connection between Flannery O'Connor's short stort Good Country People and Guy Delisle's graphic novel Pyongyang

I’ll be presenting an exposé on Good Country People written by Flannery O’Connor and Pyongyang by Guy Delisle. I’ve chosen these specific pieces because I was able to find myriad of connections on how these two authors exhibit their view points and attitudes towards a particular community or a group of people. First, I would like to start out by introducing the authors, explaining on how these authors share a similar view on their environments, where O’Connor delineates the characteristics of humans in general, whereas Delisle focuses the features of North Korean government and people.

Let me introduce the author of Pyongyang, Guy Delisle: Renown for its atrocious totalitarian Stalinist dictatorship, North Korea is recognized as one of the most ostracized and intriguing country in the world today. Continuous sequences of force and protection from the rest of the world have also caused the country to jeopardize itself to be one of the poorest also. When North Korea began to open up a little to foreign investment, cartoonist Guy Delisle was lucky enough to have a chance to visit Pyongyang on a work visa for a French film animation company, becoming one of the few foreigners to experience the current conditions in an artificial showcase city. With an unauthorized radio and a book of 1984 written by George Orwell, Delisle was able explore the country with his translator and a guide monitoring and limiting his activities. Although he started his journey seeing the buildings, people and propaganda of leaders Kim Il-Sung and his son Kim Jong-Il with an apathetic manner, Delisle was able to observe more than was intended of the culture and lives of the few North Koreans he encountered. He took advantage of the frustration and astonishment and used to record everything as the basis of this remarkable graphic novel. Pyongyang is an informative, personal and accessible look at an enigmatic country. Delisle's simple but expressive art worked well with his account, humanizing the few North Koreans he gets to know and facilitating digressions into North Korean history and various bizarre happenings.

Rather than conveying his thoughts into fancier visual devices, Delisle uses a straightforward approach that depicts the mundane absurdities he faced every day. The gray tones and unembellished drawings reflect the grim drabness of a totalitarian society. Although throughout the novel Delisle exhibits underestimation, frustration, and apathy towards everything throughout his trip, he maintained empathy. Viewing an eight-year-old accordion prodigy's robotic concert performance, he thought, "It's all so cold . . and sad. I could cry."

Moving on to O’Connor, the author of Good Country People: In 1951, O’Connor was diagnosed with lupus that had killed her father. She went on, she had written two novels and thirty-two short stories, winning awards and acclaim, speaking on tours whenever her health allowed her to; but she spent most of her time on the family farm, with her mother. She died of lupus on August 3rd, 1964 at the age of thirty-nine. The writing of Flannery O'Connor can seem cold and dispassionate, as well as almost absurdly stark and violent. She writes in a Southern Gothic style and relying heavily on regional settings and grotesque characters. Her short stories routinely end in horrendous, or, at the very least, a character's emotional devastation. In reality, her writing is filled with meaning and symbolism, hidden in plain sight beneath a narrative style. In this way, her writing is esoteric, and didactic at the same time containing knowledge that is hidden to all but those who have been instructed as to how and where to look for it. Flannery O'Connor is a Christian writer and she achieves what few Christian writers have ever achieved: a type of writing that affects both literary and the religious grounds, and succeeds in doing justice to both. These are some of the insights she exhibits in her stories: bitterness, a belief in grace as something devastating to the recipient, a concept of salvation, and violence as a force for good; stories that show the way by elucidating the worst of paths.

Now, I would like to share explaining on how these authors share a similar view on their environments in their texts. Delisle and O’Connor were afraid if people aren’t able to find their writing or message controversial. Flannery says, “I am not afraid that the book will be controversial, I'm afraid it will not be controversial,” touching on topics related to race, poverty, hypocrisy, and more to exhibit the failures of the world in the twentieth century. Also, Delisle was as controversial as O’Connor where he took risks to bring unauthorized books, criticize many of the traits of the communist influence on the people, and to attempt to help out the people around him, for example, Guy suggested his translator to read George Orwell’s 1984 when he knows that it would put his translator would be in jeopardy if he were to be caught. Later, the translator returns the book, looking puzzled and scared, saying how he didn’t enjoy the book. In one of the interviews, Delisle clearly stated that he wouldn’t go back to North Korea because he has caused too much trouble already.

