Light and Darkness in Flannery O'Connor's "The Artificial Nigger"

Light and Darkness in Flannery O'Connor's "The Artificial Nigger"

               In "The Artificial Nigger," Flannery O'Connor uses a number of devices and various images to show her reader grace, the overarching theme of the story.  To effectively show this, she uses age and youth, happiness and misery, the contrast of being lost and found, image and likeness, and danger and safety as well as a tightly packaged combination of all of these elements.  The most prominent motif, however, is that of light and darkness.  O'Connor guides her reader through the narrative using light and darkness as well as shadows, which seem to represent an in-between, or at least incomplete, state.  The resulting grace for Mr. Head in the forgiveness of his sins and in his redemption, after having come through darkness to the light, is evident at the end of the story and serves well to illustrate the result of the journey that got him there:

Mr. Head stood very still and felt the action of mercy touch him again but this time he knew that there were no words in the world that could name it.  He understood that it grew out of agony, which is not denied to any man and which is given in strange ways to children.  He understood it was all a man could carry into death to give his Maker and he suddenly burned with shame that he had so little of it to take with him.  He stood appalled, judging himself with the thoroughness of God, while the action of mercy covered his pride like a flame and consumed it.  He had never thought himself a great sinner before but he saw now that his true depravity had been hidden from him lest it cause him despair.  He realized that he was forgiven for sins from the beginning of time, when he had conceived in his own heart the sin of Adam, until the present, when he had denied poor Nelson.  He saw that no sin was too monstrous for him to claim as his own, and since God loved in proportion as He forgave, he felt ready at that instant to enter Paradise. (132)

The result is nearly the same for Nelson:

Nelson, composing his expression under the shadow of his hat brim, watched him with a mixture of fatigue and suspicion, but as the train glided past them and disappeared like a frightened serpent into the woods, even his face lightened and he muttered, "I'm glad I've went once, but I'll never go back again. (132)

The end result is salvific grace for Mr. Head- and arguably common grace for Nelson- and the reader is to understand in these lines that salvation is something to be attained and that it is not man's doing that brings him to it, but God's gift by His grace.  The importance of salvation is underscored when O'Connor tells her reader that Mr. Head "felt that he knew now what time would be like without seasons and what heat would be like without light and what man would be without salvation" (129).  O'Connor uses light, darkness, and shadow throughout the story to illustrate God's grace, as it relates to providence and glory, in a way that serves as the impetus to guide the story as well as to reveal the significance of the metaphor and how each character is portrayed in their response in respect to different lighting conditions.

               After reviewing a great deal of the criticism from the last few decades, there seems to be agreement that O'Connor uses light and darkness in many of her stories and two novels, and that she also is concerned in many of her works with grace and redemption.  Frederick Asals's 1982 book, Flannery O'Connor: the Imagination of Extremity, discusses "the duality of images" in O'Connor's works, noting that they play off of each other to create a whole.  For example, light and darkness, according to Asals, could be seen as seemingly antithetical motifs, but ones that really work one with the other to create an overarching frame within which grace can be understood (90).  Richard Gianonne's 1989 contribution to O'Connor scholarship, Flannery O'Connor and the Mystery of Love,  includes his discussion of love as it relates to favor and grace in many of the short stories and the two novels, and Edward Kessler's Flannery O'Connor and the Language of the Apocalypse discusses in detail the use of metaphor in general in O'Connor's writing.  Dozens of other books and articles make up the scholarship on O'Connor, but what seems to be missing specifically is an analysis of light and darkness as they function in relation to grace, providence, and glory in "The Artificial Nigger."  This omission seems strange because O'Connor herself said in a letter that "The Artificial Nigger" was her favorite story, so one would naturally have thought that all avenues of this story have been explored (O'Connor, Habit 101).  There is ample treatment of light and darkness, and also of grace, in the criticism, but the themes seem to have been considered separately for the most part, while the story begs for them to be read together.  Before considering a potential reconciliation of the two themes and suggesting they should be read as one, however, a close reading of the text at three major points in the story must be conducted in which the following will be considered: light and darkness, as the motif functions, during the morning, the day, and the night.

