Why Willie's Imaginary Life is Not a Life of Luxury

 

People often imagine themselves as characters in stories, but in “The Crop,” when Miss Willerton pictures herself as a central character in the story she is writing, Miss Willerton’s imaginings left me feeling sad. I found myself focusing on the ordinariness of the lives of the imagined Lot and Willie. I began to question why Willie imagines herself as an ordinary person who faces hardships.

                The average nature of Willie’s life within her story is clear because Willie wakes up at four o’clock every morning “to get in all the work” she can “while the weather [is] clear” (O’Connor 38). It is also evident that Willie and Lot face hardships because, if the couple do not get the harvest in before the rain starts, they face the possibility of losing “all they had gained in the past months” (O’Connor 38). The moment of Willie’s story that cements the readers’ understanding of the lower-class life burdened with hardships that Willie chooses for herself is when Willie says that she and Lot will not have enough money to have both a child and a cow. Willie’s imagined life is not a life of luxury.

                One would assume that Miss Willerton would want to imagine a life away from all of her troubles, but instead she imagines a life not far from her reality. The difference between Miss Willerton’s life and her life as the married Willie is that Willie has a husband and gives birth to a daughter. The married Willie is happy in her average life, while Miss Willerton is clearly unhappy with her life.

                I think that Willie imagines herself an average life to show that she does not want much. She only wants a child like so many others have. The reader can see that Willie is not greedy. She would be content to spend her life working if she could simply have a family. It is when Miss Willerton is forced to leave her dream world and go to the grocery store that the reader can see Miss Willerton’s jealousy over the lives of many average people around her.

                At the grocery store, Miss Willerton notices a woman with a child on a leash, and the woman is “pulling him, jerking him, dragging him away from a window with a jack-o’-lantern” (O’Connor 40). The woman is battling with the child, and Miss Willerton’s focus on this woman who clearly does not want to have to deal with the child, makes Miss Willerton’s reasons for imaging a life with both hardships and a family become clearer to the reader.

                Because Miss Willerton is not greedy, even in her hopeful imaginings, the reader can more easily pity Miss Willerton. She only wants what others have and take for granted. What Miss Willerton wishes her life was is not unreasonable, and her paradise involves things that others don’t appreciate. Miss Willerton’s story is extremely tragic, especially after one looks closely at the details of the life that Miss Willerton wishes for.

Parker Tries (and Fails) to Save Himself With Each Tattoo

 

Only Flannery O’Connor would give her readers a character who both feels as if religion “were after you,”  and decides to get God tattooed on his back. In “Parker’s Back,” many of Parker’s tattoos are described, and it is clear that tattoos are important to Parker. Though it is evident that Parker’s tattoo of God is the most important tattoo in the story, I thought that Parker’s previous tattoos likely also held significance. In the story, among other tattoos, Parker has tattoos of an eagle, a serpent, a panther, and two hawks. A black panther is often believed to be a symbol of a protector, guardian, or savior, and for devout Christians, the black panther can be seen as a symbol of Christ. Similarly, the eagle has positive religious symbolism because God is compared to an eagle multiple times throughout the Bible, and in Christian art, the eagle often represents Christ’s resurrection. Parker’s tattoo of a serpent coiled around a shield brings to mind the serpent in the Bible that symbolizes temptation for Adam and Eve. Parker has a tattoo of a hawk on each of his thighs, and the fact that Parker has two hawk tattoos draws the reader’s attention. In Christianity, the wild hawk is a symbol of materialism and sin, but once a hawk is tamed, it is believed to symbolize a soul that has turned to Christianity.

                Because Parker’s tattoos are not solely symbols sin and disbelief in religion, but rather a mixture of symbols of God and sin, I was unsure of the point O’Connor was attempting to make by listing the tattoos that Parker has. But O’Connor may have been showing the reader the point of these conflicting tattoos when she writes that Parker feels “as if the panther and the lion and the serpents and the eagles and the hawks had penetrated his skin and lived inside him in a raging warfare” (O’Connor 514). This line makes me wonder if Parker’s tattoos display his inner battle of wishing to be saved, while also maintaining a disbelief in God.

A black panther symbolizes protection,
and in Christianity, Christ.

