Flannery O’Connor
“Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
“Julian thought he could have stood his lot better if she had been selfish, if she had been an old hag who drank and screamed at him. He walked along, saturated in depression, as if in the midst of his martyrdom he had lost his faith.”
“if you know who you are, you can go anywhere. She said this every time he took her to the reducing class.”
“Knowing who you are is good for one generation only. You haven’t the foggiest idea where you stand now or who you are.”
“You remain what you are, she said. Your great-grand-father had a plantation and two hundred slaves.
There are no more slaves, he said irritably.”
“I’ve always had a great respect for my colored friends”
“Behind the newspaper Julian was withdrawing into the inner compartment of his mind where he spent most of his time. This was a kind of mental bubble in which he established himself when he could not bear to be a part of what was going on around him. From it he could see out and judge but in it he was safe from any kind of penetration from without. It was the only place where he felt free of the general idiocy of his fellows. His mother had never entered it but from it he could see her with absolute clarity.”
“he realized he was too intelligent to be a success”
“She excused his gloominess on the grounds that he was still growing up and his radical ideas on his lack of practical experience. She said he didn’t yet know a thing about ‘life,’ that he hadn’t even entered the real world – when already he was as disenchanted with it as a man of fifty.
The further irony of all this was that in spite of her, he had turned out so well. In spite of going to only a third-rate college, he had, on his own initiative, come out with a first-rate education; in spite of growing up dominated by a small mind, he had ended up with a large one; in spite of all her foolish views, he was free of prejudice and unafraid to face facts. Most miraculous of all, instead of being blinded by love for her as she was for him, he had cut himself emotionally free of her and could see her with complete objectivity. He was not dominated by his mother.”
“He would have liked to get in conversation with the Negro and to talk with him about art or politics or any subject that would be above the comprehension of those around them, but the man remained entrenched behind his paper. He was either ignoring the change of seating or had never noticed it. There was no way for Julian to convey his sympathy.”
“Instead, he approached the ultimate horror. He brought home a beautiful suspiciously Negroid woman. Prepare yourself, he said. There is nothing you can do about it. This is the woman I’ve chosen. She’s intelligent, dignified, even good, and she’s suffered and she hasn’t thought it fun.”
“He could not believe that Fate had thrust upon his mother such a lesson. He gave a loud chuckle so that she would look at him and see that he saw. She turned her eyes on him slowly. The blue in them seemed to have turned a bruised purple. For a moment he had an uncomfortable sense of her innocence, but it lasted only a second before principle rescued him. Justice entitled him to laugh. His grin hardened until it said to her as plainly as if he were saying aloud: Your punishment exactly fits your pettiness. This should teach you a permanent lesson.”
“She kept her eyes on the woman and an amused smile came over her face as if the woman were a monkey that had stolen her hat.”
“Don’t think that was just an uppity Negro woman, he said. That was the whole colored race which will no longer take your condescending pennies. That was your black double. She can wear the same hat as you, and to be sure, he added gratuitously (because he thought it was funny), it looked better on her than it did on you. What all this means, he said, is that the old world is gone. The old manners are obsolete and your graciousness is not worth a damn. He thought bitterly of the house that had been lost for him. You aren’t who you think you are, he said.”
“He turned her over. Her face was fiercely distorted. One eye, large and staring, moved slightly to the left as if it had become unmoored. The other remained fixed on him, raked his face again, found nothing and closed.”
“Help, help! he shouted, but his voice was thin, scarcely a thread of sound.”
Ironically, the son killed his raucous mother; Jacob read it as a sycophant father killed (failed to kill) his honest son. And not by rising, but by making him descend! The son in O’Connor’s felt guilty, unlike the dad in Lost’s.
Seclusão Anagógica 