Emily Dickinson Greenleaf Analysis
[Name]
[Professor]
American Literature Period 2
08 May 2013
When Death Takes Over
Originality can bring forth different styles and movements that can introduce new perspectives. Emily Dickinson and Flannery O’Connor bring their own ingeniousness through their most beloved works. The poem “There is a Certain Slant of Light” and the short story “Greenleaf” are prime examples of the authors’ brilliance. Dickinson and O’Connor lived in eras where their works demonstrated original thoughts, where they pertained a level of knowledge ahead of their time, and where family trials were predominate facets in their lives; therefore, the poems and short stories they created were greatly influenced by the impact of death. The era in which nineteenth century literature rebels against the previous classical age is called Romanticism. The writers in this age branched out of their comfort zones and wrote stories that were inspired by their “imagination, emotion, and freedom” (Cuddon 1). Revolutionizing the way authors write, the Romantic writers were witnessing how their works’ defiance against the “Age of Realism” was getting more attention and praise from people. The American authors of the Romanticism era admire nature as a holy place of “non – artificiality, …show more content…
where self can fulfill its potential” (Harvey 1). When the inexperienced century came, it released a new set of concepts of self and legislative freedom as authors desired to rupture the strings of the old century understands (“English Literature” 1). The women of the 19th century were looked down upon and seen as “tangential to and displaced by the male formulations of the period” (Trott 1). Women were not seen equally with men until the 1940’s when most of the men in our country had to leave for WWII, women had to pick up their husbands jobs and provide for their families by working hard labors for the war. Since women authors were seen as a different class from the men, this inspired Dickinson and if her poems were not found after her death, women today might not have hope in their gender because of our society.
The present era in which authors live in today is properly known as the Postmodernism Era. This era started after World War II’s end and continues to today’s great authors. “People’s views of the nature of man and society” changed when World War II ended and it became a momentous struggle that involved the whole world (Colarusso 1). When O’Connor was writing most of her short stories in the 1950’s, the time of segregation between whites and blacks became very big. The African Americans of that time were trying to achieve equal rights for voting, education, [and more] ("Civil Rights Movement.").
The post-modern era in which our generation lives is a time where an author’s creativity is greatly accepted. This current time exemplifies a discontinuation from 19th century literature where a story or poem was written from an “objective or omniscient point of view”. Postmodernism Literature searches for individualism and “study [studies] the inner states of consciousness” (Felluga 1). O’Connor’s era in which she lived in did not limit her creativity and thus she expanded her imagination by writing her grotesque stories. Dickinson’s personal life was an extreme struggle for her and she often faced depression throughout most of her life. She was a very private person who was usually opposed to uncovering herself or the beautiful poems she created for the world that would only deny her ingenuity (Feldman, Vaughan, Kinsella 418). For her poems to be recognized and acknowledged, she needed to be patient and wait around the time of World War I where affection and sensitivity were greatly understood in literature. The form of writing she had obtained and which affected her demeanor were “50 years ahead of her time” (Miller 1). “Her work is notable for its power, compression and complexity and the exploratory daring which belies its apparent decorum” (Tredell 1).
Possibly the most impressive fact about the author Dickinson is that she found an open door to revolutionize the particular elements of a “completely private life into poetry of power and timeless diversity” (Wolff 1).
