This may be a strange quote from a strange source, but what does it tell us about our human nature and the sin we own to put people aside if they are ugly or handicapped or weak?"I lay on my straw, but I could not sleep. I thought of the occurrences of the day. What chiefly struck me was the gentle manners of these people and I longed to join them, but dared not. I remember too well the treatment I had suffered the night before from the barbarous villagers, and resolved, whatever course of conduct I might hereafter think it right to pursue, that for the present I would remain quietly in my hovel, watching and endeavoring to discover the motives which influenced their actions....
"Every conversation of the cottagers now opened new wonders to me. While I listened to the instructions which Felix bestowed upon the Arabian, the strange system of human society was explained to me. I heard of the division of property, of immense wealth and squalid poverty, of rank, descent, and noble blood. The words induced me to turn to myself. I learned that the possessions most esteemed by your fellow-creatures were high and unsullied descent united with riches. A man might be respected with only one of these advantages, but, without either, he was considered, except in very rare instances, as a vagabond and a slave, doomed to waste his powers for the profits of the chosen few! And what was I? Of my creation and creator I was absolutely ignorant, but I knew that I possessed no money, no friends, no kind of property. I was, besides, endued with a figure hideously deformed and loathsome. I was not even the same nature as man. I was more agile than they and could subsist upon coarser diet. I bore the extremes of heat and cold with less injury to my frame. My stature far exceeded theirs. When I looked around, I saw and heard of none like me. Was I then a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled and whom all men disowned?"
- Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. Frankenstein. Scholastic Book Services, New York (Quote
from the Frankenstein "Monster", pgs. 126 & 139)
In Flannery O'Connor's short story, "Revelation", Mrs. Turpin is a woman who is a very large person with an even larger presence. She has a high opinion about herself which is very conceited. On the other hand, she has a strong, negative opinions about people, especially about those who are unlike her. She thinks the big girl sitting next to her in the doctor's room has terrible acne for her age and is thankful she doesn't have such troubles herself. She thinks the woman with "snuff-stained lips" needs a wash rag and some soap. She even holds a conversations in her head about a reoccurring dream:"Sometimes at night when she couldn't go to sleep, Mrs. Turpin would occupy herself with the question of who she would have chosen to be if she couldn't have been herself. If Jesus had said to her before he made her, 'There's only two place available for you. You can either be a nigger [sic] or white-trash,' what would she have said? 'Please, Jesus, please,' she would have said, 'just let me wait until there's another place available,' and he would have said, 'No, you have to go right now and I have only those two places so make up your mind.' She would have wiggled and squirmed and begged and pleaded but it would have been no use and finally she would have said, 'All right, make me a nigger [sic] then - but that don't mean a trashy one.'Later Mrs. Turpin leaves the doctor's waiting room with her husband, after being attacked by the acne-faced girl who seemed to know what she was thinking and didn't like it. Mrs. Turpin reflected on the incident, especially when the "ugly girl" called her an old wart hog. As she was attending to her own hogs, "licking her wounds" (so to speak) by trying to make herself feel better, she had another vision:"Until the sun slipped finally behind the tree line, Mrs. Turpin remained there with her gaze bent to [the pigs] as if she were absorbing some abysmal life-giving knowledge. At last she lifted her head. There was only a purple streak in the sky, cutting through a field of crimson and leading, like an extension of the highway, into the descending dusk. She raised her hands from the side of the pen in a gesture hieratic and profound. A visionary light settled in her eyes. She saw the streak as a vast swinging bridge extending upward from the earth through a field of living fire. Upon it a vast horde of souls were rumbling towards heaven. There were whole companies of white-trash, clean for the first time in their lives, and bands of black niggers [sic] in white robes, and battalions of freaks and lunatics [this is what she called the "ugly girl" after she was attacked] shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs. And bringing up the end of the procession was a tribe of people whom she recognized at once as those who, like herself and Claud [her husband], had always had a little of everything and the God-given wit to use it right. She leaned forward to observe them closer. They were marching behind the others with great dignity, accountable as they had always been for good order and common sense and respectable behavior. They alone were on key. Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burned away. She lowered her hands and gripped the rail of the hog pen, her eyes small and fixed unblinkingly on what lay ahead. In a moment the vision faded but she remained where she was, immobile."At length she got down and turned off the faucet and made her slow way on the darkening path to the house. In the woods around her the invisible crickets choruses had struck up, but what she heard were the voices of the souls climbing upward into the starry field and shouting hallelujah."
- Flannery O'Connor, The Complete Stories. The Noonday Press, New York, 1991. (Quotes
come from pgs. 491 & 508-509)
The scene is a courtroom in a southern town in Alabama during the 1950's. A black man, Tom Robinson, is on trial for the beating and raping of Mayella Violet Ewell, a white girl. The main floor of the court is filled with white folk, and the surrounding balcony above is filled with black folk. The jury, of course, is white. Mr. Robinson's lawyer is Atticus Finch - he did a fine job with the case at hand, proving Tom didn't hurt the girl but that her father, Mr. Ewell, was more likely to be the culprit. The jury goes out to deliberate over the verdict. Jem and Jean Louise Finch are in the balcony with the black folk and their religious leader Reverend Sykes, watching in anticipation to see what will happen. Jean Louise tells it like this:"... Mr. Tate said, 'This court will come to order,' in a voice that rang with authority, and the heads below us jerked up. Mr. Tate left the room and returned with Tom Robinson. He steered Tom in his place beside Atticus, and stood there. Judge Taylor had roused himself to sudden alertness and was sitting up straight, looking at the empty jury box...
"A jury never looks at a defendant it has convicted, and when this jury came in, not one of them looked at Tom Robinson. The foreman handed a piece of paper to Mr. Tate who handed it to the clerk who handed it to the judge..... I shut my eyes. Judge Taylor was polling the jury: 'Guilty... guilty... guilty... guilty...' I peeked at Jem: his hands were white from gripping the balcony rail, and his shoulders jerked as if each 'guilty' was a separate stab between them.
"Judge Taylor was saying something. His gavel was in his fist, but he wasn't using it. Dimly, I saw Atticus pushing papers from the table into his briefcase. He snapped it shut, went to the court reporter and said something, nodded to Mr. Gilmer, and then went to Tom Robinson and whispered something to him. Atticus put his hand on Tom's shoulder as he whispered. Atticus took his coat off the back of his chair and pulled it over his shoulder. Then he left the courtroom, but not by his usual exit. He must have wanted to go home the short way, because he walked quickly down the middle aisle toward the south exit. I followed the top of his head as he made his way to the door. He did not look up.
"Someone was pushing me, but I was reluctant to take my eyes from the people below us, and from the image of Atticus's lonely walk down the aisle.
"'Miss Jean Louise?' I looked around. They were standing. All around us and in the balcony on the opposite wall, the Negroes were getting to their feet. Reverend Sykes's voice was as distant as Judge Taylor's:
"'Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your father's passin'.'"
- Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird. J.B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, 1960.
(pgs. 223-224)