The South

1
The South
12

• Literature Craft Voice
• Nicholas Delbanco and Alan Cheuse

2
The South

• The South is comprised of those states below the
  Mason-Dixon line and takes in a diverse
  geographical area, which includes the Texas
  plains, the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas, the
  Tennessee Valley, the Louisiana bayou, the
  Florida everglades, Mississippi River towns, the
  tobacco farms of the Carolinas, small towns like
  Oxford, Mississippi, and more.
• The South could be considered as much an
  emotional, intellectual, and cultural construct
  as a geographical one.
• Flannery OConnor describes the region as rich
  in contradiction, rich in irony, rich in
  contrast, and particularly rich in its speech.
• The uniqueness of Southern speech although not
  uniform sets it apart from other regions.
  Consider the Southern drawl.
• The South has a rich oral and oratory tradition.
• The South has wrestled with race relations, more
  so than any other region of the country. Today,
  the South approaches this issue with a new
  sensibility.

3
The South continued

• The roots of Southern literature extend back to
  colonization and John Smiths promotional tracts
  in the early 1600s and the slave culture of
  cotton and tobacco farming.
• Southern literature is as diverse as its
  landscape, but authors often draw from its
  language, history, values, and settings,
  frequently exploring tradition, the family, and
  the community and the individuals obligation to
  each.
• Southern literature continues to be haunted by
  its past. One critic joked that every Southern
  story has grandparents in it and very few
  Northern stories go back a generation.
• More than authors from other regions, Southern
  authors write about race relations and social
  class and the individuals place and obligation
  to class.
• Southern writers often create intense worlds with
  Gothic overtones, building, it would seem, off
  the tradition of Edgar Allan Poe. Sometimes
  adding dark humor.
• Through writers like Tennessee Williams, William
  Faulkner, Flannery OConnor, Ralph Ellison,
  Eudora Welty, Alice Walker, and others, the South
  has been a major force in twentieth century
  American literature.

4
A Rose For Emily
William Faulkner is one of Americas great
twentieth-century authors. A Rose for Emily
is perhaps his most widely anthologized story.
Notice how Faulkners rich prose and stylistic
flourishes (which are never mere window
dressing) present a sensitive portrait of the
deranged protagonist.

• Point of View
• The story is told in the first-person plural
  point of view. The narrator speaks for the town,
  using the communal we rather than the
  individualist I.
• Title
• The title emphasizes the towns sympathetic view
  of Emily and suggests that the story is a tribute
  to Emily the rose as a gift implying affection
  or the rose tossed atop a coffin at the final
  stage of burial. The story is a kind of eulogy,
  meant to tell the truth but in a very sympathetic
  way.

5
A Rose for Emily continued

• Structure
• Interpreting A Rose for Emily as a eulogy
  provides an explanation for the disordering of
  the storys events. The disordering
  de-sensationalizes the story, obscures the
  murder, and manipulates the reader into feeling
  so sorry for Emily that by the end of the story
  we can forgive her for the murder we just
  discovered she committed.
• Unreliable Narrator?
• If the narrator intentionally disorders the
  storys events, does he lose credibility? Can he
  still be considered reliable? Can we assume his
  view of Emily accurate? Do his racist and
  misogynist comments affect our evaluation of him
  and his credibility?
• Emily
• The narrator writes this portrait of Emily not
  long after her death. Emily has murdered Homer
  Barron, but the community thinks of her with
  fondness and refuses to define her as a murderer.
  Is it because Homer was from the North? That
  Homer was perhaps gay? (See opening paragraph to
  section IV.) That the community is almost
  patronizing to Emily since her family was once so
  powerful? Or that she was insane? (Insanity ran
  in her family.) Evidence of her insanity can be
  found in her inability to accept and even
  recognize change, which includes death. In a
  sense Emily is the town eccentric. She has
  become a tradition, a duty, and a care.
  Consider how the community waived her taxes, sent
  children to her for china-painting lessons, and
  rid her home of the stench. To the community,
  she is dear, inescapable, impervious, tranquil,
  and perverse.

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A Rose for Emily continued

• Emily as a fallen monument
• How is Emily a fallen monument? Does Emily
  represent the decaying Old South? Does the town
  recognize the need for change even while
  nostalgically clinging to the past with its good
  old days? What are the signs of transition in
  the town?
• Emilys Funeral
• Focus on the old soldiers, dressed in their
  brushed Confederate uniforms, confusing time
  with its mathematical progression, and believing
  they danced or courted Emily. The narrator tells
  us that they see the past not as a diminishing
  road but as a huge meadow which no winter ever
  quite touches. The recent decade of years to
  them is like a narrow bottleneck. What does
  this image suggest about nostalgia and the
  accuracy of human memory? Why are they more
  comfortable in the past?