Dickinson lived a simple childhood but as her years went by, she grew more confined. Her father died in the year 1874 and after this tragedy she hardly left her home. For the lest ten years of her life she never left her house, staying within familiar surroundings and spending countless times in her beloved garden. In the year 1886, Dickinson died of an illness that she had been fighting for two years. Dickinson was found dead in the same house that she was born in (Feldman, Vaughan, Kinsella
1). “Flannery O’Connor is considered one of the foremost short story writers in American Literature, [and] she was an anomaly among post WWII.” O’Connor’s religious faith was shown through her horrifying fiction stories to depict the point of grace and salvation. Most of her short stories have a “biblical tradition and catholic theology” ("(Mary) Flannery O 'Connor." 1). Her catholic upbringing and her regional setting helped her write her stories. She constantly believed that the human body was not the real body; the only true body was the body of the resurrected (Novels for Students 1). She was born in Savannah, Georgia in March 25, 1925. In the late 1930’s her father developed disseminated lupus and since lupus was untreatable back then, her father died in 1941. Through experiencing her father’s death, she brought forth different elements into her works. O’Connor’s grotesque style of stories which were shockingly violent and brought a new dimension to the Postmodernism literature. O’Connor was a writer of short stories and novels in which comedy, grotesquerie, and a profound moral and theological vision. She felt her “wickedly funny and realist stories” needed a violent shock which was necessary to bring both her characters and her modern secular audience to an awareness of the powerful reality of the transcendent mystery.” In December of 1950, O’Connor was diagnosed with lupus and had to stay in her room (Encyclopedia of World Biography 1). O’Connor then died of lupus at age 39 in 1964. In her exaggerated, tragic, and at times brutally violent tales, she forces readers to confront such human faults as hypocrisy, insensitivity, self centeredness, and prejudice. Many of her stories revolve around death and exhibit a dark sense of humor (Feldman, Vaughan, Kinsella 970) Dickinson’s time period was not full of excitement about women attempting to write stories while Flannery’s era involved a world trying to recover from WWII and how they could jump back into the economy and they were living in the decade of segregation. Dickinson and O’Connor’s fathers both had died and their deaths affected their writing technique. They both suffered from an illness and died without a spouse. These authors wrote stories involving death. The difference between these two authors is that Dickinson constantly writes about death in a positive and meaningful way as she accepts death and welcomes it in. While on the other hand, O’Connor terrified people with death while trying to make a point about the importance of salvation. The poem, “There’s a certain Slant of Light,” has two main objectives: that the conceit explains how light has the effect of a great physical weight upon the poet, which is indicative of the poet’s originality and that the poet’s theme is one of despair and darkness. The reader can see how Dickinson expresses her want for that certain light to come upon her, waiting for it to shine on her. The shadows in this poem represent darkness and how it stands still when the light comes, knowing that the light is greater than darkness. Through the comprehension of “‘the heft’ of ‘cathedral tunes’ and the weight of ‘light’ on ‘winter’s afternoons’”, Dickinson brings to knowledge that weight in the poem contains the biblical idea of glory and how she longs to experience that heavenly glory (Monteiro 1).
Dickinson wishes glory’s weight to conquer and destroy and she believes that this glory is strong enough to destroy and conquer. Dickinson has faith that the “slant of light” can bring a hurt that does not necessarily cause pain but creates an “internal difference”. The light and air shown in the poem are exact representations of God and for this reason, Dickinson nevertheless manages to keep the Transcendentalist movement present in this poem. “The wound brought by the southern light of a winter’s afternoon creates an inward transformation where consciousness ascribes signification to the phenomena of the outer world”, which are examples of outstanding illustrations of her poetic technique and although the poem has a despair tone before of death’s presence in nature, she gives inventive understanding. The poem, “There’s a Certain Slant of Light’ enlivens more than a barren winter scenery; it points out how the creator of the world failed in his work and shows the brokenness of the world through the white, chilly light and the loneliness and alienation that ravaged both the human soul and the existing world (Lake 1). The weight of glory is so heavy that it has the ability to destroy ones hopelessness.
“There’s a Certain Slant of Light” displays the way Dickinson used her anti- Emersonian view where nature acts as God’s extension to oppress humans. Elements of despair such as past memories of afternoons or even how she was feeling drowsy can effect how one may read this poem than just seeing how the light was her example of despair. The seal of despair in the poem represents the hopelessness Dickinson has, except for death itself which will come soon to take her into heaven. To make clear of the winter afternoon, she exhibits the main emotional focal point of the piece, There’s a Certain Slant of Light. The author demands the readers attention and emotions toward the light by comparing it to one thing that will explain her own attitude by mentioning the music of the cathedral organ (Eulert 1). The quote above is saying how Dickinson wants the reader to know that the light is not to be afraid of but to welcome. Furthermore, Dickinson’s slant of light resembles death and how she wants death to come painlessly. The only hope that she has in her hopelessness world is death. No one can “teach” or understand the way death can come and go so quickly, unless the experience has already happened. The catholic bells symbolize how death is bigger and greater than the sounds of the loud belles that ring and also how death brings heavenly hurt, even though this isn’t a physical hurt, it makes an internal disagreement.
