Violence as the Road to Transformation: O’Connor’s
III. The Flowing of Significance: Verbal Violence
phases as far as the semiotic models of conjunction and disjunction are concerned.
Viewed from the hindsight gained through the Greimassian model and the semiotic signification analysis, the Bailey family’s journey to Florida is thus menaced with the shadow of death from the beginning. However, the narrative also promises a hidden lesson of existential awareness combined with the bitter sting of conceptual
transformation.
III. The Flowing of Significance: Verbal Violence
The massacre in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” is usually the focus of the critical debate as the violence of grace is concerned. However, I would like to point out here a very specific feature often neglected by the critics: except the physical violence, the very violent stroke of death, the narrative of “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” is full of verbal violence. As violent acts are important in respect to the possible revelation of grace, verbal violence should also be taken seriously, for verbal expression is the very constructive texture of a narrative. If only the violent event (the family massacre) is taken into consideration, this kind of narrative analysis, without doubt, would be seriously flawed, since the major part of the textual significance would thus be left out as the narrative style and the characters’ conversations are neglected.
People not only communicate with language, but also use language to demonstrate their power over others and fulfill their personal wish. Language, therefore, can be a tool of communication and a weapon of destruction. It can be used to hurt the feelings and to discourage the wishes and ambitions of others. It can express distress, resentment and even hatred. The language that hurts demonstrates the power of verbal violence. In the Bailey family, language usually fails to serve as a tool to communicate but turns out to be a sign26 of further implications: a second level signifier. It represents the speaker’s present state of mood and refers to the second level—his/her inner feelings and
unconscious desire, and leaves the third level meta-linguistic system of signification to the understanding of the probing reader of the narrative. In the Bailey family, one sends out a message but receives no immediate response, or instead, has retorts and obnoxious value judgments in return. Though failing to fulfill the first level function in the daily
26 With respect to the semiotics of sign systems derived from Saussure, Hjelmslev and Barthes, the signifying function of language as a sign system consists of two elementary parts: the expression part and the content part. The signification of a sign system is obtained through the related function of the
expression part and the content part. Adopting the layered semiotic model of the signifying system established by Roland Barthes in Elements of Semiology, I would categorize the signifying process of a language sign into three different levels. This three-level model of the language signifying process consists of three signifying systems: the first level signification belongs to the function of the reality, the second level signification is the function of denotation and the third level signification refers to the domain of the social and cultural space of connotation. In the first level sign system, the language sign as a signifier is related to the signified content-meaning which belongs to the signifying function in reality.
In the second level signifying system, the previous expression and content-meaning of the language sign will get transformed into a new signifier and develops into a second signifying system where denotation functions. The second sign system will further develop into a third level system of signification where the connotation functions. This new sign system is an extension of the previous denotative sign system of the individual and refers to a broaden content-meaning (connotation) which belongs to the realm of the social, cultural and ideological. See Roland Barthes, Elements of Semiology.
communication, the verbal message still has its referentiality in the second and third level function of signification.
The language usage and function adopted by the Bailey family indicate a discord within the family members and further reveal their inner world of discontent. For instance, the grandmother’s utterance always degenerates into a kind of cacophony and receives no attention from the family members, and sometimes it is totally ignored so that the grandmother will receive no response at all. Before the Bailey family
encounters their lethal terminators in the car accident, the existential stage of virtual verbal violence is repeatedly acted out at home, on the road, and in the Red Sammy Butts’s small barbeque store. The frequent flow of discontent and dissatisfaction emerges freely from the family conversation, as if this kind of verbal violence is but a rehearsal of their daily activities.
In the very beginning, the grandmother’s advice of not going to Florida, though demonstrated with her demanding gesture and raising sound, is ignored by her son, who buries his head over the orange sports section of the Journal. He gives her no response, and has no intention to attend to her underlying tone that demands a change of
destinations. While the grandmother tries to turn to her daughter-in-law for help and protests that visiting some more different places might be of better education for the children, her daughter-in-law takes no notice of her words, either.
