Flannery O'Connor, Laughter, and the Word Made Flesh

Abstract

O'Connor's style is singular in American letters, combining an ambivalent, even abusive, social laughter that is not negative with images of self-contained, isolated figures characteristic of our own modern age. The combination lies at heart of her fiction and generates much of power contained within her grotesque work.(1) Her success lies in moving laughter to generalized positions in her narratives, incorporating it throughout her entire text. O'Connor understood quite well that specific laughter by a character or by a narrator would be viewed as either derogative or separatist, and thus laughter occurring on a textual level in O'Connor's work does not originate with a character or narrator. Directed neither at someone nor aligned with someone (which would intimate complicity), it is a general laughter of the and of partial knowledge.(2) Laughter in O'Connor is neither positive nor negative but supremely accepting (perhaps even indifferent), and it permeates all aspects of her writing. Aimed directly at human condition, it is antithetical to excesses of sentimentality. This general laughter is most obvious when it occurs on a large scale, as in Parker's Back, when Parker crashes a tractor into only tree in field in which he is working and runs away, or in Country People, when fake bible salesman steals Hulga's wooden leg. Situational laughter is at its most subtle, though, when used in a phrase or even a single line. In A Good Man is Hard to Find, grandmother offers spiritual advice to Misfit while his band of men is killing her family. If you would pray, old lady said, Jesus would help you.(3) Such situational laughter in O'Connor's work is always anti-hierarchical. In contrast to laughter that puts somebody down, it embraces entire situation of humanity. This umbrella of laughter spans even most serious moments in her work and thus treats everyone and everything as on same level; there is nothing above it--not religion and certainly not O'Connor herself. An example of laughter aimed at situation, tellingly written at a time when O'Connor's own health was rapidly deteriorating, occurs in The Enduring Chill: You've got to face facts: Asbury can't write so he gets sick. He's going to be an invalid instead of an artist. Do you know what he needs? No, his mother said. Two or three shock treatments, Mary George said. Get that artist business out of his head once and for all. (CW, 563) This umbrella of abusive and accepting laughter, under which many different tones of laughter operate, is one of structures O'Connor uses to break with sentimental realism. It is an extremely important textual move that precludes reader identification. We are all separate individuals, but we all sit in same boat. O'Connor also does not insist that her laughter remain positive. The joyous social laughter employed by medieval explorers of grotesque such as Rabelais and celebrated by Mikhail Bakhtin is out of place in modern world.(4) O'Connor's laughter is accepting in that it allows a look at individual in his or her entirety; and it is abusive in its transgression of what is considered socially proper. Although transgressing boundaries is in itself important, textual strategy of abuse is significant because it allows O'Connor to shift a reader's perspective away from habitual sentimental realism. O'Connor is thus able to deal with difficult subject matter such as racism, human deformity, and aggressive ignorance in ways other than those socially prescribed. Her work is free to explore images and thoughts that are inaccessible under restraints imposed by serious culture. In contrast to O'Connor's transgressive situational laughter, her characters are strongly developed with well-defined voices and specific boundaries. …