Original scientific paper
Lucidity and Vulgarity in the World of Flannery O'Connor
Matej Mužina
Abstract
This paper deals with a contrast in the work of Flannery O'Connor, which by she has drawn between ordinary„ average people who lack personal identity and take the infernal chaos of modern life for granted, and the demonic personages in her fiction who have become destructive nihilists has a result of their experiences of Grenzsituationen of life as these are named and described by Karl Jaspers. This contrast is illustrated first by an analysis of the language and behaviour of the two kinds of characters in Flannery O'Connor's fiction with the purpose of defining cleary and distinctly the border-line between irresponsible, impersonal, proverbial, and i platitudinarian collective wisdom of ordinary people and the lucid nihilism of her solitary, demonic individuals. In order to defiine this contrast with utmost precision Flannery O'Connor makes a sharp distinction between her lucid, solitary, nihilistic individuals and various types of contemporary intellectuals who are, as a species, treated by Flannery O'Connor with merciless irony. The mind of the modern „intellectual being sceptical lisi amoeboid and omnivorous in Flannery O'Connor's opinion, and.for this very ' reason „it“ lacks a firm criterion of values. At description of the weaknesses of the modem intellectual as seen by Flarmery O'Connor „leads to the conclusion of this paper, which is atn attempt to point out the impor tance that permanent and painful lucidity has for the writer herself and to suggest, with the help of Jung's definition of modern man, that
Flannery O'Connor identified herself with her demonic characters.
One would be hard put to find a sharper contrast in the work of Flannery O'Connor than the one she has drawn between ordinary, average people and the demonic, violent, destructive or self-destructive freaks of her fiction. It is observable first in their use of language. The ordinary person in her stories 'and novels will in any situation in life most predictably resort to the collective, conventional 'wisdom of proverbial commonplaces in his fumbling attempts to explain it to himself. The demonic restless character
will express his quintessential truth from the depths of his experience of extreme situations in life, those called "Grenzsituationen" by the German existentialist philosopher Karl Jaspers. In fact, this thinker's “concern with himself", his attempts at "radical sincerity", and his interest in “the human condition and its inescapable extremities of death, suffering, chance, guilt, and struggle"? appear to me to fairly accurtaley describe Flannery O'Connor's demonic doubters.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
121650
URI
Publication date:
26.12.1984.
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