Although the grandmother tires hard to persuade and reason with her son and her daughter-in-law respectively, there is no sign of any communication. Silence is the only answer. But the children’s responses are different. The eight-year-old boy, John Wesley, says to her, “If you don’t want to go to Florida, why dontcha stay at home?” And the little girl, June Star, responds to John Wesley’s remark and makes her comment without even directly facing and talking to the grandmother: “‘She wouldn’t stay at home to be queen for a day. She wouldn’t stay at home for a million bucks,’ June Star said, ‘Afraid She’d miss something. She has to go everywhere we go’” (352). The children stand by their parents’ determination to go to Florida and in a childish directness dissuading her to go with them and laughing at her not being able to act on her own but depending on them.
In fact, John Wesley’s and June Star’s remarks reveal more of the modern commercial culture than of a clear consciousness and word choice of their own. John Wesley’s remark is a direct response to the grandmother’s not wishing to go to Florida;
however, June Star’s is a copy from a popular radio program27 that she might have heard with her mother. Nevertheless, the conversation the grandmother has with her
grandchildren, when compared to the silent response she obtains from the children’s parents, is full of sound and sarcasm. Since Bailey Boy and his wife say nothing to stop or reproach the children’s bluntness, it seems that the children’s words are more or less
27 June Star’s remarks were from a popular broadcasting program of the time. Margaret Earley Whitt pointed out, “O’Connor provides June Star with a popular radio show for an allusion: “She wouldn’t stay home to be queen for a day” nor “for a million bucks” (Understanding Flannery O’Connor 137). Whitt suggests, “Although the overemotional television show “Queen for a Day” premiered in 1956, a radio show with the same format began in 1945…. June Star knows her radio, but she seems ignorant of the tales and stereotypes of her region” (44-5). In a sense, June Star’s familiarity with the radio show is a proof of the prevalence of the modern commercial value system in the younger generations. The value system of the traditional South, which the grandmother believes, would be quite different. However, the grandmother’s teachings and preachments cannot match the influence of the radio programs over the younger generations.
consented by their parents, or at least, the manners and style of expressions are of no great concern to their parents. As the parents are tired of arguing with the grandmother, the children take turns to fulfill the duty for their parents.
On their way to Florida, the Bailey family stops at the Red Sam’s to have a light lunch. While waiting for their order, the mother plays “The Tennessee Waltz” on the nickelodeon. The grandmother says that tune always makes her want to dance and asks Bailey if he would like to dance, “but he only glared at her” (355). This is the second time in the story that Bailey Boy with the same silent mode rejects his mother’s
suggestion. Red Sam’s wife, watching June Star’s tap, tries to have some little talk with this little girl: “Would you like to come be my little girl?” “No I certainly wouldn’t,”
June Star said. “I wouldn’t live in a broken-down place like this for a million bucks!”
(355) Seeing all this, the grandmother reproaches the little girl for being rude. It seems that the grandmother is the only one who emphasizes manners and gentility in the Bailey family.
The actualization of physical violence terminates life; however, the virtual verbal violence humiliates and curtails the possibilities of human communication and
expression of love and sympathy. The verbal violence among the family members foreshadows the lack of communication, passion, goodwill and understanding. This virtual violence of discontent will finally clutter up to lurk behind the actualization of the chaotic massacre as a demonstration of the lack of family and companion love.
The Bailey children’s habitual retorts and their parents’ reluctance to respond to the grandmother’s words grow out of control in June Star’s rejection of the proprietress’s polite, inviting words at Red Sam’s, and at last develop into Bailey Boy’s curse to his mother when she recognizes and points out the escaped convict—The Misfit. In contrast to the actualization stage of the real world disorder and malignancy represented by the Misfit and his henchmen, this phase of verbal violence virtualization illustrates the mutilating force of language. The Bailey family’s verbal violence, which mimics the commercial language and the modern value systems, serves in the narrative syntax as a virtual miniature of the devouring force of blind malice in the real modern world.
