Tough Love
Human Goodness in the Fiction of Flannery O‘Connor
Alexander Rudolf Ate Raven
Student Nr.: 1395300
Supervisor: Dr. Irene Visser
Word Count: 14810
Masterscriptie Engelse Taal en Cultuur
Acknowledgements
The following people have been absolutely essential, in one way or another, in helping me at
long last finish this research paper. First of all, my parents, Albert Jan Raven and Carla Maria
Verlind. Your continuing support and confidence that I would indeed one day graduate has
been invaluable. Secondly, my girlfriend Katynke van der Vliet. You bravely and patiently
suffered through all of my grumpy moods, and I will happily return the favor when you start
to work on your own dissertation. Thirdly, my much beloved grandmother Lena Verlind. You
had to wait far too long to witness your grandson graduate.
And I especially would like to thank Dr. Visser, whose insights into the works of both Flannery O‘Connor and Philippa Foot were invaluable to the completion of this work and
who, despite my—to put it mildly—inconsistent communication habits, did not gave up on
Abbreviations
―A Good Man‖ - ―A Good Man Is Hard to Find‖
Contents
Preface
List of Abbreviations
Introduction...i
Chapter One — Introduction to O‘Connor and the Question of Goodness...1
Chapter Two — ―A Good Man‖, ―Good Country People‖, and ―Revelation‖...14
Chapter Three — Wise Blood...29
Conclusion….………...………...…41
Appendix………...………...43
Introduction
The fiction of Southern novelist and short-story writer Flannery O‘Connor (1925-1964)
consistently revolves around tragically misguided characters that are shaken out of ignorance
through a violent or otherwise traumatic encounter with a powerful antagonistic force. This
encounter typically produces a profound, mystical revelation that intrudes the concrete reality
of everyday life and forces a painful existential reevaluation on a reluctant protagonist. These
moments of tragic realization offer no clear-cut resolution. They often only suggest the
possibility of redemption but leave the certainty of its realization unanswered.
In her short life, which was tragically cut short by the debilitating effect of lupus erythematosus, O‘Connor produced a modest but remarkable body of work. Her literary
inheritance consists of two novels, Wise Blood (1952) and The Violent Bear It Away (1960),
and about thirty short stories. Nineteen of her best and most memorable stories are compiled
in the collections A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories (1955) and Everything That
Rises Must Converge (1965). In addition, two significant non-fiction works appeared
posthumously: Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose (1969), a selection of essays; edited
lectures; and other non-fiction pieces, and a comprehensive selection of O‘Connor‘s vast
correspondence was published under the title The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor (1979). In spite of her two novels,1
O‘Connor‘s fame and critical recognition is
principally tied to her work in short fiction. Four of her stories were awarded an O. Henry
Award for short fiction2 and the posthumous collection The Complete Stories won the
National Book Award of 1972. The latter honor is especially remarkable given the fact that it
is customarily only awarded to living authors. Moreover, only recently, that is in November
1
And in spite of John Huston‘s 1979 film adaptation of Wise Blood.
2 A total of six of O‘Connor‘s stories competed for the O. Henry Award‘s top honor: ―Greenleaf‖, ―Everything
2009, Stories was voted the best winner of the National Book Award‘s sixty-year history
(Itzkoff).
O‘Connor‘s fiction is infused with a distinct but highly mysterious and paradoxical
moral sensibility. Her protagonists are presented as flawed individuals and are often made to
shed moral ignorance through great suffering. However, several aspects of her work
complicate the delineation of goodness and badness. In the first place, the relative severity of
the agony these characters endure compared to the mundane, seemingly trivial nature of their
flaws is striking. For example, the little white lies and petty selfishness the Grandmother of O‘Connor‘s signature story ―A Good Man‖ evinces pales in comparison to the cold-blooded
violence that precedes her moment of grace. In the second place, suffering is often naturally associated with badness but in O‘Connor‘s stories it is imbued with a powerful redemptive
quality. Suffering often initiates grace in characters otherwise impervious to change. The
restorative effect of violence and trauma that O‘Connor presents in her work suggests that it
is, paradoxically enough, somehow related to goodness.
The challenge of defining the moral dimension in O‘Connor‘s stories is aptly
demonstrated by The Norton Introduction to Literature’s careless characterization of her stories as ―the commandment, in a sense, to awaken before we meet eternal damnation‖
(Booth and Mays 299). This description is far off the mark because it incorrectly places her stories in a moralistic and sermonic context. O‘Connor asserts in one of her essays that in ―the
greatest fiction, the writer‘s moral sense coincides with his dramatic sense‖. Furthermore, she
rejects the notion that her belief in Catholic dogma restricted her ability to see. She argues instead that her faith has expanded her vision by ensuring a ―respect for mystery‖ (Mystery
and Manners 31). The convergence between morality and art, and the sense of mystery O‘Connor describes is clearly reflected in her own work. Her stories never convey directives
fundamental need for redemption implicitly in masterfully crafted, highly dramatic, and
deeply ambiguous works of fiction.
In this essay I am going to research the elusive morality of O‘Connor‘s fiction. More
specifically, I am going to research what image of human goodness can be distilled from her work. The titles of the stories ―A Good Man‖ and ―Good Country People‖ appear to signal an
interest in human goodness. However, there is very little common human decency to be found
in these two stories. As a matter of fact, there is very little discernable human goodness in most of O‘Connor‘s fiction. Her protagonists often perceive themselves as good, respectable
people and are commonly regarded as such by their environment. They are prone to judging
others but at the same time are wholly oblivious to their own inadequacies and petty vices. The badness of O‘Connor‘s protagonists is not extravagant or explicit but rather painfully
mundane and insidious.
On the surface it seems then that O‘Connor‘s fiction has more to say about the
unexceptional nature of human badness than about what exactly constitutes human goodness.
Characters that are supposedly good, such as the classic Grandmother of ―A Good Man‖ or
the proverbial good country people that populate the majority of her fiction, are not good at
all. In fact they are so obtuse they require a devastating experience to come to terms with their
hypocrisy. Nevertheless, in the following chapters I want to argue that O‘Connor‘s highly
ironic presentation of kindness and decency indicates that her notion of goodness must be
sought in the counterparts of the petty flaws her protagonists evince and, paradoxically, in the
suffering and heartbreak that may be necessary to attain it as well.
I am going to confine my research into goodness in O‘Connor‘s fiction to three stories
and a novel, i.e.: ―A Good Man‖, ―Good Country People‖, ―Revelation‖, and her debut novel
it. However, the explicit allusions to human goodness in ―A Good Man‖ and ―Good Country People‖ are what attracted me to using them for this essay. I have chosen ―Revelation‖
because, in contrast to the other two stories, it was written near the end of her career. In fact, it
is one of the last stories she finished before her early death. It shows a more refined, deeper,
and considerably darker treatment of her familiar theme. I have opted for Wise Blood in favor
of adding several more stories in order to see whether its comparative length has had an
influence on O‘Connor‘s presentation of goodness and, if so, whether it can provide a
different angle than the selected short stories. What also drew me to include Wise Blood in my
research is that its protagonist, Hazel Motes, even though it goes against the core of his
nature, desperately wants to do bad and think nothing of it. Another interesting detail is that, unlike the typically ignorant O‘Connor protagonist, Hazel is not ignorant of his flaws but
conscious of them to a fault.
