The kindness of strangers

"The geranium" - Flannery O'Connor

Old Dudley, the fish out of water, the displaced southern soul, has seen everything in his life fall away. Would his diminished life have remained sturdy had his daughter not opened her home to him? She had seized on an opportunity when he wished, fleetingly, to see New York City, and he could not forgive her for her generosity.

O'Connor is brilliant in her portrayal of a stolid southern man whose ego and sense of manliness (are they different?) have been undermined by the move. In the south, Dudley had done the things he considered manly - utilitarian things, like catching fish, not womanish things, like appreciating the nuances of the river. He had been a personage, useful and dominant in his little boarding-house world of silly women and subservient black people.

Anna wonders why he was crying. I wish I thought that something in the sympathy and assistance he received on the stairs had awakened an emotion that might grow into something less toxic than the impotence and rage of an old tyrant. Perhaps I'm the one who is trapped, but I have no sympathy for a man so lacking in simple gratitude.

So we have Dudley, failing to be grateful for the kindness of his daughter, or for the kindness of a stranger, and attributing base underpinnings to their behaviours. Is it any wonder that the owner of the pale geranium he had watched and enjoyed from across the alley is a white alpha male whose baseness is expressed by sneering disrespect for both Dudley and the fragile flower?

Everything in Dudley's life has fallen, and fallen away, from his own physical strength and sense of manly purpose to the lovely geranium that lies "at the bottom of the alley with its roots in the air." Dudley, too, has no further purpose, but neither he, nor the culture he embodies, will receive or deserve a reprieve.

This is a merciless story, probably based on people O'Connor had observed closely. As Anna said, it is "penetrating."

I haven't read any other of O'Connor's stories. I'd love to know what we all think of her, and why we think she isn't better-read. (This might be my northern bias - perhaps she is well-read elsewhere in the country.)

Why is he crying?

I read Flannery O'Connor's short story "The Geranium" over the weekend. It is one of her earliest published stories, dating to 1946, and opens a window into the mind and a little of the life of an elderly southern man who has been moved to NYC to live with one of his daughters.

In the pivotal scene of the story, the man - Old Dudley - is returning from a busywork errand his daughter has asked him to do. The ascent up the tenement stairs reminds him of a hunting trip he took once, and he is caught play-acting at hunting by a well-dressed black man whom he has previously thought of insultingly. The well-dressed man is polite and friendly, and helps him back up the stairs, which Dudley is obviously struggling with, chatting about guns and hunting.

Once having delivered him back to the tenement rooms , Flannery writes of Dudley, "The pain in his throat was all over his face now, leaking out his eyes."

Is he crying because - as he thinks to himself - he is "...trapped in this place where niggers could call you 'old-timer'." ? Or is he crying because the sudden and unexpected kindess and companionship and kindness of a stranger unleashes his longing for his home in the south? Or is it some combination of the two - that the homelike conversation is coming from a person who Dudley's social values do not allow him to respect?

Either way you read it, 'The Geranium' is a penetrating story.