               At the beginning of the story, moonlight fills the room when Mr. Head wakes in the middle of the night, and he sees "half of the moon five feet away in his shaving mirror, paused as if it were waiting for permission to enter.  It rolled forward and cast a dignifying light on everything" (103).  Only half of the moon is visible to Mr. Head in the mirror, which indicates an incompleteness and seems to suggest that the story is beginning in brokenness, possibly alluding to the state of the characters.  Where the story will end up is not exactly clear, but the half-moon element illustrates a flaw by demonstrating incompleteness, though the moon rolling forward suggests that progress will be made and change will nonetheless occur.  Noticeable here too is that the moon is shining light into the room by way of the mirror, which also lends to the idea of incompleteness or detachment in that the light is reflected.  The final noteworthy part of these lines is that O'Connor chooses to describe the light as dignifying, which has far more implications than light itself in its undignified state.  With the light reflected from the mirror, in which only half of the moon is visible, O'Connor shows this detachment, but then immediately describes the moonlight as dignifying, suggesting that it is somehow set apart.  The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines "dignify" as a "confer[ring] of dignity or honor upon" something ("Dignify").  Furthermore, the OED notes that the word "confer" carries with it a meaning of bestowing, as in the bestowing of grace, upon something ("Confer").  With this in mind, then, one can understand that this moonlight coming indirectly through the window can ostensibly signal two things simultaneously: first, sinful, broken man, detached from truth and incomplete in his fallen state, and second, God's grace being manifest here in the "dignifying light" coming through the window to fill the room.  Here is a case of that which is within (the room) and that which is outside (the creation).  This idea sets apart for the reader a sense of "otherness", though the reader cannot immediately discern which is exactly "other."  It is this conflict that O'Connor seeks to reconcile in the story.  In the end, though, this "otherness" is sin and complacency and is contrasted with grace and glory, which are the result first of divine ordinance, but also of action.  In the room, things are in the norm, but outside, everything seems to be chaos.  It is in this chaos that God works in His providence and gives grace.

               Having seen this light that comes through the window and illuminates the room, the reader is then confronted on the next page with the fact that the "only dark spot in the room was Nelson's pallet, underneath the shadow of the window" (104).  There is a spot in the room that the light does not touch, and it happens to be under the very window through which it comes.  There is a sense of passing over this spot, as the light cannot physically touch it, nor is it intended to.  In the sentence that immediately precedes this one, O'Connor writes of Mr. Head that "He might have been Virgil summoned in the middle of the night to go to Dante, or better, Raphael, awakened by a blast of God's light to fly to the side of Tobias" (104).  With this in mind, it is not a stretch to suggest that what O'Connor seeks to imply here is that the moonlight is God's light and that it is this very light that will awaken him in the night and serve as a guide.  The fact that this light passes over the dark spot that is Nelson's pallet- the "only dark spot in the room" (emphasis mine)- but fills the rest of Mr. Head's room, seems to reveal that Nelson is in a way rejected from the beginning of the story, with no opportunity to have grace bestowed upon him.  So here is a clear foreshadow of what is to come; that is, Mr. Head's guidance by light that leads to saving grace, and Nelson's accompanying Mr. Head with no chance for the same.  O'Connor uses light here to clearly mark the two characters from the beginning.  This description of Nelson's pallet covered in a dark shadow, then, points the reader in a clearer direction to the outcome of the story and completes the light metaphor mentioned above; the two images- both light and darkness, a flood of light and a passing over- must be viewed together to allow for a complete picture, as each intensifies the meaning of the other, just as the meaning of sin and grace function in the same way.