My choice to research the question of human goodness in O‘Connor‘s fiction has to a
certain extent brought me to the field of moral philosophy; an area in which I as a student of
literature lack comprehensive theoretical experience. As a practical means to bridge this gap I will use Philippa Foot‘s acclaimed book Natural Goodness (2001) as the theoretical foothold
in my research. In chapters two and three I will draw on ideas and concepts presented by Foot
in her highly concrete argument for objective virtue ethics to help explicate and substantiate
the ethereal nature of goodness in O‘Connor‘s fiction. Natural Goodness conveys an
impressive career‘s worth of accumulated insight to a deceptively light and concise argument.
It is generally considered a highlight in the post-War resurgence of interest in moral
philosophy. During the course of Natural Goodness, Foot carefully constructs a theoretical
framework for the moral evaluation of actions that is grounded in what she refers to as ―natural goodness‖. Natural goodness is a specific kind of goodness that belongs exclusively
its species‖ (26-27). By placing morality in such a broad naturalistic context, Foot argues
against the dominant position of anti-naturalistic and subjectivist schools of moral philosophy
(such as emotivism and prescriptivism), which argue that moral evaluation is determined by
individual drives and attitudes rather than the interdependent relationship between the
individual and its kind.
In Chapter One I will first further introduce O‘Connor and pay some attention to
events that were key to her development as a writer. Furthermore, I will discuss the various
identities her fiction possesses, and the most important thematic and stylistic characteristics of
her fiction. Secondly, I will describe the wider critical context that specifically addresses
goodness in the fiction of O‘Connor. I will conclude this chapter with a further introduction
the moral argument Foot presents in Natural Goodness.
Chapter Two contains my analysis of human goodness in ―A Good Man‖, ―Good Country People‖, and ―Revelation‖. ―A Good Man‖ is about the formal and seemingly
respectable Grandmother who has a fatal encounter with The Misfit; a hillbilly sociopath with curious philosophical leanings. ―Good Country People‖ tells the story of the immature and
petulant nihilist Joy Hopewell, who is inadvertently seduced and profoundly humbled by the seemingly innocent young bible salesman Manley Pointer. ―Revelation‖ revolves around the
pompous and retrograde Mrs. Turpin whose world is turned upside down by a violent
encounter with a young college girl.
The representation human goodness in Wise Blood is investigated separately in
Chapter Three. Wise Blood is about the displaced young veteran Hazel Motes who desperately
wants to rid himself of his soul to escape the vengeful Christ of his evangelical Protestant
upbringing. I will draw on Natural Goodness during the course of my analysis in both
chapters and will relate my findings about goodness in these four works to the wider critical
CHAPTER ONE
Mary Flannery O‘Connor was born in Savannah, Georgia, on March 25, 1925, to Frances
Edward O‘Connor and Regina Lucille Cline. She was brought up in an Irish Catholic
neighborhood in Savannah where she spent the first thirteen years of her life. She remained a
devoted Catholic her entire life. In 1938, the O‘Connor family moved to Milledgeville,
Georgia, where Flannery attended Peabody Laboratory School and later Georgia State
College for Women (GSCW)—presently Georgia College.
O‘Connor committed herself to writing fiction after she graduated from GSCW in the
summer of 1945 and enrolled in the now famous Iowa Writer‘s Workshop at the University of
Iowa; a two-year MFA program in creative writing, then under the direction of poet and literary critic Paul Engle. During this period O‘Connor was mentored by notable literary
figures such as Robert Penn Warren, Robert Lowell, John Crowe Ransom, Austin Warren,
Alan Tate, and Andrew Lytle. She graduated from the Workshop in 1947 with a collection of
stories titled The Geranium.
Shortly after receiving her degree O‘Connor was awarded the Rinehard-Iowa Fiction
Award for the first chapters of her novel in progress, which would eventually become Wise
Blood, and was accepted for a summer residency at Yaddo: an artists‘ retreat in Saratoga Springs, New York. She arrived at Yaddo in the summer of 1948. There she continued to
work on her first novel and established valuable friendships and connections. The poet Robert
Lowell became an especially close friend and tireless advocate of O‘Connor‘s work. During
her time at Yaddo, he arranged for introductions that would prove very beneficial to both her
life and career. Lowell‘s efforts included, among others, Caroline Gordon, who would
become an important mentor; Robert Giroux, then a junior editor at Harcourt Brace, who
would eventually publish Wise Blood; and Sally and Robert Fitzgerald, who O‘Connor later
In 1950, when O‘Connor was twenty-five, she was diagnosed with the hereditary
autoimmune disease lupus erythematosus. Her father had died of the same illness in 1941. O‘Connor could no longer live and work independently as a writer and moved back to
Milledgeville to live with her mother in the Cline-family farm Andalusia. There she
completed Wise Blood and wrote all of her subsequent work. Her first collection of stories, A
Good Man, was—unlike Wise Blood—a hit; it sold well and received considerable critical appreciation. Its success widened her audience exponentially and established her reputation as
a notable literary presence.
O‘Connor died on August 3, 1964, at the age of thirty-nine from complications
brought on by lupus. Everything That Rises, her final collection of stories, was published in
the wake of her death in 1965 to the most unanimously affirmative critical response of her
career. The New York Times for instance judged her ―wonderfully gifted‖ and ―her promise [...] fulfilled‖ (Poore), and Newsweek hailed the collection as ―the work of a master [...] an
incomparable craftsman who wrote, let it be said, some of the finest stories in the language‖
(―Grace through Nature‖). Today Andalusia is memorial foundation dedicated to O‘Connor‘s
life and work.
O‘Connor‘s writing is imbued with several distinct identities and characteristics. To begin
with, she was a devoted, well-read, and highly critical Roman Catholic who saw a necessary
interconnection between her fiction and her faith. As she put it in one of her letters: ―I write the way I do because (not though) I am a Catholic‖ (The Habit of Being 90). O‘Connor was a
Catholic in what is commonly referred to as the Bible belt3 and, perhaps as a reflection of her
environment, her fiction does not portray Catholicism but mostly offshoots of fundamentalist
Protestantism. She does not, however, ridicule the warped faith of characters such as Hazel
3
Motes or The Misfit but positively contrasts the resoluteness of their belief with the spiritual
emptiness of the modern age.
Secondly, O‘Connor‘s work is part of Southern literature; i.e., literature from or about
the South of the United States. Some, perhaps obvious, examples of other famous Southern
authors are, for instance, Mark Twain, Truman Capote, Eudora Welty and, more recent, Toni Morrison, and Donna Tartt. O‘Connor‘s stories are set with near-exclusivity in Georgia and
address intrinsically Southern subjects such as racial segregation and religious fanaticism.
Furthermore, her prose is rendered in a meticulous Georgian idiom that gives her work a firm
regional grounding.
