Mr. Head's Journey to the Cross: Character, Structure, and Meaning in O'Connor's "The Artificial Nigger"

51 Marcia Smith Marzec Mr. Head's Journey to the Cross: Character, Structure, and Meaning in O'Connor's "The Artificial Nigger" Jesus is "SO SOUL hungry" that "he will chase [man] over the waters of sin" and "have him in the end," we are told in Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood.1 God's Providential plan for human salvation , God's loving desire to bring man home to him, is, in fact, a major theme of O'Connor's Christian comedy. Again and again her fiction illustrates that even when man is engulfed in the darkness of disbelief, sin, and despair, God's plan is in progress, for the love of God is greater than human sinfulness. To illustrate God's transformation of apparent evil into a real and greater good, O'Connor purposely chooses what would seem the most unlikely agents for the salvation of her characters: the sociopathic Misfit of "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," who unwittingly prompts the Grandmother to her one moment of grace through love, thus becoming the instrument ofher salvation; or the self-blinding of Wise Blood's Hazel Motes, which allows him to see as St. Paul saw and to bring that point oflight to his landlady. This is also her technique in the "Artificial Nigger," in which she uses a Logos 1:3 1997 52 Logos southerner's very racism as a vehicle for his salvation. In this story, God reaches out to the major character with his offering of saving grace through the agency of a plaster statue, but it is only because of his racism that this character is able to receive God's message. Thus, O'Connor communicates her point that no one, no matter in what spiritual darkness, is beyond the pale of salvation. From the beginning of the story, O'Connor takes pains to depict Mr. Head unsympathetically. Not only is he an ignoramus and vulgarian, but he is, in fact, so deluded as to think himself a savant. He sees himself as having "that calm understanding of life that makes him a suitable guide for the young."2 The narrator ironically describes his eyes as having a look of"ancient wisdom as if they belonged to one of the great guides of men"3: he compares Head with Virgil, and even with the angel Raphael. As Marshall Bruce Gentry has pointed out, "[sjuch elevated comparisons are easily understood as the narrator's satirical exaggeration of Mr. Head's too-high opinion of himself."4 Head feels that his "will and strong character" are written in his features, but the reader perceives his "long tube-like face with a long rounded open jaw and a long depressed nose"5 as anything but impressive. Similarly, Mr. Head deludes himself concerning his motives for the trip to Atlanta with his grandson Nelson.6 He thinks ofthe trip "in moral terms": "It was to be a lesson that the boy would never forget. He was to find out from it that he had no cause for pride merely because he had been born in a city. He was to find out that the city was not a great place."7 Yet the very next sentence belies Head's motives: Mr. Head, we are told, "meant him to see everything there is to see in a city so that he would be content to stay at home for the rest of his life." We realize that Head's true motivation lies in his own insecurity and his fear of losing Nelson. It is clear from the text that Head's relationship with his daughter had been less than good, and he fears losing his grandchild to the big city as he'd lost Nelson's mother. Character, Structure, and Meaning in O'Connor's "The Artificial Nigger"53 The description of Nelson, coming from the viewpoint of Head, reflects this insecurity, with Head's resulting suspicion ofthe child and his need to belittle in order to control. While critics have been quick to see the irony in the way Head sees himself, they fail to recognize a similar irony in his judgment of Nelson. Taking seriously the...