What Bailey Boy exclaims desperately while stepping on his road to death might best define this mal-communication stage of the modern world: “‘Listen,’ Bailey began,
‘we’re in a terrible predicament! Nobody realizes what this is,’ and his voice cracked”
(359). This is really a terrible predicament to which people in the modern world are confined, and it is true that nobody really wants to listen to others. The Misfit only talks to the grandmother, but he does not listen to her advice. The Misfit keeps talking about his doubts and disbeliefs in humanity and religion, but determines to accept nobody’s words or advices except his own reasoning. The grandmother talks and demands, but no family members really listen to her needs. The Bailey children talks and retorts, but no one, except the grandmother, listens to them and give them directions. Bailey Boy refuses to answer any of his mother’s words, whether they are questions, protests or suggestions, and when he finally tries to “talk,” no one listens to him and his voice
“cracked”—it fails to reach out and communicate. And in the whole narrative, Bailey’s wife has no words at all. Red Sam’s wife talks, but her husband twice stops her and asks her to leave and hurry up with the lunch order. “Nobody realizes what it is,” as Bailey Boy ironically points out in the end, because people, isolated within their own world, fail to communicate. The first level pragmatic function that language provides as communicating meanings in the everyday life is hampered. People keep talking to others, but only themselves are the targets and the receivers of their words. The
pragmatic dimension of language signs thus is often put into oblivion and fails to reach their receivers in their speech acts.
June Star’s repetition of the “one million bucks” is also an important signifier. It refers to the modern “grids” that popular culture formulates throughout the widespread
broadcasting media. This explains the reason why only the grandmother stands to hiss the girl and warns her of her bad manners, but June Star’s parents take no notice of her rudeness as usual. It is obvious that Bailey Boy and his wife belong to the new
generation that happily forsake the old teachings and embrace the new capitalist world.
However, Red Sam’s wife’s disapproval of June Star’s language would rank her with the same group of the old grandmother’s camp, who still cling a little bit to the old days’
glory and manners. The old good days were gone and the good manners and gentility could no longer be found in the Bailey family. Nor could the merits of a “good” man be found in the family life. If June Star should feel ashamed of her slashing honesty, her parents, who keep allowing her to repeat what she has learned from a radio program without reminding her of its aggressive inferences, should also feel ashamed. However, Bailey Boy and his wife see this happened time and again but make no sign of
chastising or discipling their young girl. These two situations plainly reveal the kind of verbal violence that happens in the Bailey family, and the different cultural and value judgments that the old and young generations embrace. These narrative incidents serve well as the virtual counterpart of the final actual violence, the physical violence
executed by The Misfit. With no extended feelings and compassion towards the others, both verbal violence and physical violence, whether virtual or actual in the semiotic modulations, generate disgraceful manners and vicious results.
With respect to the semiotic analysis of the model existence, June Star’s retorts further emit a great significance of the popular worldview. It is not merely a practice of language game or a form of communication that is worth noting, but the universal element that behind the enunciation that counts. What lingering behind the child’s materialistic and snobbish contempt of poverty and underdevelopment is the popular culture that is fast changing. The worship of materiality and money behind the words of June Star would then become clear, when viewed from the perspective of a material oriented culture. The old conventions of the grandmother’s time would then become out of date tirades and therefore, receive no attention. The economic values of the society have already incorporated into June Star’s concept of human life and behavior, although her worldview expressed through her words might not represent her independent
individual values. On the contrary, the grandmother, Red Sam and his wife belong to the
“transgressions,” but only when where manners and morals are concerned. For the sake of conversation and memory of the traditional South, they all share their high respect of gentility without really reflecting upon the genuine meaning of a “good” man. The good old days are remembered, as in their talk, because they would like to apply it to their benefits. The grandmother’s judgment of her previous suitor Mr. Teagarden is a good example: this Mr. Teagarden “was a very good looking man and a gentleman,” and “had bought Coca-Cola stock when it first came out and that he had died only a few years ago, a very wealthy man” (354). The grandmother’s comments on Mr. Teagarden remind us of her concept of a “good” man—good looking and wealthy. She does not forget to mention the economic values that a probable marriage to Mr. Teagarden might bring forth. Missing a marriage with a “good” gentleman might mean the missing of all the possible financial benefits.
The grandmother’s concept of a “good” man can thus be categorized as the following diagram: Grandma’s conversation with MATERIALITY story of Mr. Teagarden
Red Sam & his wife
However, it will take the grandmother her life to realize what a “good” man really means.