O‘Connor‘s work can also be placed in the Southern gothic tradition; a subgenre of
Southern literature that transports elements of the 18th century English gothic novel to the
American South. In the second half of the twentieth century, authors such as O‘Connor,
Carson McCullers, Tennessee Williams, and William Faulkner discarded the overt
supernatural component of traditional gothic fiction in favor of a more realistic approach in
order to address contemporary social issues (Flora 311-316). The gothic component in O‘Connor‘s work is expressed most notably by the overall sense of constriction and
displacement it possesses, and by her frequent use of stock characters and brutal violence. Her
fiction is, furthermore, characterized by a love for the grotesque. Her stories often portray curiously disfigured characters and generally revolve around outsiders or ―freaks‖ that move
around the fringe of society, such as roadside preachers, shifty conmen, delinquent
sociopaths, warped nihilists, and wayward prophets.
The defining characteristics of O‘Connor‘s fiction—especially of her stories—are
formal unity, biting satire, dark comedy, and a tough moral sensibility. Her work is
predominantly set in the countryside, such as in or around a farm or a small rural community.
O‘Connor‘s protagonists are both male and female, and sometimes children. Her adult
protagonists typically have a very limited and fixed outlook on their position in life and the
world at large. During the course of a story, the narrative steadily moves to a point where the
protagonist realizes the delusion of his or her beliefs. This moment of transformation is where
the mystery of divine grace intrudes ordinary life and offers the possibility of spiritual redemption. The dramatic highpoint of nearly every O‘Connor story occurs just before the
protagonist‘s encounter with grace, as for example the moment in ―Good Country People‖
when Joy-Hulga only just begins to realize that Manley Pointer is not the simple country boy he pretends to be, or when in ―Revelation‖ Mrs. Turpin is silenced by the echo of her own
shout shortly before her vision. Grace is usually set off by an encounter with a hostile or
otherwise shocking antagonist. These clashes are often symbolic of the larger conflict
between the changeable secular world of progress and individuality, and the immutable,
Christ-centered spiritual world of sin and redemption.
O‘Connor‘s stories are dark, violent, and highly critical of the contemporary age. Her
disdain for modernity, commercialism, and the commoditization of religion is especially
apparent in the barren wasteland of a city she portrays in Wise Blood. Many of her characters suffer greatly and the modern world can offer them no comfort. In one of her letters O‘Connor
referred to the unsentimental approach she takes in her fiction as ―Christian realism‖ (The
Habit of Being 90). Despite the overall bleak outlook, O‘Connor‘s stories tend to conclude on a hopeful note because the possibility of her protagonists‘ redemption through God‘s grace is
never repudiated. Moreover, there is a great deal to laugh about in her stories as well. The comedy in O‘Connor‘s work is primarily engendered by her rich characterization of human
imperfection and mastery in setting off hilariously unflattering descriptions against oblivious
In the introduction I addressed the mysterious and often paradoxical nature of the morality in O‘Connor‘s fiction and set out to define essential human goodness in fiction where it is either
hardly present or presented as deeply ironic, and manifestations of evil seem closely
connected to redemption. This absence of apparent human goodness is reflected in the critical
literature, which in the main line does not go beyond the delineation of good as opposite of
evil in a religious context. The close relation between suffering and redemption and the
correlation between good and evil this suggests is, on the other hand, addressed by several
critics.
Henry McDonald argues in ―The Moral Meaning of Flannery O‘Connor‖ that her
stories possess a medieval moral quality that produces a gap between modern moral
sensibilities and her own: ―Though many of her characters gain salvation, they seem to do so
on the occasions of being murdered [...]. Most readers, understandably, are not likely to
interpret such denouements in the light of grace and salvation‖ (278). According to
McDonald, the heart of this incompatibility lies in O‘Connor‘s recognition of the redemptive
quality of suffering. He explains that the acceptance of suffering as an inherent aspect of
redemption has diminished in response to the increasingly rational and subjective delineation
of human existence, as a result of which pain and anguish—especially the suffering of
children—are often heard as an argument to deny the goodness or existence of God.
According to McDonald, it is precisely the understanding that suffering can give the world
meaning rather than deny it that O‘Connor‘s stories often try to translate (278-279).
McDonald also addresses the correlation between good and evil the redemptive quality of suffering in O‘Connor‘s fiction suggests. He points out that from a traditional Christian
shows suffering as a valuable factor ―in helping us see our relative proximity to, or distance from, the good‖(279).
This connection between good and evil is addressed more extensively and from
different angles by other critics. John Desmond, for instance, refers in ―Flannery O‘Connor and the Mystery of Evil‖ to the influence of French philosopher and mystic Simone Weil on
O‘Connor‘s thought and prose, and uses Weil‘s delineation of evil in Gravity and Grace
(1947) to shed light on the operation good and evil in O‘Connor‘s stories. According to Weil, ―every contact with good leads to knowledge of the distance between good and evil and of a
painful effort of assimilation. It is something that hurts and we are afraid. [...]. The
corresponding sin cannot come about unless a lack of hope makes the consciousness of the distance intolerable and changes the pain into hatred‖ (Desmond 135). McDonald‘s earlier
description of the value of suffering in O‘Connor‘s fiction to determine one‘s relative distance
to good clearly echoes Weil‘s words. However, it is Desmond who demonstrates how Weil‘s principle operates in ―A Good Man‖. He describes how the Grandmother discovers through
her encounter with The Misfit‘s evil and the suffering this entails her proximity to good,
which ―mysteriously [triggers] in her a gesture of charity‖. While the Grandmother perceives
her gesture towards The Misfit as a means to bridge her distance from good, for The Misfit it,
conversely, only serves to point out his detachment from good. He perceives this sudden
insight not as an act of kindness but as a threat to his identity as The Misfit, to which he responds ―with a brutal execution‖ (133-135).
Preston Browning examines in ―Flannery O‘Connor and the Demonic‖ the relationship
between good and evil in O‘Connor‘s work by relating it to Tillich‘s concept of divine and demonic holiness in the nature of divinity. According to Tillich‘s theology, the recognition of
evil (demonic holiness) is necessary for the recognition of good (divine holiness).4 Browning
argues that O‘Connor‘s fiction reflects Tillich‘s ontology in that it does not consider the
demonic perversity of spiritual outcasts like Manley Pointer and Rufus Johnson5 the real
enemy of humanity but rather heedless nihilism and faithlessness. In order to defeat this evil that, in fact, manifests itself by the very denial of its existence, O‘Connor ―committed herself
to a vision which places positive valuation upon violence, upon ‗spiritual crime‘ […] and
upon evil‖ (40-41).
The relative goodness of demonic antagonists like Manley Pointer Browning describes
reverberates with the distinction between spiritual and secular grotesques Thelma J. Shinn makes in ―Flannery O‘Connor and the Violence of Grace‖. According to Shinn, O‘Connor‘s
spiritual grotesques—characters that are battling a profound existential religious conflict in
themselves—are in closer proximity to salvation than her secular grotesques, who have
replaced faith with secular rationalism, because they are still within the sphere of spirituality.