Now I’m going to share the authors’ views through the stories. Good Country People is a short story by Flannery O’Connor, illustrating the life of Hulga Hopewell and how her wooden leg is stolen. Throughout the story, Hulga feels sorry for herself because she has lost her leg, wears glasses, and has a heart condition; however, she seems to place herself above the rest of society because of her education. Hulga searches for ways to be misunderstood by her family and claims to believe in nothing. She even thinks she is too ugly to be called the happy name of Joy, so she legally changes it to Hulga. While the surface level of “Good Country People” conveys the story of how Hulga’s wooden leg was stolen by Manley, if we penetrate deeper, we discover that the wooden leg represents Hulga’s faith and pride. North Korea has great connections with Joy-Hulga. Although these authors and stories aren’t necessarily looking at the same point, it is quite interesting how these two looks quite connected when they are juxtaposed.

North Korea too, has many flaws like Joy-Hulga. They have a lunatic as their leader who is leading his own people to devastation, and titled as one of the most dangerous, poorest, and pitiful country in the world. Because of the system the people are living in, they are used to blaming on themselves when things happen out of their control. They think very low of themselves and put their leader in a high position. However, because of the continuous indoctrination, they have a pride where they believe that they are well educated and better off than other country, especially South Korea. They are constantly “educated” in a way that leads them to corruption. Just as Joy Hulga believes in nothing, but her own philosophy, North Koreans also depend on their own philosophy, Juche. Even if both Joy Hulga and North Korea are atheists, they decide to believe in at least certain things based on backgrounds, environments and situations. Because the people are so soaked into the ideology, it would bring a devastated effect on the people if they were to be separated from Juche. Just as Joy-Hulga was deceived by Many Pointer and lost her artificial leg, people in North Korea would be lost and devastated by the truth that would be exposed and inundated by the changes they have to accept.

Hulga also bases her pride in her artificial leg. She wraps her entire self into the leg and allows it to become a private obsession, never allowing anyone to touch it, taking care of it in private. The leg that used to cause Hulga shame ironically becomes a source of self-assurance. While Hulga seems superior and appears to place all self-importance solely on her intelligence, on closer examination, Hulga actually hides her pride in her leg. North Koreans lives in the ideology of Juche and breath through the pride and respect they have for their country. It is their obsession to keep the belief as sacred as possible and spread the “truth” to everyone.

Manly Pointer, who approaches the townspeople with a specific attention considering them as just ordinary “Good Country People, and meets Joy-Hulga as his target to accomplish his satisfaction. At first Manly Pointer demonstrated himself as an innocent Bible seller, who wanted to share the gospel with others and fell in love with a girl who he wanted to share everything with her. After he gained Joy-Hulga’s faith and words that she loves him by force, he was successful in revealing who he really was and stealing Hulga’s leg. With the leg he took, he ran a ways with great joy and leaved Hulga behind without looking back. Now turning our story to Pyongyang, we can easily make a solid connection between Manly Pointer and Kim Jung Ill. Kim Jung Ill first approaches the people with numerous amounts of propaganda and his feign, conditional “affection” towards the country. He attempts to use his people as much as possible in order to gain everything he wanted to fill up his satisfaction. Even if he had received people’s trust and forced affection, he didn’t care and was successful in carrying out his plans for several years. Time to times, he reveals his true self, as another “Manly Pointer” and takes away people’s souls and identity as human beings in this world. Innocent civilians are killed and persecuted mercilessly by an evil maniac who just won’t stop his scheme even till he’s on the edge of his life.

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North Korean Propaganda

The faces of the people are immediately noticeable in many of the propaganda posters because they are abnormally content, when the faces of other North Koreans seem to be stoic throughout the book. They look courageously determined with their mouths wide opened and their arms stretched out sky high. The contrast of colors between the poster and the background also interprets the irony of the poster because the poster looks too auspicious compared to the mood behind the poster. This exhibits the reality of the country forcefully attempting to brighten up the people by encouraging hollow hope that the government has the potential to grow as a great nation.

One can specifically acknowledge that the government desires for an extensive industrial power, by looking at the man holding up a hammer in his hand. This instantly reminded me of the hammer and sickle in the flag of the Soviet Union, which is a part of communist symbolism. It features a hammer superimposed on a sickle, or vice versa. These two tools are symbols of the industrial proletariet and the peasantry; placing them together symbolizes the unity between industrial and agricultural workers. This emblem was made during the Bolshevik Revolution. So this person demonstrates two solid ideas: the representation of the communist government and promotion for further industrial development. This is shown not only on the person, but also in the background of the poster. The missiles are drawn in the back to portray the power of the country with an ability to threaten others with their “advanced” technology. North Korea has been using their “undefeatable” missiles to forewarn others to send aids, but the weapon wasn’t successful at all during their numerous trials to attack Alaska and Japan. Recently, one of their representative missile, Dae-Po-Dong, didn’t quite make all the way through the South and plunged into the East Sea. This intimidated both South Korea and Japan incase of a serious warfare. Also, the tall buildings behind were very ironic because it was rare to see any skyscrapers in the book except building frequently used by foreigners such as UN and NGOs. All of these show the country’s ambition to grow more as a leading industrial nation that can be petrifying to others.