The reason why Dickinson wrote this poem the way it is, is because when she was sitting all alone in her bedroom with a suffering illness, she wanted death to come and she opens up her gates for death to come in and take her to Heaven. She wanted to die and she didn’t want to live through that pain anymore so she wrote a poem where death is looked at with a positive view and how she wants death to come take her away painlessly. The short story “Greenleaf” by O’Connor brings one of the most disturbing scenes in all of her most famous fiction collection: a bull violently murders a woman. Ms. May the main woman in this story wanted everything to be done her way. The Greenleaf clan, an African American family, are slaves to Ms. May’s property, but like doing things their own way. O’Connor makes an unmistakable similarity in Greenleaf is among the vicious bull that taunts Ms. May and the will of God. Near the end of the story, Ms. May discovers that the terrifying bull belongs to the sons of the prosperous Greenleaf family. Once Ms. May realizes that Mr. Greenleaf will not do anything about the bull that roams her garden, she decides to go after the bull herself because Ms. May is persistent. ( Meek 1). Ms. May does not know why her slaves are more prosperous than her family. Their sons married European woman and have their own land where as Ms. May’s sons are wealthy but are lazy and don’t want anything to do with the land.
The story “Greenleaf” expresses a “great Christian allegorical significance” with the concepts of one of the main themes which is life and the death of Christ. The bull represents God’s will and Ms. May wanted her will to be done and fighting “God’s will” but eventually God’s will comes over Ms. May’s will and crushes her and stabs her in the heart. Usually with O’Connor’s characters in her short stories, they are shallow, depthless, and have an internal emptiness. Like the characters in her most beloved stories, Ms. May leads a shallow, hypocritical lifestyle. She believes that she is a good Christian; she does not believe any religion is true but she has a huge respect for it. (Meek 1).
Ms. May believes that if you are not prosperous, you are not doing the will of God and she solely believes this to be true for white people only and not for blacks. By closely analyzing the religion of the Greenleaf family, the reader understands the inner mistakes and sees the reason for why Mr. Greenleaf is the one who will eventually receive God 's grace and why the story is called "Greenleaf." The death of the bull by Greenleaf 's hand represents his action of giving up his own totemism beliefs. While breaking his own law by sacrificing the bull, he demonstrates "an acceptance of grace on his part. Mr. Greenleaf 's acceptance of grace involves more than momentary decision to fire his rifle and kill the bull...[as] O 'Connor carefully delineates his gradual reversal of faith” (Schiff 3). Moreover, the main theme of “Greenleaf” is racism. Throughout the whole story the reader can see how Ms. May always looks so highly of herself above the Greenleaf family just because of their race and how she was white and how they were black. The bull taunts Ms. May and actually becomes to her omnipresent and omniscience because the bull represents the will of God. Since O’Connor was very religious she provided fictional stories that brought a shock in where people back then in that era would realize that segregation is terrible and how a white man is not greater than a black man. O’Connor’s illness with lupus also brought her to a point in her life where she wanted to try to save people and she hoped she would see them in Heaven.
Likewise, the reason why she wrote her shot stories the way she did was to try to save people from an eternal hell. Her strict religious beliefs made her the woman she was and helped her write riveting and grotesque stories about death. O’Connor looks at death with a negative attitude and wants the reader to also look at death with the same emotions she had because she wanted to share the gospel through her original and gripping short stories.
While Emily Dickinson looks upon death without any questions or doubts, O’Connor believes death to be simply horrifying. These two authors are different in their writing styles yet both managed to change their generation they belonged to and continue to inspire the generations of today with their outgoing/different pattern shown/present in their beloved stories.
Works Cited
"Civil Rights Movement." West 's Encyclopedia of American Law. 2005. Encyclopedia.com. 7 May. 2013.
Colarusso, Kathleen Dale. "World War II and Its Relevance to Today 's Adolescents." ALAN Review13.2 (Winter 1986): 12-14. Rpt. in Children 's Literature Review. Ed. Tom Burns. Vol. 127. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 30 Apr. 2013.
Cuddon, J.A. "Introduction to Romanticism." Introduction to Romanticism. Third Ed. London: Penguin Books, 1991. Web. 17 Apr. 2013.
"English Literature." Infoplease. Infoplease, 2013. Web. 16 Apr. 2013.
Eulert, Donald. "Emily Dickinson 's Certain Slant of Light." American Transcendental Quarterly 14.4 (Spring 1972): 164-166. Rpt. in Poetry for Students. Ed. Mary Ruby. Vol. 6. Detroit: Gale Group, 1999. Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 Apr. 2013.
Feldman, Kevin, Sharon Vaughan, and Kate Kinsella. Prentice Hall Literature the American Experience. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2007. Print.
