Eyers and Archetypes, O'Connor and Senility, First Reflections

Edward Eyers and Southern Archetypes

Edward L. Ayers does a nice job in his abbreviated chapter highlighting (mis)conceptions, identity topics, and archetypes of the South. He highlights the problems and the necessity of conceptions about the south, from within and without the region. He states that the intra-conceptions are necessary, economically, that "The South needs these internal differences....needs as much diversity as it can be made to contain" and that much of "Southern culture is made to order" (5). He questions the reality of self proclaimed southern identity among blacks, stating that they have "made parts of Southern states their own through sweat and sacrifice" emphasizing the spacial and physical, as he says "they have loved certain farms, houses, and streets" (4). This selective southern love is definitely not sparse in literature. It reminds me of August Wilson's The Piano Lesson. The piano in the play serves as a medium for the character’s modern struggle and desire to simultaneously shed their past slave narrative as well as forge their own generations continuum of their ancestors struggle.

The Piano

Prison Work Song (Mississippi) from the film adaptation

 A particular aspect of Ayer's writing struck me as interesting. As he speaks of the archetypes involved with the identity of the South, he writes on the self generated aspect of it and the potential consequences involved. I noticed that Ayer's words contained instances of this self-proclimation, and a bit of generalization on his part, as he says that "In their eyes, the Southern Trough is a sheltered valley, shielded from the most corosive effects of Yankee greed and rudeness" (3). This seems to be a bit blanketed for my taste, but perhaps the statement rings more true than I am aware. I also noticed that he places himself within a Southern archetype. He writes that "Being Southern, I automatically made conversation with the young woman behind the counter as she filled my order" (6). This type of rhetorical appeal seemed a bit distasteful to me. I would like to suggest a replacement for Ayer's that may work a bit more in his appeal toward understanding. "Being a friendly person, I automatically made conversation with the young woman behind the counter..." or, perhaps he needs to establish difference much like his conception of the South.

•  Discussion Qustion: Is studying the South as an "outsider" akin to being an Orientalist? Do I (or any other students not from the South) have enough "credability" to say that Ayer's self identification as a "friendly Southerner" is a bit too much?

 

Flannery O'Connor and Dark Humor

The short story titled A Late Encounter with the Enemy by O'Connor struck me as quite brilliant so I decided to write about it a bit. The dark humor presented by the quite selfish and foolish characters provided an interesting take on some thoughts that Eyers wrote about. Sally Poker Sash seems to have a passive internalized distaste for education and "the upstarts who had turned the world on its head and unsettled the ways of decent living" (19), and wishes to show them all by presenting her comically senile grandfather who had served some part in the Civil War, although "he didn't remember that war at all"

A colloquial language identity is presented in the grandfather's speech, as he calls girls "guls", national "nashnul", and tuxedo "tuxseeder" (20). He seems to be proud of his role in a "national" event and that "It wasn't a thing local about it". His senility seems to have created a lapse in his extreme Southern pride, and he now only cares about beautiful women. 

Sally Poker Sash's desire to return to history, the old ways, perhaps the Southern ways, at first annoys her grandfather on stage, as "He had no use for any of it. What happened then wasn't anything to a man living now and he was living now" (22) and later drives him into a fit of seemingly violent involuntary memory involving high levels of stress and fear, which kills him as he satirically becomes a "corpse, in the long line at the Coca-Cola machine"

• Discussion Question: Is O'Connor suggesting that extreme historical and Southern pride are silly, through Sally, or suggesting that the loss of this history and identity can be tragically silly as well, through the grandfather?

-Adam Amrani