Welcome to Chaos

Flannery O’Connor (Part 2)

Sorry everybody, now that you’ve got me started, I need to keep giving you little tid bits of O’Connor’s writing.
Here is more, just for you:

“‘Of course,’ she said, ‘if you know who you are, you can go anywhere.’ She said this every time he took her to the reducing class. ‘Most of them in it are not our kind of people,’ she said, ‘but I can be gracious to anybody. I know who I am.’
‘They don’t give a damn for your graciousness,’ Julian said savagely. ‘Knowing who you are is good for one generation only. You haven’t the foggiest idea where you stand now or who you are.’
“She stopped and allowed her eyes to flash at him. ‘I most certainly do know who I am,’ she said, ‘and if you don’t know who you are, I’m ashamed of you.’
…
“‘Will you look around you,’ he said tensely, ‘and see where you are now?’ and he swept his arm jerkily out to indicate the neighborhood, which the growing darkness at least made less dingy.
“‘You remain what you are,’ she said. ‘Your great-grandfather had a plantation and two hundred slaves.’
‘There are no more slaves,’ he said irritably.
“‘They were better off when they were,’ she said. He groaned to see that she was off on that topic. She rolled onto it every few days like a train on an open track. He knew every stop, every junction, every swamp along the way, and knew the exact point at which her conclusion would roll majestically into the station: ‘It’s ridiculous. It’s simply not realistic. They should rise, yes, but on their own side of the fence.’”

-Flannery O’Connor, “Everything That Rises Must Converge”
I honestly cannot get enough of this story. I will forever be in awe of Flannery O’Connor. Oh my goodness.