               Also interesting is that in the very next paragraph, the slop jar that stands near Nelson is described as having come "out of the shadow and made snow-white in the moonlight, appear[ing] to stand guard over him like a small personal angel" (104).  This immediately establishes the guiding theme and suggests the type of journey the men will take by showing the angel as a guiding, protecting figure, and the "snow-white" imagery as Christ's propitiation for sin, covering black with white and pouring light into darkness.  The imagery of the slop jar coming from shadow into light represents Mr. Head's transition from a life of sin into a life of grace.  The shadow seems to suggest that Mr. Head- like everyone else- without salvation, lives a life in the shadow of something greater.  It also seems to illustrate his humanness.  Consider, for example, the vertical line of being as O'Connor might: hell at the bottom (dark), life on earth in the middle (shadow), and heaven at the top (light).  It makes sense, then, that Mr. Head would not be coming from darkness to light, but from a shadow to light, as the slop jar appears to emerge out of a shadow, white as snow.  He has not been judged absolutely sinful and thus in hell, but sinful nonetheless and thus his sort of in-between state, redeemable but still sinful.  
               The slop jar's proximity to Nelson is important to recognize too, as it stands over him like an angel.  But since the jar stands angel-like over Nelson, who is covered in darkness- though arguably a darker shadow than Mr. Head and not pitch-blackness- and at the same time it stands in the room with Mr. Head, O'Connor uses this imagery to illustrate common grace; that is, that all men experience God's grace to a degree simply because grace exists, though common grace differs greatly from saving grace, which will be expanded later.  But suffice it to say for the moment that Nelson's spot is in darkness, underneath a shadow, and this immediately separates him from Mr. Head, whose space is filled with the dignified light from the moon.  The image of the slop jar itself must also be considered on the basis of what it is in relation to what it does.  The slop jar is used for waste and of potentially two different kinds, both disgusting in their own right.  On the one hand, the slop jar can be seen as a jar used for kitchen purposes; it collects waste from food scraps and the scrapings from pans and also probably dirty dishwater.  On the other hand, if the slop jar is seen as a sort of chamber pot- which seems more likely, though either case makes the point- then it is a receptacle for human waste.  Regardless of what it is used for, the slop jar is nasty and dirty and disgusting and represents the darkness and nastiness and completeness of human sin.  That the jar is "made snow-white in the moonlight" is foreshadowing.  It glows because God's grace, made manifest in the moonlight, shines on it and lights the outside of the jar; the receptacle that is naturally soiled inside is made white as snow.  When Mr. Head and Nelson leave the room, the characters travel into the city together, guided by light in various forms- that is, moonlight, sunlight, lights on the train, etc.- to the true light that is recognized in salvation, salvation attainable only by God's grace that makes the filthy clean.  But although they share the experience, the outcome- as will be seen- is vastly different for each character. 

               During the day trip to the city, O'Connor guides her reader on the journey by continually referring to the light conditions through which the characters travel.  It seems that they are under a blanket of light the entire time they are away from home, and it begins when the moonlight is described in the room in the beginning of the story.  Then, as the two reach the junction to catch the train, the reader is told that "A coarse-looking orange-colored sun coming up behind the east range of mountains was making the sky a dull red behind them, but in front of them it was still gray and they faced a gray transparent moon, hardly stronger than a thumbprint and completely without light" (108).  At the junction, the description seems to suggest that the moon has faded and the sun is becoming dominant.  The idea here is ostensibly that the half-darkness of the moonlight pulled Mr. Head and Nelson onto their journey and now the more powerful sun is functioning to push them, or at least guide them, onward; as the moon goes down, the sun comes up and offers more reliable light for guidance. 

               The language that O'Connor uses here is interesting in describing the sun as coarse-looking.  If one takes "coarse" to mean "ordinary" or "common," as the OED in part defines the word, then the sun appears to be nothing more than a source of light- and un-noteworthy light at that- and at first glance seems insignificant ("Coarse").  Likewise, if "coarse" means the opposite of fine, or "rough," as the OED also suggests, then what O'Connor gives her reader in this description is empty, nothing more than blank description that tells the reader that the sun was ordinary, though a little rough looking when it was coming up, like a man climbing out of bed early and fighting off a good sleep ("Coarse").  But surely that cannot be what O'Connor means here.  The description is so pointed all throughout the story that the meaning here must be uncovered, and when looking at this one adjective, it seems unclear indeed what she means by it.  One suggestion, however, is that the sun only appears coarse.  What it actually is is unknowable, and at the same time irrelevant.  The idea, like in the reflected moonlight at the beginning of the story, is not what the sun is, but what it reveals. 

