Flannery O'connor Presentation

The Geranium Publication History

The Geranium Critical Analysis

“An Africanist Impasse: Race, Return, and Revelation in the Short Fiction of Flannery O’Connor” Nicholas Crawford

The Geranium Critical Analysis • The connection between home and AfricanAmerican’s to O’Connor characters . • “In other words, in O’Connor’s short fiction we find a recurring pattern: a white protagonist on a journey of return, whose encounter with an African American character signals a failure of personal and social self-reckoning.” • “…a clear indication that this is a theme that haunts O’Connor, in her first story, ‘The Geranium,”’and her last- a reworking of the first- ‘Judgment Day,’ Dudley and Tanner experience devastating encounters with their black neighbors, yet they still reminisce about their old homes in the South and about the ‘Negroes’ they knew there.” • “Again and again O’Connor narratives follow a white protagonist whose significant and sought after encounter with black Americans signals a failed attempt at a secular homecoming.”

The Geranium Critical Analysis • How O’Connor’s fiction reflects the psychosocial realities of race relations. •

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“The repetition of this particular narrative pattern suggests that the culminating moments of grace are triggered by, and reflective of, social, historical, and psychological circumstances. O’Connor’s black characters figure prominently in this set of contingencies and serve to catalyze the main characters’ spiritual homecoming at the expense of a secular and psychological one.” “The pattern of attempted return, followed by a failed recognition scene with quasi-familial black characters, and ending in escape from psychological ruin through the merciful (or merciless) ‘action of grace’ is in full evidence.”

Judgment Day Publication History • Last story in Everything that Rises Must Converge (FSG, 1965) • Rewritten version of her first story, “The Geranium.” • Middle version titled “An Exile in the East” • Published posthumously in South Carolina Review in 1978 • “Judgment Day” written “in extremis” or “at the point of death.” • Sally Fitzgerald, editor of the Library of America edition of O’Connor’s collected works, believes the title should be spelled “Judgments Day,” following one of O’Connor’s typscripts, but the story was first printed as “Judgement Day”

The Geranium Critical Analysis • The connection between home and AfricanAmerican’s to O’Connor characters . •

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“…in O’Connor’s short fiction we find a recurring pattern: a white protagonist on a journal of return, whose encounter with an African-American character signals a failure of personal and social self-reckoning: and it is this failure, this impasse, that sparks the need for deliverance through spirituality.” “…a clear indication that this is a theme that haunts O’Connor, in her first story, “The Geranium,” and her last- a reworking of the first- “Judgment Day,” Dudley and Tanner experience devastating encounters with their black neighbors, yet they still reminisce about their old homes in the South and about the ‘Negroes’ they knew there.” “The emphasis on the geranium’s exposed roots focuses the story’s central symbol on Dudley’s transplanted, vulnerable state, and on the role of an unviable past violently exposed by the present.”

Judgment Day Publication History

• Letter to Robert Giroux (21 May 1964) •

“…however, there is a story [“Judgment Day”] that I have been working on off and on for several years that I may be able to finish in time to include. If not, I would rather have six or seven good stories than six or seven good and one bad…”

• Letter to Catherine Carver (27 June 1964) •

“…Will you look at this one [“Judgment Day”] and say if you think it fitten for the collection of if you think it can be made so? It’s a rewrite of a story that I have had around since 1946 and never been satisfied with, but I hope I have it now except for details maybe…”

• Letter to Catherine Carver (15 July 1964) •

“…I do thank you and I’ll get to work on this one [“Judgment Day”] you sent back. I can see the point about the daughter’s coming being too close to his encounter with the doctor. As for the “on his back” business—that’s a cherished Southern white assertion—that the Negro is on his back and in a way it’s quite true. But you have to be born below the M.D. line to appreciate it fully…”

Judgment Day Critical Analysis