Flannery O’Connor’s “Greenleaf” is a short story of struggle and redemption, primarily between Mrs. May and her farmhand, Mr. Greenleaf. Throughout the plot, a bull is chewing up crops, her shrubbery, and has the possibility of ruining the breeding schedule for Mrs. May’s cows, yet it does not bother the dwelling of the Greenleafs. The reader does not learn who the bull belongs to until the middle of the story, which is revealed to belong to Mr. Greenfleaf’s two sons, E.T. and O.T. Greenleaf. The bull is a strong symbolic figure throughout the story, and none of the characters are eager to rid Mrs. May of the bull except Mrs. May herself, yet the tables turn on her in the end when the bull gores her through the heart. Although she died because of the bull, I will show why the bull was necessary for the redemption of Mrs. May in the end and how it is a suitable figure to resemble Jesus Christ.
It does not take long for the reader to gain clues to identify what kind of character Mrs. May is. She is morally smug and sees herself as superior to the Greenleaf family through means of education, social status, and the fact that she owns the farm and gave Mr. Greenleaf his job fifteen years ago. The bull is seen by the Greenleafs as a force of nature that is bigger and far more powerful than Mrs. May can comprehend, yet she wants to control it by the means of either containing it or having it shot to death, as long as it is no longer on her property. Her crops and livestock are held in higher esteem than anything else, which depicts how shallow she is toward everyone she associates with on a daily basis. As she tries to keep the bull off her property, it is symbolizing her efforts to keep Christ out of her life (Durso). She believed that if she hired Mr. Greenleaf, then he would handle all the grunt work and do as she commands, despite his best wishes. However, the bull is a messenger that would make her think otherwise.
The bull wore a wreath around his horns which resembled a menacing prickly crown (O’Connor, 312). Based on scripture, Jesus of Nazareth had a crown of thorns around his head before he was crucified. The author mentions that Mrs. May was a good Christian woman had a large respect for religion, but was not a believer herself (316). This correlates with Mr. Greenleaf’s spouse, Mrs. Greenleaf, doing the spiritual healing out in the woods with the newspaper clippings of various offenses against humanity. Her most foreboding quote was, “Oh Jesus, stab me in the heart!”(317) Mrs. May looked down on Mrs. Greenleaf not only because she was flat on the dirt while doing these spiritual healings, but also because she did not do motherly things that were considered the normal housewife obligations to the family, such as washing her children’s clothes. Mrs. Greenleaf’s quote is a foreshadowing device which is later resolved at the end of the story.
The significance of Mrs. Greenleaf’s prayers actually come true, yet the recipient is Mrs. May. The day comes when she finally goes to Mr. Greenleaf’s dwelling on her property and tells him several times to get his gun because they were going to shoot the bull today. She had been told before that the bull had a loathing for car horns and noisy vehicles, but the noises she made with her car horn to signal Mr. Greenleaf were the catalyst of what would be her death. The bull, which represents Jesus, stabbed her in the heart. As she experienced death, it was as if she realized her relationship with God through the means of grace, God’s unmerited favor.
The majority of Flannery O’Connor’s writings have a main character that does not have a proper relationship with God. In this case, it was Mrs. May since she respected religion, yet was not a believer until the end. Despite how much contempt she had toward the Greenleafs, she was still given grace in the end. The visions Mrs. May had in the end were vivid, yet she could not hear what was happening from the moment she was gored by the bull. She saw the tree line as a dark wound in a world that was nothing but sky accompanied by a light that was unbearable to the eyes (333), quite possibly the vision of heaven. The bull was the messenger which conveyed several religious references, mostly relevant to Jesus Christ and a relationship to God.
Works Cited
Durso, Eric. “Literary analysis: Greenleaf, by Flannery O'Connor” Helium. 04 March 2008.
web. 19 January 2012.
O’Connor, Flannery. “Greenleaf” Flannery O’Connor The Complete Stories. Ed. Farrar, Straus,
and Giroux. New York: pg. 311-334.
Hello. I hope your still blogging and thanks for the discussion of Greenleaf. I'm new to Flannery O'Connor. Why was she so pissed off? Why are her writings so dark and confrontational? How can she be called a Catholic apologetic? Did she convert anyone? Do you think she was trying to exorcise her own demons? Was she guilty?
ReplyDeleteI don't blog as much as I did before since I have no new material. Flannery O'Connor was part of our theme of denial in our Intro to Literature class at UWF. She tries to instill faith by writing about the faithless and the hypocritical. I cannot say for sure if she converted anyone, or why she wrote the way she did. Judging what I read about her, she didn't seem "pissed off". As far as her demons go, I'm more of an analyst than a critic. No one could truly talk of her personal demons except for Flannery O'Connor herself. I'm not sure if she was guilty per se, you might have to rephrase that question for me. I believe we are all guilty in some fashion, but it depends on the system and the crime, as well as the sequence of events leading up to that crime. I'll agree that her writings are dark and confrontational, but there was a sense of redemption in just about everything she wrote. It depends on how you analyze it. You also have to take into account when the story was written. If she were writing today, I can't imagine what kind of hate mail she would get since there are many faithless people in the world and corporate greed is encouraged. Idolatry is at an all time high, and the idols are pieces of paper with dead presidents on them, with the exception of Benjamin Franklin. I'll be looking forward to a response :)
Delete