               While the moonlight in the beginning suggested the idea of sin and imperfection by way of reflected illumination, the sun here casts light in a way that directly reveals it.  When the sun comes up, the light it spends is more thorough and pervasive, as it is direct and far more powerful than that of the reflected moonlight.  So the  moon being described at the end of the sentence as being "completely without light" is not problematic in the least, as might be contested, as the light of the sun shows the degrees of power and the effect that light can shed on a situation.  For example, the moonlight, being reflected and incomplete, shows the potential for God's grace.  The light is dignifying, but it is incomplete.  Here, the sun is powerful and the light it casts is direct.  The sunlight, then, serves to reveal sin, a recognition of which is necessary for grace to be complete, as by grace sin is forgiven, but the revealing of the sin is still necessary; that which needs covered by grace must be recognized in order for the covering to be possible.  So it makes sense that the reflected light of the moon fading into nothingness, being replaced by the sun, occurs.  Indirect light is replaced by direct light and this transition is necessary to understand the light as revealed at the end of the story.

               Before discussing light of the evening at the end of the story, however, one more element of light that is described during the day must be analyzed.  Once in the city, in the full daylight, Mr. Head tries to squash Nelson's enthusiasm for having been born there by sticking his head into the sewers to show him the nastiness and describe the reality of the city, the endless, pitch black sewers that gurgle beneath the surface, ready to suck a man down endless tunnels (117):  "He described it so well that Nelson was for some seconds shaken.  He connected the sewer passages with the entrance to hell and understood for the first time how the world was put together in its lower parts.  He drew away from the curb" (117-118).  In this realization, he understands for the first time the image of hell.  He looks down into the sewer, into the darkness and emptiness and seemingly never ending tunnels and his eyes and mind are opened for the first time.  In a sense, he is living in light to a degree at this point, as he is on the surface looking down, and the realization is not yet complete, rather only a hint at what is to come, which, short of grace and repentance, is death and hell, the great pitch-black.  Considering the function of the sunlight that is mentioned above, it seems obvious that if that light is used in the story to reveal sin and all that constitutes it and all that results from it, then O'Connor here uses pitch-blackness to thrust the reader's head into the sewers with Nelson as a reminder of light's opposite.  It is in darkness where sin exists unchecked, but in the light is where it is revealed, able to be confessed and forgiven.

               When Mr. Head and Nelson return home from the dark city, the moon again is shining and, having been "restored to its full splendor, sprang from a cloud and flooded the clearing with light. . . . The treetops, fencing the junction like the protecting walls of a garden, were darker than the sky which was hung with gigantic white clouds illuminated like lanterns" (131).  Mr. Head has at this point experienced his salvation and this is his Eden, his home, enclosed and protected, away from the dark city.  The language that O'Connor uses here shows the moon again, only this time its light is not reflected, but is direct.  Just as the sun flooded the landscape earlier in the day, so now the moon floods the clearing and causes the clouds to appear as if hanging like lanterns.  While the sun exposes sin in the story by flooding the earth with light on a hot, uncomfortable day in the South, the moon conversely shows grace and mercy.  This moonlight is the same as it was in the morning, but this time the dignifying light is direct, while retaining that soft quality that is more calming and restful than the aggressive sunlight.  There is a sense of completion here at the end of the story, and the resolution is unique, as it suggests a kind of finality for Mr. Head.  He was guided by the light of both the sun and the moon on his dedicated journey, from which he could not part, and he received God's grace, not by anything he had done, but by God's goodness alone.

