Systemic Lupus Erythematosus, By Flannery O
Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) is a chronic autoimmune disorder where the body’s own immune system perceives the body as a foreign object and attacks it. According to the Lupus Foundation of America, it is estimated that approximately five million people worldwide have a form of lupus. It is one of the most deadly, and insidious disease today. Many patients experience years of generalized fatigue and pain before a diagnosis can be made; moreover, it has the potential to affect all body systems, eventually leading to multi-organ failure. Flannery O’Connor, one of America’s best short story writers was diagnosed with this incurable disease at the age of twenty-six in 1951. Moreover, in 1941 when O’Connor was only sixteen years old, his father
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O’Connor was badly disfigured by SLE; moreover, whenever her SLE exacerbated, her legs would get very swollen, she often could not walk and had to use crutches. Therefore, there are a lot of imagery of swelling, ugliness, and distortion of the body and a lack of completeness in O’Connor’s characters in the novel. For example, when Hazel first went to see Mrs. Warts, the way O’Connor and the narration allows us to see through Hazel’s eyes begins to take the whole body apart, as if he was just looking at some dismembered body parts and not Mrs. Warts as a whole. In addition, when Enoch was hiding in the trees and spying on a woman, it was very interesting as to how he described her legs, he said “until a large foot and leg came up from behind her.” The way Enoch described the women was as if her legs were not part of her body, as if her legs got cut off and was sneaking up behind the women. Not only in Wise Blood where we can sense a incompleteness in the character’s physical features, the idea of fragmented body parts is also evident in O’Connor’s Good Country People in which the main character joy, has a prosthetic …show more content…
The answer lies within O’Connor’s SLE. The violent scenes and the disturbing images in the novel emerge as a metaphor of the self-attacking, self-destroying, and self-killing nature of the disease. O’Connor had once mentioned that during her unexpected lupus flares, the violent nature of the disease shredded her body apart and shocked her confidence. She felt limited, vulnerable, isolated, and unexpected during her lupus flares, and her literary figures suffer from these as well.
Significance to Modern
O’Connor was badly disfigured by SLE; moreover, whenever her SLE exacerbated, her legs would get very swollen, she often could not walk and had to use crutches. Therefore, there are a lot of imagery of swelling, ugliness, and distortion of the body and a lack of completeness in O’Connor’s characters in the novel. For example, when Hazel first went to see Mrs. Warts, the way O’Connor and the narration allows us to see through Hazel’s eyes begins to take the whole body apart, as if he was just looking at some dismembered body parts and not Mrs. Warts as a whole. In addition, when Enoch was hiding in the trees and spying on a woman, it was very interesting as to how he described her legs, he said “until a large foot and leg came up from behind her.” The way Enoch described the women was as if her legs were not part of her body, as if her legs got cut off and was sneaking up behind the women. Not only in Wise Blood where we can sense a incompleteness in the character’s physical features, the idea of fragmented body parts is also evident in O’Connor’s Good Country People in which the main character joy, has a prosthetic …show more content…
The answer lies within O’Connor’s SLE. The violent scenes and the disturbing images in the novel emerge as a metaphor of the self-attacking, self-destroying, and self-killing nature of the disease. O’Connor had once mentioned that during her unexpected lupus flares, the violent nature of the disease shredded her body apart and shocked her confidence. She felt limited, vulnerable, isolated, and unexpected during her lupus flares, and her literary figures suffer from these as well.
Significance to Modern