                Because Parker believes that if “a man can’t save his self from whatever it is he don’t deserve none of my sympathy,” I thought that Parker’s tattoos could also represent Parker's attempts at displaying his ability to save himself (O’Connor 524 &525). Specifically, Parker’s tattoo of the panther made me wonder if Parker believes that he can invoke the protection that the panther symbolizes, just as many Catholics believe that wearing a medal of Saint Christopher – the patron saint of travelers – because they believe it will bring them protection while traveling. Ultimately though, Parker comes to see each tattoo as “haphazard and botched” (O’Connor 514). It seems plausible that Parker begins to see each tattoo as unsatisfactory because the tattoo has not granted him the protection or redemption that he hoped. And when Parker’s wife does not recognize God in Parker’s tattoo, Parker realizes that even after getting a tattoo of God, Parker is still unable to save himself.

 

https://www.worldbirds.org/black-panther-symbolism/

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/christiancrier/2015/07/17/what-does-the-eagle-represent-in-the-bible-a-christian-study/

https://www.redlandsdailyfacts.com/2018/07/06/professing-faith-the-eagle-is-a-religious-symbol-as-well-as-a-national-one/#:~:text=In%20Christian%20art%2C%20the%20eagle,of%20the%20Gospel%20of%20St.

https://www.biblestudytools.com/dictionary/serpent/

 

Mrs. McIntyre Cried, So Now I Feel Bad

From the movie adaptation of "The Displaced Person."

As I was reading “The Displaced Person,” there were many aspects of the story that surprised me. But about halfway through the story, Mrs. McIntyre breaks down and begins crying on her bed, and I was so shocked that I needed to go back through the story to reanalyze Mrs. McIntyre. It is clear to the reader that Mrs. McIntyre is racist when she calls her African American workers “half-witted” and “thieving” (O’Connor 222). And Mrs. McIntyre only cares for The Displaced Person because he is useful to her. But When Mrs. McIntyre sat on her bed and cried, I genuinely felt bad for her.

            Despite Mrs. McIntyre’s unfeeling ways, I pitied her, which made me want to evaluate Mrs. McIntyre and attempt to discern why Mrs. McIntyre acts the way she does throughout the story. Mrs. McIntyre doesn’t have a husband or children, and Mrs. Shortley seems to be the only companion Mrs. McIntyre has, but Mrs. McIntyre drives the Shortleys away. Mrs. McIntyre needs the people who work for her to be dependent on her because she doesn’t have anyone else. In Mrs. McIntyre’s eyes, “there was nobody poorer in the world than she was” (O’Connor 221).

            Mrs. McIntyre divorced two husbands and buried one, but Mrs. McIntyre has “a superstitious fear of annoying the Judge in the grave,” (O’Connor 218). While many would think that someone who has died has permanently left the earth, O’Connor explains Mrs. McIntyre’s fear by saying that unlike Mrs. McIntyre’s other husbands, “the Judge, sunk in the cornfield with his family, was always at home” (O’Connor 218). Though the audience learns from Mrs. McIntyre that the years she spent with the Judge were “the happiest” of her life (O’Connor 218). But the fact that the Judge is still on the farm upsets Mrs. McIntyre.

Toward the end of the story, the reader learns that Mrs. McIntyre “had never discharged anyone before; they had all left her” (O’Connor 231). Mrs. McIntyre states that the Guizacs “would not hesitate to leave her,” and yet she is unable to fire Mr. Guizac (O’Connor 230).  It seems possible that Mrs. McIntyre wants the Guizacs to leave on their own because she is used to people leaving her. The Judge will not leave on his own, and neither will Mr. Guizac, which makes Mrs. McIntyre uncomfortable because this breaks the pattern of people choosing to leave her that she has become accustomed to.

A cherub on top of a tombstone like the one
taken off of the Judge's grave

            I don’t know if the reader is meant to feel bad for Mrs. McIntyre. Mrs. McIntyre is unsympathetic toward the Guizacs and says that Mr. Guizac “had probably not had to struggle enough,” which causes me to believe that perhaps Mrs. McIntyre is not meant to be a character one feels badly for (219). But O’Connor created a complicated woman in Mrs. McIntyre because despite it being Mrs. McIntyre’s own doing that she is left to live on her farm alone at the end of the story, I didn’t like the idea that the only person that doesn’t leave Mrs. McIntyre is dead in the ground under a desecrated tombstone.