Shinn argues that secular grotesques embody, in the eyes of O‘Connor, the maximum amount
of goodness that can possibly be attained through secularism; i.e., a kind of goodness that is not quite right because ―[even] the best form of disbelief cannot approach the most deformed
forms of belief‖ (66, 72).
Bob Dowell presents in ―The Moment of Grace in the Fiction of Flannery O‘Connor‖
a considerably orthodox position on the necessity of spirituality—i.e., faith in Christ—for goodness in O‘Connor‘s fiction. He states that ―[in] the O‘Connor world whether one
commits himself to evil deeds or good deeds makes little difference ultimately, for without Christ one‘s actions only lead to evil‖ (236). According to Dowell, O‘Connor‘s work ―never
loses sight of‖ the close relationship between God and humans, and reflects the notion that
humans are only able to achieve redemption within this supernatural bond. In order to be
redeemed it is necessary to acknowledge evil as a reality and then to accept divine grace as
the only means of conquering it. This realization is what, according to Dowell, constitutes O‘Connor‘s ―view of ultimate reality‖ and is the theme that she dramatizes in all of her fiction
(238).
In the critical literature discussed above the notion of goodness in O‘Connor‘s fiction is defined exclusively in relation to humanity‘s connection to God and is generally equaled
with the redemption that her characters may or may not achieve in the course of their
narratives. Given the fact that O‘Connor saw no separation between her Catholicism and her
writing this critical approach to interpreting her work is very understandable. However, taken
outside of its religious context redemption is a very broad term that does not provide an
indication of the nature of the goodness that is lacking and, possibly, restored in O‘Connor‘s
protagonists.
In Natural Goodness Foot argues for an account of human goodness that is grounded in elemental and essentially biological facts about human life. Foot‘s central position is that
moral evaluation of human action shares the same logical grammar as the assessment of goodness and badness in parts and characteristics of plants and animals. As Foot puts it: ―I
want to show moral evil as ‗a kind of natural defect‘‖ (5).
Natural Goodness covers a lot of ground in a deceptively brief discussion; it consists of an introduction and seven concise chapters that are spread out over a hundred and twenty-five pages. The structure of Foot‘s argument can be divided into three informal sections. To
begin with, the first chapter serves as a precursor to Foot‘s main argument and paves the way
for what is to come. In it she contrasts her position with that of subjectivist schools of
philosophy, i.e.: emotivism, prescriptivism, and expressivism—which are referred to
collectively as non-cognitivism. According to David Hume, morality is necessarily practical
incorrectly try to meet ―Hume‘s practicality requirement‖ by explaining morality in terms of
individual desire and interest. Foot wants to argue instead that it is met ―by the (most
un-Humean) thought that acting morally is part of practical rationality‖ (9).
Natural Goodness‘ second part consists of the subsequent four chapters and focuses on establishing the conceptual link between moral goodness and rational action that Foot claims. She introduces the concept of ―natural goodness‖ as a special kind of goodness that is only
attributable to living things and their parts, characteristics, and operations. It is an ―intrinsic‖ or ―autonomous‖ goodness because it is determined by the interdependent relationship
between the individual and its kind (26-27). Foot shows how this relationship produces
natural norms in the life of animals and plants that are based on the demands of development,
self-maintenance, and reproduction. Natural norms produce a logical evaluative principle that
can account for, for example, the defectiveness of a male peacock with a drab tail, given the
essential role a brightly colored tail plays in the reproductive cycle of its kind (31-33).
Despite the fact that human good, as opposed to plant or animal good, does not end
with what needed for reproduction Foot argues that the logical grammar of ―natural
normativity‖ remains valid when it comes to the evaluation of human action. Humans need to
be able to form friendships and participate in a community in order to flourish and these are
facilitated by rules of conduct and virtues such as loyalty and kindness. This means that just
as the good of an oak hangs on it having deep rather than superficial roots, human good hangs
on a set of objective values that, among many other things, promote keeping promises rather
than breaking them (38-46). However, unlike plants or animals, humans can question the
reason for abiding to objective norms and can choose to give what they see as their own good
preference over any objective standard of goodness. The challenge Foot takes on is to
right is acting in accordance with practical reason. Foot refers to a previous article6 in which
she unsuccessfully attempted to show a link between moral action and rational action. She credits Warren Quinn‘s criticism of the subjectivist definition of practical rationality7
for
triggering the necessary insight for a successful revision: Instead of seeing practical
rationality as wholly determined by individual drives and desires, Foot now argues for a conception in which moral goodness is ―a necessary condition [...] and therefore at least a
part-determinant of the thing itself‖. Someone who then still asks for the reason for acting rationally is ―[asking] for a reason where reasons must a priori have come to an end‖ (63-65).
As with practical rationality, Foot similarly challenges the leading understanding of
what can rightly be considered the subject of morality. The general assumption is that only
actions between individuals or individuals and society merit moral evaluation. Foot, on the
other hand, argues for a comprehensive definition of morality that gives equal presence to
what is done to others and what people do to themselves. Foot demonstrates the validity of her
position by showing that there is no logical difference between evaluations of these two categories of action and that they can all be considered simply ―evaluations of the rational
human will‖ (66-80).
The third and final part of Natural Goodness is entirely dedicated to addressing two
subjects that directly contravene the connection between virtues and human good that Foot
has argued for. First, there are the complications that arise when happiness is seen as
humanity‘s good and the principal determinant of virtues. This perspective is incompatible
with the notion that human goodness may sometimes require the sacrifice of happiness and, at
the same time, allows the combination of happiness with great acts of evil. While Foot cannot
rule out the coexistence of happiness with evil, she does however arrive at a kind of happiness
6―Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives,‖ Virtues and Vices and Other Essays in Moral Philosophy
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002) 157-73.
7
that is ―conceptually inseparable from virtue‖. Foot exemplifies this form of happiness with
the letters collected in Dying We Live:8 The final letters of group of people, written shortly
before their execution by the Nazis. They all chose not to prevaricate from what they saw as
just to save their lives. Though it is tempting to think that the authors of these letters
sacrificed their happiness for the sake of justice, Foot points out that perhaps they did not feel they were sacrificing their happiness ―but rather that a happy life had turned out not to be
possible‖ (94-97).
Second, Foot addresses certain aspects of Nietzsche‘s moral philosophy that threaten
her position. Nietzsche denied the natural connection between certain virtues and humanity‘s good. He especially regarded what he referred to as ―Christian pity morality‖ incompatible
with human flourishing. According to Nietzsche, acts of kindness are rarely genuine but rather
motivated by secret maliciousness and the desire to degrade the recipient. Foot acknowledges
the possible duality of kind acts Nietzsche pointed out but shows that his appraisal of charity
and compassion does not reflect what is needed in human life by the logic of natural
normativity (105-110). Nietzsche, furthermore, denied the inherent badness of certain actions,
like murder and rape, and argued that their goodness or badness depends entirely on the
nature of the person who does them rather than on any objective standard of right and wrong.
Foot shows the artifice of Nietzsche‘s radical subjectivism by arguing that instead of ―[taking] actual human life in account‖ he creates an idealized version of what he sees as human good.
