Flannery O’Connor and Working-Class Literature :: Biography Biographies Essays

Flannery OConnor and Working-Class LiteratureAlthough Flannery OConnor could not herself technically be called a member of the functional class, the majority of her characters exist as good country people or those who have been displaced from the city to the farm. whatever the situation of the characters, rural, proletariat sprightliness is nearly always the focus in her work. Just a few of the critical elements of the working-class genre that OConnor offers in her pieces include a show of the cosmosy differences between classes, principally the ideas that working-class people are happier in their station in life and also experience less loneliness than those of the upper classes, and a sinister focus on the authentic dialogue of the southern working classes. She employs these elements like an expert in her work. OConnors texts often address the differences between the working classes and the owning classes. In their article, Toward a Theory of Working-Class Literature, Re nny Christopher and Carolyn Whitson comment that working-class nicety does not celebrate individuality. It instead recognizes the interdependence of units of people family, biotic community, friends, unions (76). OConnor confirms the benefits of community that the working class offers by showing upper-class loneliness. In effective Country People, the farm owners well-educated daughter is really depressed and lonely but chooses to be so. When her mother and she walk the field together, the daughters remarks were usually so ugly and her face so glum. She rigidly interacted with her mother, not showing any signs of family, community or solidarity with her at all. She informs her mother, if you want me, here I am LIKE I AM (274). There is no willingness to commune. Loneliness is also shown among many other materialistic characters in OConnors work the farm owner in The Displaced Person, the teacher Rayber in The Barber, and Mrs. Turpin in Revelation are some surplus e xamples. Christopher and Whitson claim that working-class culture has its own exceptional people who do not choose to leave their culture. OConnors pieces support this idea. much she paints the middle-class characters in her pieces as ridiculous or unhappy where the working-class is seemingly well-adjusted and satisfied with their place in life. Old Dudley, in the story The Geranium, finds himself living in better conditions in New York City, having left wing the poor country life as a boarder and fix-it man in Georgia.