Felluga, Dino F. "General Introduction to Postmodernism." General Introduction to Postmodernism. Introductory Guide to Critical Theory, 2012. Web. 17 Apr. 2013.
"Flannery O 'Connor." Encyclopedia of World Biography. 2004. Encyclopedia.com. 17 Apr. 2013
"Flannery O 'Connor." Novels for Students. Detroit: Gale, 1998. Literature Resource Center. Web. 16 Apr. 2013.
Harvey, Bruce. "American Romanticism Overview." AMERICAN ROMANTICISM OVERVIEW. N.p., 1997. Web. 17 Apr. 2013.
Lake, Michael. "Critical Essay on 'There 's a Certain Slant of Light '." Poetry for Students. Ed. Mary Ruby. Vol. 6. Detroit: Gale Group, 1999. Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 Apr. 2013.
"(Mary) Flannery O 'connor." Contemporary Literary Criticism Select. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 16 Apr. 2013
Meek, Kristen. "Flannery O 'Connor 's 'Greenleaf ' and the Holy Hunt of the Unicorn." The Flannery O 'Connor Bulletin 19 (1990): 30-37. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Ed. Thomas J. Schoenberg and Lawrence J. Trudeau. Vol. 82. Detroit: Gale, 2005.Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 Apr. 2013.
Miller, Ruth. "Emily (Elizabeth) Dickinson." The American Renaissance in New England. Ed. Joel Myerson. Detroit: Gale Research, 1978. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 1. Literature Resource Center. Web. 16 Apr. 2013.
Monteiro, George. "Dickinson 's 'There 's a Certain Slant of Light, '." The Explicator 31.2 (Oct. 1972). Rpt. in Poetry for Students. Ed. Mary Ruby. Vol. 6. Detroit: Gale Group, 1999. Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 Apr. 2013.
Schiff, Jonathan. " 'That 's a Greenleaf Bull ': Totemism and Exogamy in Flannery O 'Connor 's 'Greenleaf. '." English Language Notes 32.3 (Mar. 1995): 69-76. Rpt. inShort Story Criticism. Ed. Thomas J. Schoenberg and Lawrence J. Trudeau. Vol. 82. Detroit: Gale, 2005. Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 Apr. 2013.
Tredell, Nicolas. "Emily Dickinson: Overview." Gay & Lesbian Biography. Ed. Michael J. Tyrkus and Michael Bronski. Detroit: St. James Press, 1997. Literature Resource Center. Web. 16 Apr. 2013.
Trott, Nicola. "Review of Women in Romanticism." Review of English Studies 43.172 (Nov. 1992): 569-571. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter and Polly Vedder. Vol. 121. Detroit: Gale Group, 2000. Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 Apr. 2013.
Wolff, Cynthia Griffin. "Dickinson, Emily (Elizabeth) (1830-1886)." Benet 's Reader 's Encyclopedia of American Literature. George B. Perkins, Barbara Perkins, and Phillip Leininger. Vol. 1. New York: HarperCollins, 1991. 261. Literature Resource Center. Web. 16 Apr. 2013.
[Professor]
American Literature Period 2
08 May 2013
When Death Takes Over
Originality can bring forth different styles and movements that can introduce new perspectives. Emily Dickinson and Flannery O’Connor bring their own ingeniousness through their most beloved works. The poem “There is a Certain Slant of Light” and the short story “Greenleaf” are prime examples of the authors’ brilliance. Dickinson and O’Connor lived in eras where their works demonstrated original thoughts, where they pertained a level of knowledge ahead of their time, and where family trials were predominate facets in their lives; therefore, the poems and short stories they created were greatly influenced by the impact of death. The era in which nineteenth century literature rebels against the previous classical age is called Romanticism. The writers in this age branched out of their comfort zones and wrote stories that were inspired by their “imagination, emotion, and freedom” (Cuddon 1). Revolutionizing the way authors write, the Romantic writers were witnessing how their works’ defiance against the “Age of Realism” was getting more attention and praise from people. The American authors of the Romanticism era admire nature as a holy place of “non – artificiality, …show more content…
where self can fulfill its potential” (Harvey 1). When the inexperienced century came, it released a new set of concepts of self and legislative freedom as authors desired to rupture the strings of the old century understands (“English Literature” 1). The women of the 19th century were looked down upon and seen as “tangential to and displaced by the male formulations of the period” (Trott 1). Women were not seen equally with men until the 1940’s when most of the men in our country had to leave for WWII, women had to pick up their husbands jobs and provide for their families by working hard labors for the war. Since women authors were seen as a different class from the men, this inspired Dickinson and if her poems were not found after her death, women today might not have hope in their gender because of our society.