7
Barn Burning
Plot At the end of Barn
Burning, we are left with a question which
has fascinated readers since the storys
publication Does Major de Spain kill
Abner Snopes? Three shots ring out and as
Sarty runs away, he trips over something, looks
back, and sobs Father! Has Sarty
tripped over the dead body of his father,
whom he immediately eulogizes with Father,
instead of his more usual Pap? The
eulogy is more obvious in the next
paragraph when Sarty refers to his father as
brave and Father. My Father (italics
Faulkners). The confusion is fueled by
Faulkners use of Abner in later fictions. Flem
is the primary Snopes in the trilogy of
novels The Hamlet, The Town, and The
Mansion, but Abner is still alive and renowned
for his barn burning. Of course, it is
possible that Abner was only wounded by
Major de Spain. (Faulkners characters often
appear in more than one work.)

• Point of View
• Who is the narrator? The narrator has access to
  Sartys innermost thoughts. Is the narrator a
  close friend recording Sartys story? It almost
  sounds as if the narrator is referencing an
  interview with the phrase twenty years later.
• Sentence Structure
• Consider Faulkners use of sentence structure to
  convey mood. Whenever Sarty, for instance, is
  anxious or in a heightened emotional state, the
  sentences correspond as they grow longer and more
  complex, surging forward like a torrent.
  Consider the storys opening paragraph and,
  later, when Sarty jumps out of the way of Major
  de Spains galloping horse (paragraph beginning
  Behind him the white man).

8
Sarty Snopes

• Sarty Snopes
• Barn Burning chronicles a turning point in
  Sartys life as he decides to resolve his
  dilemma. He must choose either truth, dignity,
  loneliness, and perhaps death or dishonesty,
  meanness, life, and family. His decision is not
  easy. Sarty is only ten years old and craves his
  fathers attention and love. Consider how he
  imitates his fathers behavior as he climbs on
  the wagon in the opening scene, and how he tries
  to persuade his father not to seek revenge on
  Major de Spain for the penalty. He feels as if
  he is being pulled two ways like between two
  teams of horses.
• Two events bring Sartys dilemma to a crisis
  point. First, just before the family arrives at
  Major de Spains, Abner tells Sarty, Youre
  getting to be a man. You got to learn to stick
  to your own blood or you aint going to have any
  blood to stick to you.
• Second, Abner prepares to burn Major de Spains
  barn without his customary warning. Trusting his
  fathers words about becoming a man and realizing
  the absolute wickedness of his fathers impending
  action, he breaks free from the clutches of his
  mother and warns Major de Spain and thus forever
  separates himself from his family.
• Sarty never regrets his decision and the
  implication is that he has grown into a decent
  man. Consider the last sentence of the story and
  note that the events related in the narrative
  occurred at least twenty years ago.

9
Abner Snopes

• Abner Snopes
• Overwhelmed by his sense of humiliation, Abner
  is incapable of resolving disputes, working under
  anyone, accepting reprimands, or accepting even
  the most lenient of penalties for obvious
  wrongdoings. He is mean-spirited, irascible, and
  snarling to everyone, including his family. His
  fierce pride masks his insecurity, and so he
  assumes a wolflike posture that places himself
  above the law and oozes defiance to an absurd
  extreme. He reveals no redeeming qualities.
  Only Sarty seems to escape his influence as his
  older son Flem is following in his footsteps.
• Fire and Abner
• Fire is the instrument through which Abner
  preserves his integrity. He feels empowered with
  fire as he uses it to place others, or at least
  their possessions, at his mercy for however so
  brief a time. For Abner, the resulting
  destruction compensates for the injury inflicted
  on him and his family by their enemies. Of
  course, these injuries are largely Abners own
  doing and result largely from his heightened
  sensitivity and psychoses.

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The Snopes Women

• The Snopes Women
• An unappealing bunch. The wife is under the
  husbands subjection, the aunt is lazy, and the
  daughters are completely unattractive and slow
  witted.
• Some have questioned Faulkners attitude toward
  women. Is he unnecessarily hostile? Or is the
  presentation of Sartys sisters, for instance,
  just darkly humorous?
• Consider the descriptions of his sisters
  hulking, big, bovine, in a flutter of cheap
  ribbons, the flat loud voices of the two girls
  emanated an incorrigible idle inertia, and
  they gave the impression of being, encompassing
  as much living meat and volume and weight as any
  other two of the family wearing only an
  expression of bovine interest.