Since Nietzsche‘s philosophy is not grounded in facts about life, it does not interfere with her
argument for a natural goodness that applies to everyone: ―My point is that it is only for a
different species that Nietzsche's most radical revaluation of values could be valid. It is not valid for us as we are, or are ever likely to be‖ (111-115).
8
CHAPTER TWO
The principal tragic flaws that unite O‘Connor‘s protagonists across the board are selfishness,
arrogance, and complacency. These imperfections, which stem from a misguided sense of pride, are interesting to relate to Foot‘s moral theory because they contravene its basic
premise of goodness.
As described in Chapter One, Foot‘s natural goodness is based on the interdependent
relationship between the individual and its kind. Evaluative norms are derived from the
specifics of human self-maintenance, which can then be applied to the assessment of
individual human parts and characteristics, and behavior. The resulting objective framework
can account for, for instance, the goodness of refraining from theft and the badness—or
immorality—of committing murder. However, especially relevant in this context is Foot‘s
reconfiguration of practical rationality. By defining practical rationality as a conditional aspect of goodness rather than ―an independent concept [...] with which the requirements of
moral goodness must somehow be shown to be consonant‖(62-63), Foot was able to justify
the rationality of sacrificing self-interest for the sake of virtue; for example, as in keeping a
promise that can easily be broken or even sacrificing your life for the sake of your
convictions, like the letter writers of Dying We Live.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines the negative implication of pride as ―the feeling that you are better or more important than other people‖ and, additionally, selfishness
as ―caring only about yourself rather than other people‖ (Hornby). Pride, selfishness, and their
consonants arrogance and complacency, clearly constitute natural defects from the vantage points of Foot‘s theory because, in their emphasis on self-advancement, these traits are
inimical to the rationality, or goodness, of acting against self-interest. And, because of their
inability or unwillingness to relate their good to that of others, the Grandmother, Joy-Hulga,
The Grandmother‘s superficiality and sense of pride are established early in ―A Good
Man‘s‖ narrative by the curious effort she puts in, considering the circumstances, her
wardrobe, just so that ―In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would
know at once that she was a lady‖ (138). Furthermore, throughout the story, the Grandmother
lauds the past as a time morally superior to the present. For example, when she chastises her
grandchildren, June Star and John Wesley, for their ill manners, she remarks that in her day ―children were more respectful of their native states and their children and everything else.
People did right then‖ (139). And, she tells Red Sammy Butts during their convivial chat in his diner that ―People are certainly not nice like they used to be‖ (141).
However, as the Grandmother‘s manipulation and selfishness become evident, her
incessant idolization of the past‘s moral superiority is rendered increasingly absurd. The first minor token of the Grandmother‘s egotistical nature is her secretly bringing along her cat
Pitty Sing (a distortion of ―pretty thing‖) on the trip, knowingly against the wishes of her son
Bailey. Of greater consequence, however, is the fib of a secret treasure she tells her
grandchildren in order to get Bailey to take a detour. This seemingly innocent lie is what leads
the family directly to The Misfit, where the selfish and contradictory nature of the
Grandmother is greatly amplified. Under the threat The Misfit poses, she immediately places
her own survival over that of her family by referring to her status: ―You wouldn‘t shoot a lady, would you?‖. When this fails, she futilely attempts to appease him by referring to his
―blood‖ instead and by repeatedly goading him into prayer with her. In a final desperate bid to
save her life, she offers him all of her money, to which The Misfit casually responds that ―there never was a body that give the undertaker a tip‖ (147-52).
Hulga Hopewell of ―Good Country People‖ has completely retreated into intellectual
arrogance, and the philosophical existentialism of Martin Heidegger and Nicolas
of ―constant outrage‖ (264). Interestingly, Joy-Hulga is described as ―someone who has
achieved blindness by an act of will and means to keep it‖ (265), which strongly suggests that
she has consciously severed any connection with her environment. This interpretation is
supported by the manner in which she cultivates ugliness as a repellent against the others in
the household; i.e., her mother, Mrs. Hopewell, and the nosy Mrs. Freeman. For example,
Mrs. Hopewell is certain that her daughter intentionally lets her prosthetic leg drag over the
floor solely for the sake of making an ugly noise (267). More dramatic, however, is Joy‘s self-elected moniker ―Hulga‖, which she considers ―her highest creative act‖ and ―one of her
major triumphs‖ because it signifies the perseverance of self-determination over her mother‘s
intention ―to turn her dust into Joy‖ (267). In fact, she is only able to enjoy her creation when
it successfully repels people. For instance, Joy is greatly vexed by Mrs. Freeman‘s apparent ―relish‖ in the pronunciation of her alias (267).
Furthermore, Joy-Hulga‘s misguided attempt to seduce and edify the seemingly naive bible salesman Manley Pointer by ―[changing] his remorse into a deeper understanding of
life‖ should not be mistaken for a selfless act of charity because it is fueled by the arrogant
and condescending notion that ―True genius can get an idea across even to an inferior mind‖
(267).
―Revelation‘s‖ Mrs. Turpin is jovial and outgoing but, at the same time, conceited and
possessed by a powerful sense of entitlement. O‘Connor suggests these traits in the first
paragraph by characterizing her as a large, usurping presence who takes up more than her fair share of space in the doctor‘s waiting room (633). Mrs. Turpin is guided by a simplistic
conception of social hierarchy that validates her own felt sense of superiority. More
specifically, she supposes that because she and her husband Claud are white home- and
more land‖ (636). Furthermore, Mrs. Turpin feels that Christ favors her especially because
―He had made her herself and given her a little of everything. Jesus thank you!‖ (642). She
has a strong tendency to equate physical and material wellbeing with divine approval, and is
wholly incapable of grasping the correlation between transcendence and faith.
Though Mrs. Turpin prides herself on her self-effacing mettle: ―To help anybody out
that needed it was her philosophy of life. [...], whether they were white or black, trash or decent‖ (642), she only extends affability or charity to others out of social obligation or duty,
not because she genuinely feels that it is the right thing to do. For example, Mrs. Turpin grudgingly ―loves‖ her African-American farmhands, even though she ―sure [is] tired of
buttering up niggers‖, merely because ―you got to love em if you want em to work for you‖
(639). Mrs. Turpin‘s hypocrisy contrasts sharply with the straightforwardness of the ―white trashy woman‖, who unabashedly declares that she is never going to ―love no niggers or scoot
down no hog with no hose‖ (639). This does not mean, however, that she is devoid of any
sense of hierarchy because, after the sedated Mary Grace is carried away by ambulance, she comically parallels Mrs. Turpin by fervently thanking God she ―ain‘t a lunatic‖ (647).
In the previous chapter it is mentioned that Foot subscribes, as non-cognitivists do, to Hume‘s
practicality requirement of morality, which states that morality is practical by default.
However, unlike non-cognitivists, she tries to meet Hume‘s demand by showing that morality
is an inherent aspect of rational behavior. O‘Connor‘s fiction reflects the practical nature of
morality by endowing her characters, through their encounter with grace, with the necessary
insight to recognize and subsequently change their irrational behavior into rational, moral
actions.
