Flannery O'Connor's strong Catholic beliefs are apparent in most of her stories, but nowhere as dramatically illustrated as in "A Temple of the Holy Ghost". Critical analysis for this particular story, however, could not be found in the same abundance as for her other works. It merits more study than it has been given because it is, by far, one of Flannery O'Connor's most symbolically enriched, dramatic and interesting stories. The story is about a lonely, unattractive girl of twelve, who covered her shortcomings with pride, sass and arrogance. Her two convent-schooled cousins, Susan and Joanne visit for a weekend, and virtually ignored the child, preferring the attention of the neighborhood boys. Throughout the story, the child experienced many emotions including faith, acceptance of love, and repentance, all culminating in a spiritual revelation.

In the quiet solitude of her room the child dreamed about the things she would like to be someday.

She would have to be a saint because that was the occupation that included everything you could know; yet she knew she would never be a saint. She did not steal or murder, but she was a born liar and slothful and sassed her mother and was deliberately ugly to almost everybody. She was eaten up also with the sin of Pride, the worst one.

She considered her cousins' prettiness and need for love as signs of stupidity. She saw her own homeliness as the source of her smartness. As the story progresses, we are able to look into the emotional complexion of the child and see that she used her pride as a protective shield covering her loneliness and her need for love and attention.

The child's mother did not know what to do to entertain Joanne and Susan for the entire time, so the child made several malicious suggestions. The first was to have bald, fat and cheap Mr. Cheatham escort the girls. Mr. Cheatham was the gentleman caller of Miss Kirby, a prim spinster teacher living with the child and her mother as a boarder. The child's second suggestion was to have Alonzo Myers drive them around. Alonzo, a huge young man of eighteen who, "smoked or rather chewed a short black cigar, had a round sweaty chest that showed through the yellow nylon shirt he wore." The girls were, naturally, appalled by these suggestions. The child, however, was very happy--her malicious humor stung two objects at once: she caused Miss Kirby great embarrassment, and disappointed the girls about the coming weekend. The child did manage to make a workable suggestion advising her mother to ask two neighborhood boys to escort Joanne and Susan to the fair.

The caustic retributions of too much pride, a favorite topic of O'Connor's, can also be found in "The Artificial Nigger" when Mr. Head denied knowing his grandson Nelson in order to serve his own sense of pride, but he came to regret his decision. C. Hugh Holman in "Her Rue with a Difference" quotes O'Connor regarding how Mr. Head, "had never thought of himself a great sinner before but he saw that his true depravity had been hidden from him lest it caused him despair."¹ Both Mr. Head and the child in "A Temple of the Holy Ghost" realize the sinful nature of their pride: Mr. Head when he denied knowing Nelson because he did not want to be humiliated in an ugly street scene; and the child when she realized that she could never be a saint because she was filled with the sin of pride.

Irving Malin, in "Flannery O'Connor and the Grotesque", beautifully described O'Connor's belief that the sin of pride, "violates cosmic order. When a sinner is 'proud,' he disturbs 'the great chain of being'; he steps out of his spiritual domain and in the attempt to rise--to God's loftiness--falls into animalistic depths."²

Joanne and Susan took to calling each other Temple One and Temple Two. When asked why, the girls explained that Sister Perpetua had given a lecture on what to do if a young man should threaten their chastity. Sister Perpetua said that they were to say "Stop Sir! I am a Temple of the Holy Ghost." This Christian image pleased the Child. She thought that not only are her cousins, Miss Kirby and herself temples of the Holy Ghost, but even the Freak at the fair, the hermaphrodite, "this miserably defective creature as well, was the child of God and a Temple of the Holy Ghost."³

This freak at the fair with a strange name girls couldn't remember, said to the men in the audience, "I'm going to show you this and if you laugh God may strike you the same way. God made me thisaway and I ain't disputing His way. I'm going to show you because I got to make the best of hit." O'Connor used the hermaphrodite as a "mystery of God's unfathomable will for men and the almost greater mystery of the power of the afflicted believer to accept God's will on simple faith."⁴ The hermaphrodite was grotesquely afflicted but still a believer in the will of God. He believed that God dwelled in him.

Flannery O'Connor, herself, was afflicted with a crippling disease that forced her to spend many hours confined to bed and robbed her of the use of her legs, her mobility and ultimately, her life. In an interview with Betsy Lockridge, O'Connor said, "I can accept the universe as it is. I don't have to make up my own sense of values; I can apply to a judgment higher than my own. I'm not limited to what I personally feel or think. And I have a sense of personal responsibility; I believe that a person is always valuable and always responsible." O'Connor offered further testimony in The Habit of Being: "As near as I get to saying what purity is in this story is saying that it is an acceptance of what God wills for us and acceptance of our individual circumstances."⁵

O'Connor used the hermaphrodite to illustrate that The Holy Ghost or love of God dwells in each of us, whether pretty, ugly, rich, poor or anywhere in between. Even in the body of the hermaphrodite, a grotesque symbol of the unity of man and woman, a temple of God is a holy thing. The hermaphrodite knew that because God dwells in us, we are all reverent beings, and we should mutually treat each other with care, love and respect.

