does not smoke nor drink, works hard and cares for his family. Despite all this, Mrs. McIntyre resolves to get rid of him. Father Flynn counsels her to keep him and gives her repeated warnings, even going so far as to say that “He came to redeem us” (Three, p. 295).

Nevertheless, the old lady is literally hell-bent on his leaving, and ends by committing blasphemy when she says “Christ is just another Displaced Person.” Her soul now forever lost, she is incapable of stopping his murder. In the final scene, it is she who feels as if “she was in some foreign country” (Three, p. 299), it is she who is a displaced person, beyond the mercy of God. She “hardened her heart” and will never be saved, a theme repeated over and over in sermon, song and altar calls in the South:

Oh, do not let the word depart,
And close thine eyes against the light;
Poor sinner, harden not your heart,
Be saved, o tonight.
Should the Spirit cease its warning,
When sin's path so long you've trod,
What a sad, eternal judgment,
Unprepared to meet thy God.

Flannery O'Connor has been accused of incorrectly depicting the Protestant South, as well as writing only about freaks—Southerners are “still able to recognize one” (MM, p. 44)—but perhaps the problem is one of misunderstanding on the part of the reader, not of the writer. The list of attitudes and mores in the South that “outlanders” misunderstand are legion, and run the gamut from racial issues to collard greens. W. J. Cash says that the South is “not quite a nation without a nation, but the next thing to it.”¹¹

It is just possible that Flannery O'Connor portrays the South so accurately that outlanders will never “read her stories right.” Certainly she does an extraordinary job of portraying the splendors of Bible Belt Protestantism, but perhaps it takes a Southern Protestant to recognize that. As O'Connor writes,

Religious enthusiasm is accepted as one of the South's more grotesque features, and it is possible to build upon that acceptance, however little real understanding such acceptance may carry with it.

(MM, p. 208)

Notes

1. W. J. Cash, The Mind of the South (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1941), p. viii.

2. Flannery O'Connor, Mystery and Manners, ed. Sally and Robert Fitzgerald (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1979), pp. 44 and 118. Hereafter, this source will be cited in parentheses following the quotation as MM.

3. Flannery O'Connor, Three by Flannery O'Connor (New York: The New American Library), p. 16. Hereafter, this source will be cited in parentheses following the quotation as Three.

4. The songs and anecdotes contained in the text are those recalled from my childhood and own experiences.

5. Cash, p. 54.

6. Flannery O'Connor, The Complete Stories (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1979), p. 528. Hereafter, this source will be cited in parentheses following the quotation as CS.

7. Cash, p. 56.

8. Stuart Burns, “The Evolution of Wise Blood,” Modern Fiction Studies, Vol. XVI No. 2 (1970), p. 154.

9. Cash, p. 57.

10. François Mauriac, Les Anges Noirs (Paris: Editions Bernard Grasset, 1936), p. 206.

11. Cash, p. viii.