The present era in which authors live in today is properly known as the Postmodernism Era. This era started after World War II’s end and continues to today’s great authors. “People’s views of the nature of man and society” changed when World War II ended and it became a momentous struggle that involved the whole world (Colarusso 1). When O’Connor was writing most of her short stories in the 1950’s, the time of segregation between whites and blacks became very big. The African Americans of that time were trying to achieve equal rights for voting, education, [and more] ("Civil Rights Movement.").
The post-modern era in which our generation lives is a time where an author’s creativity is greatly accepted. This current time exemplifies a discontinuation from 19th century literature where a story or poem was written from an “objective or omniscient point of view”. Postmodernism Literature searches for individualism and “study [studies] the inner states of consciousness” (Felluga 1). O’Connor’s era in which she lived in did not limit her creativity and thus she expanded her imagination by writing her grotesque stories. Dickinson’s personal life was an extreme struggle for her and she often faced depression throughout most of her life. She was a very private person who was usually opposed to uncovering herself or the beautiful poems she created for the world that would only deny her ingenuity (Feldman, Vaughan, Kinsella 418). For her poems to be recognized and acknowledged, she needed to be patient and wait around the time of World War I where affection and sensitivity were greatly understood in literature. The form of writing she had obtained and which affected her demeanor were “50 years ahead of her time” (Miller 1). “Her work is notable for its power, compression and complexity and the exploratory daring which belies its apparent decorum” (Tredell 1).
Possibly the most impressive fact about the author Dickinson is that she found an open door to revolutionize the particular elements of a “completely private life into poetry of power and timeless diversity” (Wolff 1).
Dickinson lived a simple childhood but as her years went by, she grew more confined. Her father died in the year 1874 and after this tragedy she hardly left her home. For the lest ten years of her life she never left her house, staying within familiar surroundings and spending countless times in her beloved garden. In the year 1886, Dickinson died of an illness that she had been fighting for two years. Dickinson was found dead in the same house that she was born in (Feldman, Vaughan, Kinsella
1). “Flannery O’Connor is considered one of the foremost short story writers in American Literature, [and] she was an anomaly among post WWII.” O’Connor’s religious faith was shown through her horrifying fiction stories to depict the point of grace and salvation. Most of her short stories have a “biblical tradition and catholic theology” ("(Mary) Flannery O 'Connor." 1). Her catholic upbringing and her regional setting helped her write her stories. She constantly believed that the human body was not the real body; the only true body was the body of the resurrected (Novels for Students 1). She was born in Savannah, Georgia in March 25, 1925. In the late 1930’s her father developed disseminated lupus and since lupus was untreatable back then, her father died in 1941. Through experiencing her father’s death, she brought forth different elements into her works. O’Connor’s grotesque style of stories which were shockingly violent and brought a new dimension to the Postmodernism literature. O’Connor was a writer of short stories and novels in which comedy, grotesquerie, and a profound moral and theological vision. She felt her “wickedly funny and realist stories” needed a violent shock which was necessary to bring both her characters and her modern secular audience to an awareness of the powerful reality of the transcendent mystery.” In December of 1950, O’Connor was diagnosed with lupus and had to stay in her room (Encyclopedia of World Biography 1). O’Connor then died of lupus at age 39 in 1964. In her exaggerated, tragic, and at times brutally violent tales, she forces readers to confront such human faults as hypocrisy, insensitivity, self centeredness, and prejudice. Many of her stories revolve around death and exhibit a dark sense of humor (Feldman, Vaughan, Kinsella 970) Dickinson’s time period was not full of excitement about women attempting to write stories while Flannery’s era involved a world trying to recover from WWII and how they could jump back into the economy and they were living in the decade of segregation. Dickinson and O’Connor’s fathers both had died and their deaths affected their writing technique. They both suffered from an illness and died without a spouse. These authors wrote stories involving death. The difference between these two authors is that Dickinson constantly writes about death in a positive and meaningful way as she accepts death and welcomes it in. While on the other hand, O’Connor terrified people with death while trying to make a point about the importance of salvation. The poem, “There’s a certain Slant of Light,” has two main objectives: that the conceit explains how light has the effect of a great physical weight upon the poet, which is indicative of the poet’s originality and that the poet’s theme is one of despair and darkness. The reader can see how Dickinson expresses her want for that certain light to come upon her, waiting for it to shine on her. The shadows in this poem represent darkness and how it stands still when the light comes, knowing that the light is greater than darkness. Through the comprehension of “‘the heft’ of ‘cathedral tunes’ and the weight of ‘light’ on ‘winter’s afternoons’”, Dickinson brings to knowledge that weight in the poem contains the biblical idea of glory and how she longs to experience that heavenly glory (Monteiro 1).