               So Flannery O'Connor uses light in "The Artificial Nigger" to reveal both grace and sin.  From the moon, the light is dignifying, and from the sun, the light is coarse, or so it seems, anyway.  Darkness and light work together to contribute to the overall effect of the imagery, as well as to the overarching theme of grace, on which the story is balanced.  Among all of the motifs that are working together in this story- age and youth, happiness and misery, danger and safety, etc.- this motif of light and darkness seems to be the most important because of the way it seems to guide and hold the story together.

               Having seen, then, how O'Connor uses light in "The Artificial Nigger" to reveal sin and the necessity of grace to reach a saved state, as is illustrated in the last scene in which Mr. Head and Nelson return home to a kind of Eden, one must consider in regard to these things how O'Connor uses light to underscore grace, providence, and glory in the story.  Light in the story seems to suggest a very narrow path.  On the train and heading for the city, O'Connor shows how "Outside, behind rows of brown rickety houses, a line of blue buildings stood up, and beyond them a pale rose-gray sky faded away to nothing" (115).  Nothingness suggests darkness, and anything beyond the current path on which Mr. Head and Nelson are travelling is darkness and there is no light.  Mr. Head and Nelson are being guided by light, though, and on a train nonetheless- which is fixed and cannot veer off course- and are kept away from darkness.  This path to salvation is not of their doing, but God's, as the reader is shown at the end of the story.  The light is irresistible.  It draws them and shapes their trip.  So light, acting as a guide, points to the "dignifying light" in the beginning of the story and illustrates God's sovereignty over the pouring out of His grace.

               In the penultimate paragraph of the story, Mr. Head fully receives salvific grace and the description, quoted in the introduction above, suggest completeness.  Mr. Head has been saved from sin, and God's "action of mercy covered his pride like a flame and consumed it. . . . He saw that no sin was too monstrous for him to claim as his own, and since God loved in proportion as He forgave, he felt ready at that instant to enter Paradise." (132).  Mr. Head here experiences true light for the first time- ironically at night- as the moonlight, in its bestowing of grace on him, shines directly and softly on him in his Eden.  Light has revealed sin and brokenness and has fully illuminated the path to righteousness by God's grace. 

               The nature of the grace, however, as bestowed upon each character, is twofold.  To consider this properly, one must consider the last paragraph of the story:

                        Nelson, composing his expression under the shadow of his hat brim, watched him with a mixture of fatigue and suspicion, but as the train glided past them and disappeared like a frightened serpent into the woods, even his face lightened and he muttered, "I'm glad I've went once, but I'll never go back again." (132)

In his book, Flanner O'Connor: The Imagination of Extremity, Frederick Asals notes the following about the final scene of the story:

                        Yet the Edenic scene [Mr. Head and Nelson] return to and the explicit invocation of a paradise beyond the local setting are made possible only through touching the depths of a personal hell.  So too do the other major antithetical motifs of the story (sun and moon, youth and age, black and white, exterior landscape and interior world) repeatedly turn in on one another, each in the pairs of opposites transforming the other as they touch.  The result is the uniqueness of "The Artificial Nigger" among O'Connor's works: a story that ends not in violent death or estrangement or in an apocalyptic vision, but in human reconciliation and the promise of a genuine future in this world for the protagonists. (90)

If the two above quotations are compared, an important question arises.  At the end of the story, Nelson is described as being "under the shadow of his hat brim," imagery which keeps him in shadow and hidden, not lighted in the same way as Mr. Head.  Yes, his face lightens soon after, but it must be noted that it lightens, and not that he is brought into light.  The question is, then, does Nelson receive grace?

               Asals notes in the above quote that the antithetical motifs work together to produce results, so it would be easy to assume that Nelson receives the same grace that his grandfather does.  To further this idea, Asals says too that the story ends "in human reconciliation and the promise of a genuine future in this world for the protagonists" (90).  But reconciliation between whom here?  The only two options are between Mr. Head and Nelson and Nelson and God.  It must necessarily follow, then, given that Nelson is still under the shadow of his hat, that Mr. Head and Nelson are reconciled by their experience at the familial level, but Nelson and God are not reconciled.  One must treat, however, the fact that Nelson's face lightens at the end, but is not in light proper, as is related to grace.  This seems to suggest that Nelson, still in shadow- but a lighter shadow opposed to the darker one at the beginning of the story- has received common grace, opposed to the salvific grace that Mr. Head receives.  What this means is that Nelson receives the benefits of grace simply for the reason that grace exists.  God's light has effectively worked, but in different ways.  So light functions in the story to reveal sin and suggest the efficacy of grace, as the light leads and guides the characters.

