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May 01, 2006
Imagery (again) and "The Displaced Person"
I know I’ve already discussed the imagery of Flannery O’Connor in a previous blog entry, but after reading “The Displaced Person,” I have no choice but to go back and re-open the issue. In a surprising coup, O’Connor outdoes herself by writing a paragraph of what is perhaps the most intense, amazing imagery I have ever read:
“He had jumped into the tree and his tail hung in front of her, full of fierce planets with eyes that were each ringed in green and set against a sun that was gold in one seconds light and salmon-colored in the next. She might have been looking at a map of the universe but she didn’t realize it any more than she did the spots of sky that cracked the dull green of the tree.”
Maybe it’s just because when I was little I loved anything that has to do with space, but for some reason or other the imagery in that paragraph appealed to me more than everything else in O’Connor’s works combined. If I’ve ever come across a perfect piece of prose, this is undoubtedly it. Maybe I won’t remember a single story of Flannery’s when I grow older, but there is no doubt in my mind that I will never forget that single paragraph.
Corny, I know. But it needed to be said.
Posted by PaulCrossman at May 1, 2006 11:47 PM