11
A Good Man Is Hard to Find
Flannery OConnors work is deeply
informed by her Southernness and her
Catholicity. The sense of both place and
religion is strong in her work and needs to
be considered for even a rudimentary
understanding of her achievement.

• Consider the following quotation from Dorothy
  Walters In her book Flannery OConnor
• For OConnors characters, the path to
  salvation is never easy the journey is marked by
  violence, suffering, often acute disaster. To
  arouse the recipients of grace, divinity often
  resorts to drastic modes of awakening. A kind of
  redemption through catastrophe.

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A Good Man continued

• Grandmother redemption through catastrophe
• As OConnors other works of fiction, A Good
  Man Is Hard to Find is about a characters
  redemption through catastrophe. Here, the
  grandmother, a silly and annoying woman, finds
  salvation in the moment just before death.
• Chart the grandmothers movement towards
  salvation. She begins by trying to flatter the
  Misfit into releasing the family (You wouldnt
  shoot an old lady ). Soon the flattery
  transforms into sincerity as she seems to
  recognize some goodness in him. She evokes the
  power of prayer and genuinely seems to want to
  help him, although her son is already dead If
  you would pray Jesus would help you.
• Confusion and doubt follow for the grandmother
  before the power of grace takes full effect
  the grandmothers head cleared for an instant.
  She saw the mans face twisted close to her own
  as if he were going to cry and she murmured, Why
  youre one of my babies. Youre one of my
  children! She reached out and touched him on
  the shoulder. She reaches out with compassion,
  sympathy, and unselfishness.
• OConnor comments on this scene are
  illuminating Its the moment of grace for her
  anyway a silly old woman but it leads him to
  shoot her. The moment of grace excites the devil
  to frenzy.
• The grandmother dies redeemed, a martyr, as
  emphasized by her crossed legs and her smiling
  toward heaven.

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A Good Man continued

• Misfits Salvation?
• The grandmothers efforts to save the Misfit do
  not seem to have been in vain. OConnor said the
  grandmothers gesture, like the mustard seed,
  will grow to be a crow-filled tree in the
  Misfits heart and redeem him yet. The process
  seems to have begun. Close to the end of the
  story, the Misfit declares, No pleasure but
  meanness, but after the murder, he says, Its
  no real pleasure in life. A subtle but
  significant movement.
• Structure and Tone
• Consider the storys structure. How does the
  tone change with the Misfits arrival? (Note how
  in the first half humor dominates the darker
  undertones. But after the Misfit arrives, the
  darkness dominates the humor.) Does the tonal
  shift make for an imbalanced, perhaps confused
  story? Or does the imbalanced tone or seemingly
  confused structure reflect OConnors world view?
• The Family
• Is the family representative of the American
  suburban family?

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Revelation

• In Revelation, we meet two grotesque figures
  Ruby Turpin, who is in need of salvation, and
  Mary Grace, the unwitting agent of that
  salvation.
• Point of View
• Flannery OConnor uses a third-person limited
  point of view. We see only into Ruby
  consciousness. Note Rubys arrogance as she
  studies the individuals in the waiting room of
  the doctors office.
• Structure
• The story is structured conventionally. The
  action builds to the turning point when Mary
  Grace attacks Ruby. Ruby then contemplates Mary
  Graces verbal assault and, in the climax of the
  story, questions God Who do you think you are?
  After her final revelation in which she sees
  people entering heaven, Ruby becomes fully aware
  of her deeply flawed character.

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Ruby Turpin

• Ruby Turpin
• Ruby is likened to a hog. She is overweight
  and has small, fierce eyes, but, more
  importantly, she is emotionally and spiritually a
  hog, reflective of her arrogance and selfishness.
  Before her transformation, Ruby is
  condescending, domineering, smug,
  self-congratulatory, and capable of only a
  superficial reflection of God.
• Mary Grace calls Ruby a wart hog, resulting in
  her extended self-examination. Ruby asks
  herself, How am I a hog? Her self-examination
  is intense and OConnor communicates the
  intensity to us through a metaphorical language.
  Ruby, we read, gazed, as if through the very
  heart of mystery, down into the pig parlor at the
  hogs, suggesting that she peered into her own
  heart. As she looks at the pigs, she absorbs
  some abysmal life-giving knowledge what she
  discovers about herself is ugly, but ultimately
  life-giving as she transforms into a better, more
  profound, more introspective, more honest, and
  more compassionate individual.