Dickinson wishes glory’s weight to conquer and destroy and she believes that this glory is strong enough to destroy and conquer. Dickinson has faith that the “slant of light” can bring a hurt that does not necessarily cause pain but creates an “internal difference”. The light and air shown in the poem are exact representations of God and for this reason, Dickinson nevertheless manages to keep the Transcendentalist movement present in this poem. “The wound brought by the southern light of a winter’s afternoon creates an inward transformation where consciousness ascribes signification to the phenomena of the outer world”, which are examples of outstanding illustrations of her poetic technique and although the poem has a despair tone before of death’s presence in nature, she gives inventive understanding. The poem, “There’s a Certain Slant of Light’ enlivens more than a barren winter scenery; it points out how the creator of the world failed in his work and shows the brokenness of the world through the white, chilly light and the loneliness and alienation that ravaged both the human soul and the existing world (Lake 1). The weight of glory is so heavy that it has the ability to destroy ones hopelessness.
“There’s a Certain Slant of Light” displays the way Dickinson used her anti- Emersonian view where nature acts as God’s extension to oppress humans. Elements of despair such as past memories of afternoons or even how she was feeling drowsy can effect how one may read this poem than just seeing how the light was her example of despair. The seal of despair in the poem represents the hopelessness Dickinson has, except for death itself which will come soon to take her into heaven. To make clear of the winter afternoon, she exhibits the main emotional focal point of the piece, There’s a Certain Slant of Light. The author demands the readers attention and emotions toward the light by comparing it to one thing that will explain her own attitude by mentioning the music of the cathedral organ (Eulert 1). The quote above is saying how Dickinson wants the reader to know that the light is not to be afraid of but to welcome. Furthermore, Dickinson’s slant of light resembles death and how she wants death to come painlessly. The only hope that she has in her hopelessness world is death. No one can “teach” or understand the way death can come and go so quickly, unless the experience has already happened. The catholic bells symbolize how death is bigger and greater than the sounds of the loud belles that ring and also how death brings heavenly hurt, even though this isn’t a physical hurt, it makes an internal disagreement.
The reason why Dickinson wrote this poem the way it is, is because when she was sitting all alone in her bedroom with a suffering illness, she wanted death to come and she opens up her gates for death to come in and take her to Heaven. She wanted to die and she didn’t want to live through that pain anymore so she wrote a poem where death is looked at with a positive view and how she wants death to come take her away painlessly. The short story “Greenleaf” by O’Connor brings one of the most disturbing scenes in all of her most famous fiction collection: a bull violently murders a woman. Ms. May the main woman in this story wanted everything to be done her way. The Greenleaf clan, an African American family, are slaves to Ms. May’s property, but like doing things their own way. O’Connor makes an unmistakable similarity in Greenleaf is among the vicious bull that taunts Ms. May and the will of God. Near the end of the story, Ms. May discovers that the terrifying bull belongs to the sons of the prosperous Greenleaf family. Once Ms. May realizes that Mr. Greenleaf will not do anything about the bull that roams her garden, she decides to go after the bull herself because Ms. May is persistent. ( Meek 1). Ms. May does not know why her slaves are more prosperous than her family. Their sons married European woman and have their own land where as Ms. May’s sons are wealthy but are lazy and don’t want anything to do with the land.
The story “Greenleaf” expresses a “great Christian allegorical significance” with the concepts of one of the main themes which is life and the death of Christ. The bull represents God’s will and Ms. May wanted her will to be done and fighting “God’s will” but eventually God’s will comes over Ms. May’s will and crushes her and stabs her in the heart. Usually with O’Connor’s characters in her short stories, they are shallow, depthless, and have an internal emptiness. Like the characters in her most beloved stories, Ms. May leads a shallow, hypocritical lifestyle. She believes that she is a good Christian; she does not believe any religion is true but she has a huge respect for it. (Meek 1).