The dramatic turning point where O‘Connor‘s protagonists go from ignorance to
encounter with a violent antagonist. ―A Good Man‖, ―Good Country People‖, and
―Revelation‖ all adhere to this familiar paradigm. Only an inch removed from The Misfit‘s
final, desperate harangue and death, ―the Grandmother‘s head cleared for an instant‖. She
becomes aware of her connection to The Misfit‘s suffering, as she sees his ―face twisted close to her own as if he were going to cry‖, and acts on this insight by reaching out to accept him,
figuratively, as her child: ―[...], Why you‘re one of my babies. You‘re one of my own
children!‖ (152). The Grandmother is brought to a point, through her encounter with The
Misfit, where her selfishness disappears and she is enabled, for the first time in the narrative,
to make a genuinely selfless gesture towards another person.
Joy-Hulga‘s existential jolt occurs when she realizes Pointer‘s perfidious deception: ―Aren‘t you, she murmured, aren‘t you just good country people?‖ (282). Ironically, instead
of ―[changing] his remorse into a deeper understanding of life‖ (282), Pointer has turned the
table on Joy-Hulga by teaching her a lesson instead; i.e., the affectation of her supposed
nihilism, which withered quickly under his suggestions of love and acceptance. However, it is Pointer‘s final remark that leaves her ―churning‖ the implications of his deception: ―And I‘ll
tell you another thing, [...], you ain‘t so smart. I been believing in nothing ever since I was
born!‖ (283).
Mrs. Turpin‘s revelation is triggered by her violent encounter with the aptly-named
Mary Grace. However, it is the message that she delivers (―Go back to hell where you came from, you old wart hog, [...]‖) that haunts Mrs. Turpin the most and slowly corrodes the
solidity of her self-conception: ―How am I a hog and me both? How am I saved and from hell too?‖ (646, 52). Mrs. Turpin‘s mounting insecurity climaxes in an apostatic shout, which
echoes back to her over the landscape ―like an answer from beyond the wood‖ and leaves her
transfixed (653). She receives the eponymous revelation in the form of a celestial parade in
frontrunners; while her class, those with ―a little bit everything and the God-given wit to use it
right‖, comes last (654). This haunting appearance conveys to Mrs. Turpin her pride and the
inadequacy of wealth and race as signifiers of God‘s favor; she is no more saved than those
that she considers beneath her.
However, the significance of the epiphany the Grandmother, Joy-Hulga, and Mrs.
Turpin receive goes beyond the practicality of a single action. Rather, the implications of their
widened moral consciousness extend to the possibility of attaining a kind of foundational,
integral goodness because these characters are enabled to consistently prevent defective
behavior in favor of actions that adhere to moral goodness. Or to put it differently, the
alleviation of moral ignorance is a prerequisite for durably changing practical irrationality to
rationality.
According to Foot, practical rationality is conditional on goodness of the will (11).
Moral ignorance, therefore, constitutes a defect of the will that produces irrational or immoral
behavior. From this follows naturally that it is of vital importance for humans to be able to
make their will good. This is an issue that strongly resonates with the argument in Natural
Goodness but which remains unaddressed. O‘Connor, on the other hand, offers a clear perspective on the extent to which people are capable of exercising self-cleansing moral
autonomy.
O‘Connor‘s stories generally offer a pessimistic outlook on humanity‘s ability to
initiate self-redemption; i.e., to successfully make its will good when left to its own devices.
The Grandmother, Joy-Hulga, and Mrs. Turpin are characteristically ignorant of their
character flaws and need the violent shock of grace to attain unimpeded self-perception
and-understanding. Given these characters fundamental need for grace it is warranted to briefly
highlight a specifically Catholic aspect of its understanding, namely that divine grace does not
entirely dependent on the recipient‘s conscious choice to act on it (Cross and Livingstone
697). To put it differently, grace is divine help that only offers, not promises, salvation. The conditionality of Catholic grace is reflected in O‘Connor‘s stories by the typically
open-ended nature of their conclusions. Of the three stories selected for this chapter, the denouement of ―A Good Man‖ is seemingly beyond obscurity; not simply because of the
Grandmother‘s death but because she, unlike Joy-Hulga and Mrs. Turpin, immediately acts on
the interference of grace by transcending, for a moment, her own desperate need for survival. That the Grandmother‘s spontaneous gesture towards The Misfit instantly translates into her
murder does not deter from the fact that, for at least a moment, she had made her will good. However, The Misfit‘s epitaph for the Grandmother that ―she would of been a good woman
[...] if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life‖ pulls the rug from
under the durability of her transformation by suggesting that only under the continuous threat
of mortal danger could such an obtuse woman ever be made good (153).
The conclusions of ―Good Country People‖ and ―Revelation‖, on the other hand, are
more unambiguously ambiguous; there is no resolution as to whether Joy-Hulga or Mrs.
Turpin will act on grace: The first is left behind, dumbstruck, in the loft of the barn and the
latter is last described as silently walking home, enveloped by the sounds of a celestial choir
of crickets. John Gardner remarks in his famous On Moral Fiction that the delay of a moral
decision is the source of suspense in fiction and invests the conclusion with increased moral
significance (114-15). O‘Connor goes beyond delay by freezing Joy-Hulga and the
Grandmother in their respective moments of choice. The unresolved tension this creates, on
Though Foot demonstrated by way of the letter writers of Dying We Live a kind of happiness that is irreconcilable with the sacrifice of one‘s virtues, she could not disallow the
combination of great happiness with the kind of deliberate, conscious evil her ―fictional but
only too lifelike‖ Nazi-commandant ―Z‖ embodied (90-94). O‘Connor‘s stories, on the other
hand, are able to provide a more definitive stance against the conjunction of happiness with
great evil.
Though O‘Connor‘s protagonists are the objects of moral revelations, they cannot be
measured convincingly against the type of inhumane evil Foot‘s ―Z‖ represents: First, their
principal flaws, which generally boil down to pride and complacency, are far more mundane
and, above all, deeply human; and second, these characters are typically unconscious of their
flaws. This is relevant because it means that their sense of happiness is unburdened by the
weight of guilt and self-scrutiny. That ignorance is bliss is demonstrated especially by the
Grandmother and Mrs. Turpin: Both are talkative, sociable characters who, on the surface at
least, express a certain lightness of being.
Foot examines the expression ―a happy frame of mind‖ and notes the possibility of
experiencing this state coupled with the awareness that things are not right. This combination of ostensible happiness and existential unrest is, according to Foot, possible because ―a happy
mood is something so much on the surface that it can cover up actual knowledge that things are not well at all‖ (84-85). Mrs. Turpin is a working example of a character whose joviality
and, of course, self-professed ―good disposition‖ shroud a deep-seated inner conflict. She is
deeply confounded by the inapplicability of her simple social hierarchy on life. Her schema cannot account for people that are ―common‖ but, nevertheless, well off, or those with ―good
blood [who] had lost their money and had to rent‖, and ―colored people who owned their
homes and land as well‖ (636). The irresolvable paradoxes her simplistic outlook produces
classes of people [...] moiling and roiling around in her head [...] together in a boxcar [...] to be put in a gas oven‖ (636). Curiously enough, this wholly evil allusion to genocide
momentarily places Mrs. Turpin in close proximity to Foot‘s fictional Nazi.