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Revelation continued

• Language and Imagery
• Consider the almost Biblical language and
  imagery that OConnor uses to convey Rubys
  transformation. Ruby falls silent and awe-struck
  as she realizes the sacredness of all life.
  Everything was taking on a mysterious hue and
  burned with a transparent intensity a purple
  streak in the sky a field of crimson a
  visionary light settled in her eyes a field of
  living fire a vast horde of souls were rumbling
  toward heaven white trash, clean for the first
  time in their lives shouting hallelujah.

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Revelation continued

• Mary Grace
• Her obviously symbolic name suggests that Mary
  Grace is the one God has selected to work through
  to send grace to Ruby. Significantly, in the
  waiting room, she reads Human Development, which
  is exactly what Ruby needs.
• Consider what Joyce Carol Oates said of Mary
  Grace
• Mary Grace is one of those pathetic,
  overeducated, physically unattractive girls like
  Joy-Hulga in Good Country People. That
  OConnor identifies with these girls is obvious
  it is she, through Mary Grace, who throws that
  textbook on human development at all of us,
  striking us in the foreheads, hopefully to bring
  about a change in our lives.
• In OConnor, mean-spirited characters are often
  the agents of grace and salvation for her
  protagonists
• OConnor on Ruby and Mary Grace
• Ruby Turpin gets the vision. Wouldnt have
  been any point in that story if she hadnt. I
  like Mrs. Turpin as well as Mary Grace. You got
  to be a very big woman to shout at the Lord
  across a hog pen. Shes a county female Jacob.
  And that vision is purgatorial.

18
Battle Royal
First published as a short story in 1948, Battle
Royal was used as the opening chapter of
Invisible Man, Ralph Ellisons classic novel
published in 1952.

• In Ralph Ellison, Mark Busby writes that
  Ellisons regional background, especially his
  Southwestern frontier childhood, had a profound
  effect on his work. Ordered chaos, visible
  darkness, traditional individuality, antagonistic
  cooperation all characterize Ralph Ellisons
  complex worldview drawn from his experience on
  the frontier where cultural minglings
  flourished.
• Narrator and Invisibility
• Battle Royal is narrated by an older man
  looking back at an experience in his youth. At
  the time of the story the narrator is confused
  about many things, and he admits he has a lot to
  learn. He has to learn, for instance, that he is
  invisible. How does the experience related in
  the story help him understand the concept of
  invisibility?
• The narrator feels invisible because he is
  not looked upon as an individual. He is
  considered only as a type (a black boy) whose
  talents, desires, and goals are only relevant to
  the town leaders if they can be exploited.

19
Battle Royal

• Narrator and the prize
• When the narrator is awarded his prize, he is
  grateful, moved and overjoyed. His family
  and neighbors are also excited for him. Does the
  scholarship, to a certain extent, excuse the
  townsmens behavior toward the narrator and the
  other black boys? Or does it represent another
  gesture of humiliation and oppression? If so,
  why would they want to educate the narrator?
• Consider the superintendents words some
  day hell lead his people in the proper paths
  Keep developing as you are and some day this
  brief case will be filled with important papers
  that will help shape the destiny of your people.
  
• Do you think the towns leaders have plans to
  use the narrator for their own purposes after his
  graduation?
• What do you think the superintendent means by
  proper paths?
• Are the towns leaders altruistic?
• Why are they so upset by the phrase social
  equality?
• What is the difference between social
  equality and social responsibility?

20
Battle Royal continued

• Town Leaders and Public Posture
• At the smoker, the town leaders drop the mask of
  dignity and decorum that they wear during the
  day. Consider the narrators surprise when he
  enters the room and notices that many are drunk,
  and then hears the superintendent yell, Bring
  up the shines, gentlemen! Bring up the little
  shines!
• Battle Royal as Symbol
• The Battle Royal is symbolic of the leaders
  communal strategy to keep the African Americans
  divided and subjugated. At the smoker and in the
  community, the leaders confuse, humiliate, and
  exploit the boys, and then pay them a small fee,
  which makes the boys and, symbolically, the
  larger black community dependent upon the leaders
  who control all opportunities. Thus, the Battle
  Royal mirrors the larger battle for
  African-American equality and the more personal
  battle of the narrator as he evaluates the
  conflicting messages from his grandfather and the
  town leaders.
• Grandfathers Advice
• The grandfather found a way to live within a
  racist culture with at least some integrity and
  dignity. Was he too passive? Can his yeses been
  seen as a subversive action?

