J.+Martin

The Color Purple Livebinder

1.) Flannery O’Connor, //The Artificial Nigger.// The Artificial Nigger is a tale depicting a white grandfather and his white son’s journey to Atlanta, Georgia. The grandfather, Mr. Head, teases his grandson, Nelson, about African Americans with questions such as, “Have you ever seen one before?” and, “If you have, what do they look like?” before their visit. After they board a train and get spooked by a ghost, they arrive at Atlanta. The white duo thus begin their tour until they get lost and cannot figure out which way to go. What should they ask when they don’t know which way to go? The negro, the negro! (Thattttt’s Right!) However, that’s wrong, the grandfather insists on being ignorant instead of “lowering” himself to ask a negro for directions. The two men/boys/males continue on hopelessly through the city until they get separated in a large crowd. Mr. Head uses this opportunity to formally traumatize Nelson so that he won’t ever live in the city. Mr. Head soon realized his impeccable plan had a cranny. The plan horribly backfired. Nelson ran into, and knocked down, an elderly woman who grabbed the child and screamed for his guardian. Mr. Head immediately disowned the ruffian and waited for the quarrel to subside to reclaim his kin. Nelson was mortified by the event and nearly lost all faith in his beloved grandfather until the two stumbled upon a statue of a(n) African American/black/negro/nigger-ish statue in a predominantly, and most likely all, white neighborhood. Mr. Head explains to the naive child that the statue is there because there aren’t enough real ones (neggros) in the area, so they need fake, aka artificial, negros, aka nigger (this is where the title comes from) to create a more even world. This completely rekindles the child’s admiration for his grandfather and the two reclaim the great bond they once had (most likely a hydrogen bond, they’re pretty strong). They return home and move on ,the end.

2.) All of Flannery O’Connor’s stories feature three prominent things: the elderly, an ignorant religious figure (typically the elderly), and morbidly strange endings. //In A Rose for Emily//, the main character is an elderly, lonesome woman who lives in the past as she continues to not pay taxes—a deal that was made between her and the Colonel many years prior to the commencement of the story. As the tale proceeds and her story unfolds, the sympathy for Emily is deteriorated by the strange stories rumored throughout the small town. Finally, the author finishes her story by confusing and amazing her audience by mentioning that she had been sleeping with the dead body of a past lover for years. In //Good Country People//, we see a young girl and her mother and grandmother, a religious grandmother who accepts the bible salesman, because he sells bibles, and the girl loses her wooden leg to the bible salesman. In //The Artificial Nigger//, the grandfather considers himself to be mostly without sin, beckoning the religious factor that continues to be present within the majority of her stories. By the conclusion of the story, the grandfather realizes that he is just as much a sinner as anyone else for he abandoned his grandson in a twisted and surprising turn of events. The ending of the story is strange in the fact that it is mostly anticlimactic compared to the other stories studied. The grandfather and grandson find a statue of a miserable-looking black man (the artificial nigger) hunched over himself against a wall. Somehow, a joke made by the grandfather brings him and the grandson together and reestablishes their relationship.

3.) Image of the Bronze Thinker; Explanation - It’s a statue, it looks black, it is depicting a scholarly black man. Foreshadows the future of Civil Rights Act, toleration of African Americans, and equality. All of which an old white man of the “early” 1900’s would despise.