In her circumscription of happiness as humanity‘s good, Foot distinguishes between
surface happiness, which is a state of mind that involves feelings of cheerfulness, contentment and enjoyment; and deep happiness, which ―must extend all the way into the underlying
thoughts that a person has about himself and his life‖. According to Foot, the experience of
deep happiness—or sadness, for that matter—is connected to events that are universal and
very basic to human life; for example: the birth of a child, or the death of a friend or parent. In
other words, depth of experience is attached to significant matters involving home, family,
work, and friendship (88, 90-91).
The general buoyancy of the Grandmother and Mrs. Turpin can be perceived as an
expression of superficial happiness that is fostered by ignorance or, in other words, lack of depth. For example, the Grandmother thinks she is a good woman: ―You wouldn‘t shoot a
lady, would you?‖, and Mrs. Turpin prides herself on her good disposition and self-effacing
mettle: ―To help anybody out that needed it was her philosophy of life. [...], whether they
were white or black, trash or decent‖ (―A Good Man‖ 147; ―Revelation‖ 642). The shocking
violence these two characters encounter and the epiphany this produces transform their
superficial conception into a frighteningly deep understanding that, in accordance with Foot‘s definition of deep happiness, reaches down to ―the underlying thoughts that a person has
about himself and his life‖.
Mrs. Turpin suffers her revelation submissively and, consequently, ―Revelation‖
concludes with only the suggested possibility of deep happiness—or unhappiness—for this
character. The Grandmother, on the other hand, immediately acts on her deepened
one of her own children, she ventures into the depth of experience that Foot relates to primary events of human life, such as in this case, a metaphorical birth. And O‘Connor‘s description
of the Grandmother‘s corpse as ―smiling up at the cloudless sky‖ suggests that in her final
moment, she may have indeed experienced a sense of profound happiness (152).
Unlike the Grandmother or Mrs. Turpin, The Misfit is able to convincingly function as a foil to Foot‘s ―Z‖ by exemplifying a similar class of evil but one that is positively adverse to
happiness. In the first place, The Misfit‘s actions—i.e., his direction of and participation in the
execution of an entire family, including an infant—tentatively put him in the same league as Foot‘s Nazi. Secondly, in contrast with the Grandmother and Mrs. Turpin, The Misfit is not
ignorant of who he is and knows that, in fact, he is not good: ―Nome, I ain‘t a good man [...]
but I ain‘t the worst in the world neither‖ (148). The Misfit, moreover, evinces an intense
religious sensibility that puts the Grandmother‘s shallow faith to shame. From his vantage point there is no moral middle ground: Either you ―thow away everything and follow Him‖ or
you ―enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can—by killing somebody or
burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him‖ (152).
However, the crucial factor that sets The Misfit apart from ―Z‖ is that the first is
wholly incapable of taking pleasure in evil because he is torn between, on the one hand, his
inability to believe in Christ‘s divinity and, on the other, a profound desire to do so: ―If I had of been there I would of known and I wouldn‘t be like I am now‖ (152). The depth of The
Misfit‘s despair is evidenced by the manner in which he contradicts himself to the
Grandmother. First, he speaks of violence and destruction as the most enjoyable way to pass
the time but, then, in nearly the same breath, he dismisses any connection between his violent hedonism and felicity: ―No pleasure but meanness, he said and his voice had become almost a
berates one of his cronies for expressing elation at the just-performed carnage: ―Shut up, Bobby Lee, The Misfit said. It‘s no real pleasure in life‖ (153).
O‘Connor implements shock and violence as instruments of grace to instigate the possibility,
not the certainty, of redemption in her ignorant protagonists; or to put it in different terms:
Badness is used for the sake of good. O‘Connor‘s seemingly contradictory use of badness
raises the question whether the end—i.e., salvation—can be justified by immoral means. For instance, is Pointer‘s deception justified by the insight it produces for Joy-Hulga? Or, are the
murders that precede the Grandmother‘s epiphany validated by the unexpected gesture she
makes towards The Misfit? In addition, can such acts of deception and violence be classified
as evil at all when used in the service of good?
Foot identifies the end for which an action is performed as ―an independent source of goodness or badness in it‖ (73). This means that a good act can be negated by an evil end and
that, conversely, an evil act can be pardoned by a sufficiently good end. For example, Foot
considers the destruction of someone‘s property to prevent fire from spreading an example of
a bad means justified by a good end (73). Nevertheless, she admits to the difficulty of
assessing the possible goodness of actions according to the relationship between their nature
and end, and asks: ―Can any of these actions, containing both good and bad elements, be called good?‖ (75).
Foot uses Aquinas‘ view of ―asymmetry in the concepts of badness and goodness‖ as a
guiding principle in this complicated matter. According to Aquinas, any minor defect
produces badness, ―while goodness must goodness in all respects‖ (75). Foot shows that this
evaluative asymmetry indeed reflects the way we think. For instance, dampness alone is
objects to actions and concludes that a good action, therefore, is always negated by a bad end
(75-76).
However, contrary to Aquinas‘ tenet of goodness, O‘Connor‘s stories suggest that the
shock of evil is an absolutely necessary if not justified means of breaking down the walls of
pride and ignorance in her protagonists to, at least, establish hope for goodness. This sense of
the necessity of evil in relation to good already surfaced in the discussion of critics in Chapter
One. McDonald, for instance, pointed out O‘Connor‘s understanding of the redemptive
quality of suffering and the manner in which evil can reveal the distance or propinquity to good. The notion of evil as a point of reference resurfaced with more depth in Desmond‘s
analysis of ―A Good Man‖ from the perspective of Weil‘s moral philosophy, according to
which the Grandmother discovers her proximity to good through her encounter with The
Misfit. Furthermore, Browning attested that the experience of evil is an indispensable condition for the experience of good and that, in fact, O‘Connor‘s stories place positive
judgment on iniquities that emphasize the reality of demonic holiness as opposed to ―the absurd existence cut off from all depth‖(40).
Though evil indeed possesses a constructive and even beneficial quality in O‘Connor‘s
fiction, at the same time, it does not imply that deception and violence should be classified as anything but evil. A tempting exception, however, can be seen in Mary Grace‘s assault and
angry vituperation of Mrs. Turpin. Because her violent outburst is gradually built up to by Mrs. Turpin‘s obtrusive retrograde and self-congratulatory remarks, she can count on
considerable sympathy. In contrast, while the profound depth of The Misfit‘s spiritual crisis
does elicit compassion, the evil of his part in the massacre of the family is beyond contention or sympathy. This reading is emphasized by O‘Connor‘s strikingly detached, even casual
outcome is effectively conveyed by the manner in which Bobby Lee drags Bailey‘s yellow
parrot-adorned shirt over the ground like a corpse (150).
However, it is Pointer who epitomizes the most untainted and unequivocal
manifestation of evil because, unlike Mary Grace or The Misfit, his characterization lacks any
significant circumscription that places his deception in, at least, a somewhat sensible context.