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Battle Royal continued

• Dancer
• In one way, the dancer with the tattooed
  American flag on her belly represents the
  American dream. The black boys can get close
  enough to see it, but they cannot touch it, or,
  implicitly, participate fully in what America
  offers. The men at the smoker abuse the dancer
  in the same way they exploit American freedom and
  ideals.
• However, as a woman, the dancer serves to point
  out that the culture of this small town is not
  only racist, but also sexist. Like the boys, the
  dancer is similarly abused, degraded, and
  exploited, and therefore indicative of the way
  the community treats women.
• Narrators Dream
• The dream suggests that the neighbors (i.e.,
  the black community) who congratulate the
  narrator on his scholarship are the clowns and
  that the town leaders laugh at them for their
  foolish acceptance of the situation. The message
  in the brief case implies that one way to control
  the black community and, particularly, its very
  intelligent and therefore potentially dangerous
  members, is to keep them busy. If they are kept
  moving, they may not have the time to think and
  they will buy into an illusion of advancement.
• Are there other ways to interpret the dream?

22
A Party Down at the Square

• Ralph Ellison sets this story in a small Southern
  town sometime in the mid-twentieth century. As
  the story suggests, lynching were all too common
  in the South until well into the Civil Rights
  movement. (During the Cold War, the Soviet Union
  criticized the United States for the frequent
  lynchings of African-Americans.) A Party Down
  at the Square, with its disarming title, depicts
  all the violence, hatred, degeneracy, and horror
  of a vigilante lynching.
• The Crowd
• Note the response of the crowd to the lynching.
  Most find it an outlet for their own anger and
  their own disappointments as well as a source of
  entertainment. Consider the crowds reaction to
  Jed and his response to the Negros appeal for a
  Christian to put him out of his misery.
• Use of Nigger
• The casual use of nigger, in the story and in
  actuality, not only indicates disrespect and
  racism towards African Americans but also
  desensitizes whites to blacks by dehumanizing
  them. Therefore, if blacks are less than human,
  a lynching and burning are justified or, at
  least, more easily tolerated.

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A Party Down at the Square continued

• Narrator
• The narrator, a young boy from Ohio, is
  visiting his uncle in Alabama. He is shocked by
  the execution he witnesses in the town square.
• As the leaders prepare to burn the man, a
  violent storm breaks and a plane crashes, but
  nothing deters the execution. The storm reflects
  the narrators inner turmoil and confusion The
  heat was too much for me. My heart was pounding
  everything came up and spilled in a big gush
  over the ground. I was sick, and tied, and weak,
  and cold.
• Despite the brutality, the horror, and the
  inhumanity of what he witnesses, the narrator
  remains non-committal about his experience. He
  condemns no one. But he is young and that, as
  his casual use of nigger indicates, he was raised
  in, almost certainly, a racist family milieu. He
  is haunted by the burning and recalls it every
  time he eats barbecue.
• At the end of the story, the narrator seems
  almost ready to shed his inculcated racist
  attitudes. He does protest his uncles derisive
  statement that he is the gutless wonder from
  Cincinnati he never goes to another lynching
  and he notes their ineffectiveness whites still
  look hungry and blacks look mean as hell when
  you pass them at the store.
• This story represents a way for him to process
  what he saw and a first step in accepting African
  Americans as equals.

24
A Party Down at the Square continued

• Statue
• On the site of the execution stands a statue of
  a Confederate general appearing resolute and
  intractable. Could the statue be a symbol of the
  Old South and its values, which include racism
  and vigilante justice?
• Is it significant that the statue is not
  affected by the crashing of the plane, the
  execution, or the storm?
• At one point, the narrator is unable to leave
  and sees only the statue. Could his lack of
  movement be emblematic of his wanting to leave
  his racist attitudes behind but not being quite
  able?
• Irony
• How is the title of the story ironic?
• How are Jeds words ironic when he says that
  there are no Christians or Jews here, only one
  hundred percent Americans?

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For Further Consideration

• 1. Eudora Welty once said, Fiction depends for
  its life on place every story would be another
  story, and unrecognizable as art, if it took up
  its characters and plot and happened somewhere
  else. Test Weltys statement by shifting the
  location of one of the stories in this chapter.
• 2. James D. Houston states that fiction reveals a
  form of dialogue between a place and the lives
  being lived. How does this demonstrate itself
  in the stories in this chapter?
• 3. Compare and contrast the South (or Souths) of
  Faulkner, OConnor and Ellison.