               And this guiding can most likely be viewed as God's providence.  God has His divine hand over everything that takes place in the story and this presence is amplified in the last third of it.  From the bottom of page 124 to the end of the story, the language shifts drastically, as do the tone and the pace.  There seems to be desperation in Mr. Head's voice and in O'Connor's description of his thoughts.  Earlier, he functioned in the dark just fine, but now "He knew that if dark overtook them in the city, they would be beaten and robbed.  The speed of God's justice was only what he expected for himself, but he could not stand to think that his sins would be visited upon Nelson and that even now, he was leading the boy to his doom" (127).  Mr. Head is now fearful of the dark because he is beginning to live in the light and he sees the city as a dark, haunting place and longs for home, which functions as his Eden.  To further illustrate the shift in language and desperation, Mr. Head begins shouting and invoking God's name when he realizes the lost situation he is in- which of course has a few meanings here: literally lost in the city, spiritually lost in his being, and probably emotionally lost in his mind, as the seeming panic would indicate.  The resolution of the situation is likened to returning from death and Mr. Head is ecstatic when he understands that he will soon return home.  All through this episode, though, Nelson's eyes are described as cold and having no light, feeling, or interest; he was a figure standing and waiting and home was nothing (129).

               The preceding is a description of providence in its glory.  Mr. Head and Nelson are not puppets in God's play and so God does not force them into situations; rather he presides over them, knowing what will happen, always present.  In his book, Flannery O'Connor and the Mystery of Love, Richard Gianonne writes about Hazel Motes in Wise Blood and the "eternal scale" of God by which all things are measured, but the quote can serve to show a similarity in "The Artificial Nigger":

                        The design is plain and alive.  Pristine stars compose a catalytic beauty as they ply through darkness according to no will other than the desire of the source of being.  To heed the astral framework in motion is to feel the pull of divine building in the cosmos.  All one has to do is to lift one's eyes to observe the plan that sustains and controls the sum of things.  Though redemptive activity shines on high this Thursday night in Taulkinham, "No one was paying any attention to the sky" (37). (16-17)

What can be extracted and applied from this analysis of the sky in Wise Blood is that while Mr. Head is fearful of being overtaken by dark in the city and leading Nelson to his doom, all he has to do is look up.  One overarching theme in this story mirrors that of what Gianonne recognizes in Wise Blood: that all the characters have to do is pay attention to the sky, as that is from where guidance and light come.  The design is indeed "plain and alive."  The only seeming contrast in the situations is that the stars act as the guide in the night sky in Taulkinham and in Atlanta it is the sun and moon that function in this capacity.  But in both cases, feeling the pull of the divine building of the "astral framework" is paramount, and in order to feel this pull, all Mr. Head and Nelson have to do is look up.  In their sinful, unredeemed state, however, they do not seem to understand this.  But light can and does bring them through this chaos, and the idea that God's providence and His hand over their situation is key and underscores providence as it reveals God's glory in full and suggests a measure of it for the characters.

