ENGL 4310

In her letter to A. when she compares walking on crutches to walking like an ape, Flannery O’Connor writes, “In my own experience, everything funny I have written is more terrible than it is funny, or only funny because it is terrible, or only terrible because it is funny” (957). While this quote seems like it could be something from Lewis Carroll, when you really think about it, it rings true. Of course O’Connor should know more about her own writing than we do, but this was really a Duh! moment for me. I was frustrated that though I know it to be true, the thought had never occurred to me to put it into words. O’Connor’s stories are hysterically funny…but only because they are so terrible. Girl throwing book at annoying old woman: funny. Getting your leg stolen by a con-artist parading as a bible salesman: funny. These are terrible, awful things that rank about an 8.94 on our Schadenfreude scale and are therefore funny. It is O’Connor’s way of handling these tragically absurd situations that gives them their humor. You know the image of Hulga waiting for someone to help her down makes you laugh in the same way that O’Connor’s notion that “the lame shall enter first” because they have used their crutches to knock everyone else out of the way does. We can see O’Connor’s humor about her real life situation as an “anthropoid ape” working itself into her writings. If she had a different sense of humor, her stories would be drastically different, even if the plots remained the same.