In class today, Neena mentioned O'Connor's use of color words in "The Artificial Nigger." It got me to reflecting on my own perception of the story, what colors I saw it in as I read, and I think it just played out as a sepia-toned movie for me, with lots of wide angle shots and not much music. On page 228 in our O'Connor text, the narrator says The sun dropped down behind a row of houses. This startled me a little when I first read it; I had been imagining so much of what precedes page 228, including Mr. Head hiding from and then denying any relationship with Nelson, in dusk and even total darkness. Though I won't rule it out completely, I don't think my misunderstanding was a result of not reading carefully enough. O'Connor just did a really good job of making the day in the city feel very, very long and aimless. All the circling and recircling of brick buildings seemed to last for many hours, at least to me. It sounds a little elementary, but I think I've settled on concluding that the hazy, night aspect of that key scene in which Mr. Head says, "This is not my boy ... I've never seen him before," doesn't come from the angle of the sun in the sky. It comes from the surreal situation and from inside of the man himself.
The scene I pondered on the most from "The Artificial Nigger" wasn't one we touched on in class, so I'd like to work on it here. On page 222, Nelson asks the black woman for directions back to town. They have a short exchange, after which O'Connor writes,
He stood drinking in every detail of her. His eyes traveled up from her great knees to her forehead and then made atriangular path from the glistening sweat on her neck down and across her tremendous bosom and over her bare arm back to where her fingers lay hidden in her hair. He suddenly wanted her to reach down and pick him up and draw him against her and then he wanted to feel her breath on his face. He wanted to look down and down into her eyes while she held him tighter and tighter. He had never had such a feeling before. He felt as if he were reeling down through a pitchblack tunnel. (pg. 223)Geez, Louise - that's beautiful writing. It really speaks to me about the loneliness of being a kid, and about the racial/social struggle that Nelson in particular is obliged to be a part of. This woman is mocking him mildly, and she's looked down upon by his grandfather, but to Nelson, she's a woman, just as the big black man on the train was a man, a fat man, an old man to him. And right then, Nelson wanted a motherly woman to hold him tight and care for him. It's not as though he gets much affection from his grandfather, and, to our knowledge, who else is there? For a child to connect so solidly with a stranger suggests that there aren't other adults around to turn to for that validation, which, from a child development perspective, is not really that rare.
I think I'm definitely cross-contaminating my class discussions and personal reflections from Robin's Young Adult Lit course with 4310. I'm really noticing that theme of adolescent loneliness in our reading ... Anyhow, I love it when that happens - not the loneliness, the cross-contaminating.
Tags: Artificial Nigger, loneliness, mother, O'Connor, reflective, Sara Staheli, time
I also like how O'Conner's "grays" play into the ghost images Head and Nelson take on, but I don't know where to go with that yet.