Ms. May believes that if you are not prosperous, you are not doing the will of God and she solely believes this to be true for white people only and not for blacks. By closely analyzing the religion of the Greenleaf family, the reader understands the inner mistakes and sees the reason for why Mr. Greenleaf is the one who will eventually receive God 's grace and why the story is called "Greenleaf." The death of the bull by Greenleaf 's hand represents his action of giving up his own totemism beliefs. While breaking his own law by sacrificing the bull, he demonstrates "an acceptance of grace on his part. Mr. Greenleaf 's acceptance of grace involves more than momentary decision to fire his rifle and kill the bull...[as] O 'Connor carefully delineates his gradual reversal of faith” (Schiff 3). Moreover, the main theme of “Greenleaf” is racism. Throughout the whole story the reader can see how Ms. May always looks so highly of herself above the Greenleaf family just because of their race and how she was white and how they were black. The bull taunts Ms. May and actually becomes to her omnipresent and omniscience because the bull represents the will of God. Since O’Connor was very religious she provided fictional stories that brought a shock in where people back then in that era would realize that segregation is terrible and how a white man is not greater than a black man. O’Connor’s illness with lupus also brought her to a point in her life where she wanted to try to save people and she hoped she would see them in Heaven.
Likewise, the reason why she wrote her shot stories the way she did was to try to save people from an eternal hell. Her strict religious beliefs made her the woman she was and helped her write riveting and grotesque stories about death. O’Connor looks at death with a negative attitude and wants the reader to also look at death with the same emotions she had because she wanted to share the gospel through her original and gripping short stories.
While Emily Dickinson looks upon death without any questions or doubts, O’Connor believes death to be simply horrifying. These two authors are different in their writing styles yet both managed to change their generation they belonged to and continue to inspire the generations of today with their outgoing/different pattern shown/present in their beloved stories.
Works Cited
"Civil Rights Movement." West 's Encyclopedia of American Law. 2005. Encyclopedia.com. 7 May. 2013.
Colarusso, Kathleen Dale. "World War II and Its Relevance to Today 's Adolescents." ALAN Review13.2 (Winter 1986): 12-14. Rpt. in Children 's Literature Review. Ed. Tom Burns. Vol. 127. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 30 Apr. 2013.
Cuddon, J.A. "Introduction to Romanticism." Introduction to Romanticism. Third Ed. London: Penguin Books, 1991. Web. 17 Apr. 2013.
"English Literature." Infoplease. Infoplease, 2013. Web. 16 Apr. 2013.
Eulert, Donald. "Emily Dickinson 's Certain Slant of Light." American Transcendental Quarterly 14.4 (Spring 1972): 164-166. Rpt. in Poetry for Students. Ed. Mary Ruby. Vol. 6. Detroit: Gale Group, 1999. Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 Apr. 2013.
Feldman, Kevin, Sharon Vaughan, and Kate Kinsella. Prentice Hall Literature the American Experience. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2007. Print.
Felluga, Dino F. "General Introduction to Postmodernism." General Introduction to Postmodernism. Introductory Guide to Critical Theory, 2012. Web. 17 Apr. 2013.
"Flannery O 'Connor." Encyclopedia of World Biography. 2004. Encyclopedia.com. 17 Apr. 2013
"Flannery O 'Connor." Novels for Students. Detroit: Gale, 1998. Literature Resource Center. Web. 16 Apr. 2013.
Harvey, Bruce. "American Romanticism Overview." AMERICAN ROMANTICISM OVERVIEW. N.p., 1997. Web. 17 Apr. 2013.
Lake, Michael. "Critical Essay on 'There 's a Certain Slant of Light '." Poetry for Students. Ed. Mary Ruby. Vol. 6. Detroit: Gale Group, 1999. Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 Apr. 2013.
"(Mary) Flannery O 'connor." Contemporary Literary Criticism Select. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 16 Apr. 2013
Meek, Kristen. "Flannery O 'Connor 's 'Greenleaf ' and the Holy Hunt of the Unicorn." The Flannery O 'Connor Bulletin 19 (1990): 30-37. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Ed. Thomas J. Schoenberg and Lawrence J. Trudeau. Vol. 82. Detroit: Gale, 2005.Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 Apr. 2013.
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