The child, her mother, and cousins returned to the convent in time for the benediction. The child rudely refused the welcome hug offered by the nun, but the nun ignored the child's coldness and hustled them into the chapel. "The child knelt down between her mother and the nun and they were well into the 'Tantum Ergo' before her ugly thoughts stopped and she began to realize she was in the presence of God." As they were leaving, the nun again hugged the child, nearly smothering her and smashing her face against the crucifix, but this time the child does not pull away.

There are a combination of images representing Biblical concepts here: the child seeking help from God, accepting the nun's hug, and the crucifix pressing roughly against her face.

Throughout the Bible, in both the Old and New Testaments, we learn that the Lord answers sincere prayers for help. In the book of Hosea, Hosea pleads, "your sin made you stumble and fall. Return to the Lord and let this prayer be your offering to him."⁶ The child had always prayed automatically; merely repeating, without feeling or emotions, words she had been taught. When the priest raised the Host, the Catholic symbol for the Body of Christ, the child felt a quietness grow within her. For the very first time, she began to pray earnestly for the Lord's help. That she entered the mass at the benediction is also symbolic, as the benediction is the last divine blessing offered at a mass. At last, the child allowed the Lord's glorious presence to calm her soul.

God's message to His children is that we must love one another. The child's embrace by the nun was "marked with the ultimate all inclusive symbol of love."⁷ In accepting that hug, the child allowed herself to be the recipient of the love offered by the nun. She realized that she, like her cousins, needs love and must be willing to give love in order to receive it. She also realized that her moral ugliness was not a badge of her superiority, but rather a barrier preventing from giving and receiving love

The crucifix is the Christian symbol of suffering and repentance. When Christ was crucified, he suffered for our sins. As the nun hugged the child, the crucifix smashed against her face, and at that moment, through pain of the crucifix against her cheek, the child suffered and repented for her personal sins.

In the final paragraph, on her way home, the setting sun was a huge red ball like an "elevated Host drenched in blood." O'Connor believed strongly in the Host as being the body and blood of Christ, and the image here is the setting sun as the son of God. For those who have experienced a form of revelation, a light is often an integral part of the experience: the Lord made His appearance to Moses in the form of fire, and as a blinding light to St. Paul. In the glow of the setting sun, the child experienced revelation in her newly found acceptance of love and repentance.

O'Connor similarly used the sun image several times in "The Displaced Person". A dramatic illustration occurred in a vision Mrs. Shortley had as she walked across the pasture.

Suddenly, while she watched, the sky folded back in two pieces like a curtain to a stage and a gigantic figure stood facing her. It was the color of the sun in the early afternoon, white-gold. It was of no definite shape, but there were fiery wheels with fierce dark eyes in the middle, spinning rapidly all around it, She was not able to tell if the figure was going forward or backward because its magnificence was so great. She shut her eyes in order to look at it and it turned blood-red and the wheels turn white. A voice, very resonant, said one word "Prophesy!"

Flannery O'Connor's stories are rich in religious symbolism, and each of her central characters are flawed with the sins of pride and envy. The child in "A Temple of the Holy Ghost" and the child in "A Circle in the Fire" could indeed be the same child, and Joy-Hulga of "Good Country People", the adult version. Each of these characters espouses the same indifference to God and to other people, however the child in "A Temple of the Holy Ghost" chose a different path when she became aware of her sins, and learned that God dwells within her when she reached out for and accepted His help.

Bibliography

1 Holman, C. Hugh. "Her Rue with a Difference." The Added Dimension: the Art and Mind of Flannery O'Connor. Ed. Melvin J. Friedman and Lewis A. Lawson. New York: Fordham University Press, 1966.

2 Malin, Irving. "Flannery O'Connor and the Grotesque." The Added Dimension: the Art and Mind of Flannery O'Connor. Ed. Melvin J. Friedman and Lewis A. Lawson. New York: Fordham University Press, 1966.

3 Stephens, Martha. A Question of Flannery O’Connor. New Orleans: Louisiana State University Press, 1973.

4 Lawson, Lewis A. "Collection of Statements." The Added Dimension: the Art and Mind of Flannery O'Connor. Ed. Melvin J. Friedman and Lewis A. Lawson. New York: Fordham University Press, 1966.

5 O'Connor, Flannery. The Habit of Being: The Letters of Flannery O’Connor. ed. Sally Fitzgerald. New York: Farrar, 1979.

6 The Good News Bible. "The Book of Hosea." Nashville: American Bible Society, 1976.

7 O'Connor, Flannery. The Habit of Being: The Letters of Flannery O’Connor. ed. Sally Fitzgerald. New York: Farrar, 1979.

Quotes from O'Connor's short stories were taken from A Good Man is Hard to Find. New York: Harcourt, 1977.