Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School 1991 A Reading of "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" and "A Curtain of Green": The nflueI nce of Parable on Flannery O'Connor and Eudora Welty. Allison Carol Chestnut Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses Recommended Citation Chestnut, Allison Carol, "A Reading of "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" and "A Curtain of Green": The nflueI nce of Parable on Flannery O'Connor and Eudora Welty." (1991). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. 5111. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/5111 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of LSU Digital Commons. 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Carol, Ph.D. The Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical Col., 1991 UMI 300 N. Zeeb Rd. Ann Arbor, MI 48106 A Reading of A Good Man is Hard to Find and A Curtain of Green The Influence of Parable on Flannery O'Connor and Eudora Welty Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the reguirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of English by Allison Carol Chestnut B.S., Mississippi University for Women, 1979 M.A., Mississippi University for Women, 1980 May 1991 Acknowledgments I am indebted to my dissertation committee for their insights and assistance: co-directors Lewis P. Simpson and John R. May, Veronica Makowsky, and Richard Moreland in the Department of English, and Edward Henderson in the Department of Religion. I was also fortunate to receive the additional support of University of Southern Mississippi colleagues Linda McDaniel, Noel Polk, David Roberts, and Thomas Richardson, and to participate in theological dialogue with Robert Trotter and Martha Pope Trotter. I am grateful for the financial support provided by the Zeta State Province of Delta Kappa Gamma through a generous summer study scholarship and to my parents for their unflagging support of me during my studies. Table of Contents Acknowledgements ii Abstract iv Chapter 1: By Way of Definition: Parables, Myths and the Southern Short Story 1 Chapter 2: Parable as the Unifying Factor in A Good Man is Hard to Find 23 Chapter 3: Social Parable and the Short Story Cycle: A Curtain of Green 111 Bibliography 245 Vita 252 iii Abstract A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor and A Curtain of Green by Eudora Welty are short story cycles harmonized by their marked imitation of the style and structure of parable. O'Connor added stories after initially sending the collection to the publisher and then rearranged them accordingly; her work represents a completed cycle. Welty's collection, published in an order different from their individual publications and their original placement in an early typescript, is an arranged cycle. Moreover, parabolic style and structure unify each cycle. A parable typically is a brief story told in the past tense, usually through a third person narrator; uses specific, historically accurate settings and incorporates themes having universal application; introduces a character who engages another in unavoidable conflict; refutes one or more of the basic assumptions (myths) by which a class of people or nationality reconciles and orders its iv environment; and concludes ambiguously, requiring the reader to determine the ending. Also, both cycles logically reflect the assumptions of Hebrew myth rather than those in the more commonly recognized Greco-Roman tradition. The Judaic and Southern cultures share agrarian economies, a theocentric understanding of history, feelings of persecution and guilt, subjugation through military defeat, and perpetuation of ritual. O'Connor's collection joins sacramental imagery and the themes of original sin, goodness, and grace to create parables of Southern religion and morality. Welty's parables subvert cultural myths dealing with place, caste systems, charity, aristocracy and the past. The collections also have internal thematic unity. In A Good Man is Hard to Find, adult characters seem unworthy either to offer or receive grace, view life as immediate, material and uni-dimensional, and wrestle with pride, usually unsuccessfully; children typically misunderstand the truths they encounter because their guardians have neglected to prepare them adequately. In A Curtain of Green, isolation and its consequences are repeatedly explored, as are dimensions of charity or pity. Other recurring elements include travellers whose specific goal is either directly stated or implied, the pivotal appearance of a significant stranger or of an object, and V types of handicap. Welty's cycle is divided into two halves bridged by "A Memory." The first half emphasizes possibility by raising the question "what if?" The second half stresses characters who act deliberately to find catharsis. In both collections, each successive story builds upon foundations laid in previous stories. Thus, appreciation of the overall cycle requires that the stories be read consecutively. CHAPTER 1: BY WAY OF DEFINITION: PARABLES, MYTHS, AND THE SOUTHERN SHORT STORY Critics generally have found Flannery O'Connor's A Good Man is Hard to Find and Eudora Welty's A Curtain of Green to be more or less casually organized short story collections. Close inspection, however, reveals otherwise. Each collection is unified in two ways: the individual stories reflect the style and structure of New Testament parable, and each story incorporates themes set forth in the one before it. A Good Man is Hard to Find and A Curtain of Green are more than collections; they are short story cycles. The short story cycle, or "sequence," is a comparatively new form of fiction.1 According to Robert Luscher, a unified short story sequence differs from a random collection of stories in that combining "internal consistency and coherence," "interplay among characters, motifs, and ideas," it "gradually constructs patterns of action and thematic unity."2 In Representative Short Story 1Robert Scholes and Robert Kellogg describe the short story genre as "a cross between a biological and a dialectical process, in which different species sometimes combine to produce new hybrids, which can in turn combine with other old or new forms." See The Nature of the Narrative (New York: Oxford UP, 1966) 11. 2Robert Luscher, Unpublished Dissertation (Duke University 1984) 4. Luscher finds that these characteristics "engage many of the same literary 2 Cycles of the Twentieth Century. Forrest L. Ingrain declares authorial intent establishes three categories of short story cycle.3 The "composed collection" is originally conceived as an ordered series, and the author writes the stories accordingly. Eudora Welty's The Wide Net is an example of a composed collection because she began the work with the specific intention of writing a group of stories about the Natchez Trace. In a "completed collection," the author sees a pattern of similarity and writes additional stories specifically to finish that pattern. Finally, an "arranged collection" results when the author takes independent stories having similar characters, themes, or locations and places them in a systematic order which may or may not follow the chronological order of their composition or publication. As the subseguent chapters will show, A Good Man is Hard to Find seems to be a completed collection, while A Curtain of Green meets the criteria of the arranged category. Moreover, both A Good Man is Hard to Find and A Curtain of Green in their overall unity reflect the influence