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April 28, 2006
A Prayer of Thanksgiving
'"Every day I say a prayer of thanksgiving," Mrs. Cope said. "Think of all we have. Lord," she said and sighed, "we have everything," and she looked around at her rich pastures and hills heavy with timber and shook her head as if it might all be a burden she was trying to shake off her back.'
We have, on frequent occasions, brought up how one of O'Connor's key traits as a writer is to never allow one of her characters to be either perfectly good or perfectly bad. There will always be a flaw, or a redeeming quality which allows them not only to become more three dimensional, but more human as well. To me, the quote above is perhaps the best example of this in all of Flannery's works that we've read so far.
Here we see Mrs. Cope outwardly exclaiming how thankful she is for every little thing, talking of how God has given them everything they could want or need, and yet immediately afterward O'Connor describes her gestures as if everything God had given her was a burden. It seems to me that though Mrs. Cope is portrayed as constantly being thankful for what she has, she views it as a job which she must do. She isn't being thankful because there is so much to be thankful about, but rather because she believes she should be thankful. Because of this, she can never be truly thankful for anything, and thus the act of giving thanks in itself becomes a burden.
Posted by PaulCrossman at April 28, 2006 06:42 AM