The missiles also represent the military power that the country is continuously patronizing; it is not hard to search pictures of pixels of North Korean soldiers on any sites available. As soon as one sees the pictures, one will easily recognize North Korea to be in the second place of Nazis, organizing brainwashed soldiers for a single individual.

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putting myself in the shoes of a North Korean

It was very cold that night. Actually, it was colder than any other winters I’ve gone through my whole entire life. Amidst of all the wailing behind my back, my eyes were focused on the face of my brother’s bloody face. He was down on the ground surrounded by men with rifles in their hands and with stoic looks upon their faces as if they were so used to this kind of act. I saw my brother’s eyes fixed on my parents who were struggling to liberate themselves from the hands of the soldiers roughly pulling them back from approaching my brother.

All of my family members were too fragile to rebel against any of the well-trained combatants and I just sat there on the ground without any thoughts in my head. I tried to lower my body to directly look into my brother’s eyes, wishing to at least remind him that everything would be okay and that the Sky will protect him no matter what happens. At that moment, my brother broke the havoc shouting hysterically, “We are not made to be your puppets. Why do you want us to believe in your truth when the real deal is outside of this country? Can’t you see the children shoving dirt into their mouths? Can’t you see the brain-washed teenagers who are supposed to be having dreams on their own? You idiots! Blind fools! You…!” Before he could even finish his last sentence, the bullet spilt through the air and stroked the center of his heart. It was the fastest way to shut his mouth. The revolution he wanted to bring faded immediately with the sound of his heart beat. As his body was dragged by two soldiers towards the truck, his unclosed eyes were harboring enmity towards the socialist government and were also asking me to continue to follow his footsteps for freedom.

The death of Kim Il Sung in 1994 made the situation even worse. Food production decreased as Russia and China stopped supporting aids and surpluses to our country. All the provisions we did receive landed in the pockets of the generals and government associates. Kim Jung Il, his son, told us that it was a punishment from the heavens for not respecting Kim Il Sung “our One”, well enough from the beginning of his reign. They encouraged us that all of the haardships would be eradicated after three years. But it never happened. The theory of socioeconomic structure and the establishment of a classless society were great, but they were never efficiently demonstrated in reality. Everyone became so egotistic to the point where they only cared about themselves.

Neither the government nor peace was their priority. People’s main goal was solely on food to alleviate the hunger of their children. Three million civilians starved to death in four years after Kim Il Sung’s death and everything rapidly deteriorated. Everyone scattered to look for money making jobs and I wasn’t able to see my parents for four years. It was a pain for me to suppress my nostalgia; wondering how my family would bear the torture of the cold weather and dearth of supplies. One day, I received a mail from a neighbor that my parents had passed away. As I got on the bus, I calmed myself to regain composure, but it was impossible when I saw my parents’ bodies loaded on the truck with other seventeen corpses who had died from extreme hunger. The officer told me to find my parents among the other bodies, but the pungent smell was too strong that it made me vomit continuously. However, it wasn’t the odor that hindered my approach, it was the wide-opened eyes and blue faces of the corpses that made it so hard to manage my emotion of guilt and fear. I reluctantly gave up on finding my parents and had no choice but to back down.

I had to leave this place; it wasn’t a home, it was hell. My head geared towards the South where the government constantly told us that it was even more difficult to live. If the south is far worse than this place, then I would rather die for the sake of myself living in such corrupted world where a human being is more insignificant than a cockroach. There was a rumor that if we broke into the South Korean embassy in Thailand, then a flight to South Korea was guaranteed. However, the trip itself seemed to be impossible because it would be an arduous mission where a group of people have to swim across the Du-Man River, which is packed with armed security. After that you would have to look for a ride to get across and into China. “God, help me get through, in your way. I have lost everything. I have nothing. I am nothing. Show me another way to serve you. I don’t blame you for my family’s death, because I know it has helped me to turn myself to you. Your touch has worked successfully; now, please clear all the hindrances. Let the water of Du-Man cleanse me all of my transgression and the soil of a new land to lead me into the light.” I prayed.

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