Pointer is the opposite of The Misfit‘s existential struggle because, as a self-professed natural
born nihilist, he can fully embrace the immorality of his perversity without the weight of his
conscience tearing him apart.
Though Aquinas‘ concept of the asymmetry of goodness and badness precludes the validation
of immorally accomplished good ends, Nietzsche‘s denial of the intrinsic badness of certain
actions leaves this possibility wide open. In fact, Nietzsche‘s doctrine does not even require a
good end for the justification of seemingly self-evident acts of evil because its guiding
principle is not, as described in Chapter One, what is done but rather who does it. As a result,
whether or not the action of, say, killing an entire family is evil depends on the nature of the
person who performs it.
Nevertheless, Foot points out that it is inaccurate to refer to Nietzsche as an immoralist
since he, after all, did subscribe to a specific set of virtues. She identifies courage and
authenticity as principal Nietzschian virtues, and ―the malice and inauthenticity [...] he attributed to ‗members of the herd‘‖ as their opposites (111).
It is striking to note that the hypocrisy of O‘Connor‘s protagonists chimes with
Nietzsche perception of immorality, while, on the other hand, her antagonists tend to
substantiate the virtues he advocated. The Grandmother, of course, hides her selfishness and
pettiness behind the civility of an old-fashioned Southern lady, and Mrs. Turpin‘s genial
duplicity stems from the suppression of a fundamental desire for love and acceptance with
hostility and intellectual nihilism; a craving tellingly illustrated by the angry remark she makes to her mother, Mrs. Hopewell: ―If you want me, here I am—LIKE I AM‖ (266).
Pointer and The Misfit, conversely, approximate the courage and authenticity
Nietzsche deemed of great importance. Though in their case, audacity is perhaps a more apt qualification than courage. Nevertheless, with regard to Nietzsche‘s call for authenticity,
Pointer and The Misfit fit the bill. First, Pointer‘s remark that he has ―been believing in
nothing ever since [he] was born‖ suggests that deception is in accordance with his true nature
(283); and second, The Misfit‘s recognition of his own badness and the unflinching honesty with which he articulates his ―meanness‖ stand in stark contrast to the Grandmother‘s
self-serving hypocrisy.
It is particularly interesting, however, to relate The Misfit to Nietzsche‘s denial of the
inherent badness of certain actions because, in the first place, his deeds are so apparently
immoral and, secondly, his example further supports Foot‘s demystification of this doctrine. Following Nietzsche‘s supremely subjective morality, if The Misfit murdered the family
because it was in his nature to do so, it would not be evil or immoral because the killing
would be a necessary step towards self-fulfillment and authenticity. Further references to
justification do not factor in. However, The Misfit does not evince the kind of satisfaction or
happiness that one would expect of someone leading an authentic life, dedicated to fulfilling
his true nature. In fact, he is a tormented, deeply-conflicted character whose existence is not determined by ―pleasure but meanness‖ (152).
Furthermore, The Misfit expressed desire to change his nature (―if I had of been there I
would of known and I wouldn‘t be like I am now‖) contravenes Nietzsche‘s notion that
(Foot 112). As a matter of fact, his moral conception is absolute: Either you follow God or
you commit yourself to doing evil. The tragedy of The Misfit is that he wants to but is
incapable of submitting to a notion of goodness that is grounded in faith: ―Jesus was the only
one that ever raised the dead, [...], and he shouldn‘t have done it. He thown everything off balance‖ (152). His inability to transcend confirmation in a matter of belief yields an
irresolvable paradox that places The Misfit in an agonizing limbo between faith and
In Chapter One I described how Foot argued for a comprehensive definition of morality that
unifies both self- and other-regarding values as evaluations of the rational human will.9 She
further supports her argument by showing that the two basic criteria of moral evaluation
(voluntariness and purpose) and the three formal features of a single action (the nature of the
action itself; the end for which something is done; and the relationship between an action and the doer‘s judgment or conscience) apply equally to self- and other-involving judgments of
actions (69-74). In the subsequent chapter, I investigated whether the shock and violence O‘Connor typically implements in her short stories is justified by often only the suggestion of
redemption.10 The relationship between an action and judgment or conscience is, on the other
hand, particularly interesting to relate to Wise Blood’s Hazel Motes because he evinces a stoic
dedication to actions that directly contravene his own nature and conscience.
O‘Connor recounts in Wise Blood’s first chapter how Hazel, as a young boy, is
instilled by his grandfather with a frightful religious back story in which Christ is a vengeful,
soul-hungry deity that will never let him relinquish his redemption. Hazel would come to be haunted by the image of Christ as a ubiquitous ―wild ragged figure‖ that ―[moved] from tree
to tree in the back of his mind‖ and by the paradoxical notion that the only way to stave off
this boogeyman was to stay clear of sin (9-11).
Hazel brings this trepidation of corruption, together with his mother‘s black bible and
silver-rimmed spectacles, with him to the army. However, when his considerably less
trepidatious fellow soldiers bluntly point out that he does not have a soul, the possibility of it is confounding. He desperately wants to believe them in order to ―get rid of it once and for all,
[...] without corruption, to be converted into nothing instead of evil‖ (12). The possibility of
the soul as a fictitious rather than factual concept is a liberating notion that offers Hazel the
opportunity to escape the perennial wild ragged figure and existential guilt of his radical
9
See page 10.
evangelical heritage. The story opens with Hazel bound for Taulkinham—in accordance with
the familiar image of the city as a place of sin—to corrupt his soul in order to prove that he
does not have one.
Foot refers to the common assumption that the badness of either an action itself or its
purpose is annulled when it is done in good faith but throws cold water on it by referring to Aquinas‘ moral philosophy, which ―insists that erring conscience does not excuse‖ ( 73).
Aquinas also says that ―even an erring conscience binds [...] because in going against
conscience the will tends to an action as something evil in that reason has proposed it as evil‖.
Foot underwrites Aquinas‘ view by classifying ―acting as one thinks one should not‖ as ―a
very radical form of badness of the will‖ because ―[how] could a human being be acting well
in doing what he or she saw as evil? Is that not as if an archer should not even aim his arrow at where the target seemed to him to be?‖ (73-74). Hazel embodies this specific kind of
immorality or radical badness of the will because despite his efforts to reject religious
concepts such as sin; soul; and redemption, he cannot help himself but believe in them and, consequently, he is consciously doing what he perceives as evil. Foot‘s earlier metaphor of
the archer not even aiming at his mark chimes with his landlady‘s, Mrs. Flood, bemused thought of Hazel as ―going backwards to Bethlehem‖ (123).
O‘Connor makes it very clear that Hazel is not able to either deny or escape his
spiritual legacy and cannot convince himself or anybody else of the veracity of the nihilism
that he preaches in his Church Without Christ. Hazel‘s inextricable connection with his
evangelical roots is suggested by the fact that he is regularly mistaken for a preacher or feels
pressed to make abundantly clear that he, in fact, is not one. For example, the taxi driver who takes him to Lenora Watts‘ house says that he looks like a preacher, shortly after which Hazel