               This story can be taken in so many different directions in a close reading, but the most prominent is that of light and darkness functioning as the vehicle by which the narrative is driven.  Mr. Head's salvation is a lifting of a veil and allows him to see the world exactly like it is.  He recognizes the separation of sin and death and hell from heavenly and Edenic things.  He receives grace from God and feels the weight of his sin, and even more so the forgiveness of God in love and is at that moment ready to enter Paradise.  Mark McGurl, in The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing, notes that "O'Connor could be said to have written the same perfectly crafted short story again and again.  No wonder, then, that they sometimes seem pre-packaged for close reading in the classroom" because, as noted in the few lines before this quote in McGurl's book, Alfred Kazin said that "Each story was complete, sentence by sentence.  And each sentence was a hard, straight, altogether complete version of her subject: human deficiency, sin, error" (144).  Since O'Connor sought to guide and direct her reader and carefully crafted each element to her stories, blending them to create a tight, close-knit story, the light motif in "The Artificial Nigger" is not only evident, but intended and arguably stands out the most in directing the reading of the story.  The other elements contribute and are not to be overlooked, but should be incorporated to have the most complete picture of O'Connor's intent.  In this story, salvation is light and is attained on a lighted path, and the reader would do well to pay attention to this imagery.

Works Cited

Asals, Frederick. Flannery O'Connor: The Imagination of Extremity. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1982. Print.

"Coarse." The Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. oed.com. Web. 12 Dec. 2013.

"Confer." The Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. oed.com. Web. 12 Dec. 2013.

"Dignify." The Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. oed.com. Web. 12 Dec. 2013.

Giannone, Richard. Flannery O'Connor and the Mystery of Love. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989. Print.

Kessler, Edward. Flannery O'Connor and the Language of Apocalypse. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986. Print.

McGurl, Mark.  The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing.  Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009.  Print.

O'Connor, Flannery.  "The Artificial Nigger."  A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories.  Orlando: Harcourt, 1955.  103-132.  Print.

O'Connor, Flannery. The Habit of Being. Ed. Sally Fitzgerald. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1979. Print.

Works Consulted

Asals, Frederick. Flannery O'Connor: The Imagination of Extremity. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1982. Print.

Basselin, Timothy J. Flannery O'Connor: Writing a Theology of Disabled Humanity. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2013. Print.

Brinkmeyer, Jr., Robert H. The Art and Vision of Flannery O'Connor. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989. Print.

"Coarse." The Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. oed.com. Web. 12 Dec. 2013.

"Confer." The Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. oed.com. Web. 12 Dec. 2013.

"Dignify." The Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. oed.com. Web. 12 Dec. 2013.

Edmondson III, Henry T. Return to Good and Evil: Flannery O'Connor's Response to Nihilism. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2002. Print.

Eggenschwiler, David. The Christian Humanism of Flannery O'Connor. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1972. Print.

Gentry, Marshall Bruce. Flannery O'Connor's Religion of the Grotesque. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1986. Print.

Giannone, Richard. Flannery O'Connor and the Mystery of Love. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989. Print.

Gordon, Sarah. Flannery O'Connor: The Obedient Imagination. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2000. Print.

Hardy, Donald E. Narrating Knowledge in Flannery O'Connor's Fiction. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2003. Print.

Johansen, Ruthann Knechel. The Narrative Secret of Flannery O'Connor: The Trickster as Interpreter. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 1994. Print.

Kessler, Edward. Flannery O'Connor and the Language of Apocalypse. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986. Print.

Martin, Carter W. The True Country: Themes in the Fiction of Flannery O'Connor. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1969. Print.

McGurl, Mark.  The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing.  Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009.  Print.

Muller, Gilbert H. Nightmares and Visions: Flannery O'Connor and the Catholic Grotesque. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1972. Print.

O'Connor, Flannery.  "The Artificial Nigger."  A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories.                 

Orlando: Harcourt, 1955.  103-132.  Print.

O'Connor, Flannery. The Habit of Being. Ed. Sally Fitzgerald. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1979. Print.

O'Connor, Flannery. Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969. Print.

Ragen, Brian Abel. A Wreck on the Road to Damascus: Innocence, Guilt, and Conversion in Flannery O'Connor. Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1989. Print.

Seel, Cynthia L. Ritual Performance in the Fiction of Flannery O'Connor. Rochester: Camden House, 2001. Print.

Shloss, Carol. Flannery O'Connor's Dark Comedies: The Limits of Inference. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980. Print.

Stephens, Martha. The Question of Flannery O'Connor. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1973. Print.

Whitt, Margaret Earley. Understanding Flannery O'Connor. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1995. Print.