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 working class, the majority of her characters exist as good country mass or those who hasten been displaced from the city to the stir. Whatever the situation of the characters, rural, labor movement life 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 some differences between classes, chiefly the ideas that working-class people argon happier in their brand in life and also experience less loneliness than those of the stop number classes, and a heavy focus on the authentic dialogue of the gray working classes. She employs these elements expertly in her work. OConnors texts often plow the differences between the working classes and the owning classes. In their article, Toward a Theory of Working-Class Literature, Renny Christopher and Ca rolyn Whitson notice that working-class culture does not celebrate individuality. It instead recognizes the interdependence of units of people family, companionship, friends, unions (76). OConnor confirms the benefits of community that the working class offers by showing upper crust loneliness. In Good Country People, the farm owners conditioned daughter is very depressed and lonely but chooses to be so. When her receive and she walk the fields together, the daughters remarks were usually so pitiable 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 standardised I AM (274). There is no willingness to commune. Loneliness is also shown among numerous other middle-class characters in OConnors work the farm owner in The Displaced Person, the teacher Rayber in The Barber, and Mrs. Turpin in Revelation are some additional examples. Chri stopher and Whitson claim that working-class culture has its own portentous people who do not choose to leave their culture. OConnors pieces support this idea. Often 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 the poor country life as a boarder and fix-it man in Georgia.