1. James Baldwin 1924-1987 Documentary Excerpt Baldwin Speaks
Grew up in poverty, one of 9 children, in Harlem of the early 20th c.
One of America’s greatest writers, internationally acclaimed very early in his career.
Influenced by the passionate “fire and brimstone” preaching of his step father, James underwent a religious conversion as a teenager and began to preach himself.
Author James Baldwin is shown on a Harlem street in New York City, June 3, (AP Photo/stf)

2. Moved to Paris, where he spent most of his life
Baldwin was taught by Countee Cullen at Frederick Douglas public school in Harlem
Later he was advised and helped by Richard Wright, author of Native Son.
Moved to Paris, where he spent most of his life
Returned to America to work in the Civil Rights movement
Passionate speaker and activist
PDF Sonny's Blues
American Masters PBS
Baldwin Debates William F. Buckley
Civil Rights Timeline

3. In his 1953 novel Go Tell It On the Mountain, he explores feelings of alienation. The protagonist of this novel undergoes a religious conversion, like Baldwin himself. He uses religion as a weapon against his cruel stepfather. John Grimes, the protagonist also grapples with homosexual leanings. Baldwin explores homosexuality explicitly in his second novel Giovanni’s Room.

4. “Sonny’s Blues” 1957 Literary Form- author’s choices Context
First person narrator, unnamed, Sonny’s brother
Non-linear narrative style: jumbling of time, flashbacks, slowing of time.
Use of metaphor and sensory imagery
Characterization: male vs. female characters, symbolic characters, fully developed characters (?)
Conflict/growth: exterior conflicts vs. interior conflict/growth
Context
Harlem of the 1950’s
Poverty, changes in housing: the beginning of high rise housing projects
Importance of the Jazz scene, differences between the old Jazz (“that old time down home crap”) Louis Armstrong
and the new- Charlie Parker and Dizzy Live in Belgium Coltrane "cleaner" version
Poet Amari Baraka excerpt "Jazz and the White Critic"
Importance of street preachers, religion as a means of escape
Drug culture, especially heroin, also a means of escape
Racial violence, Civil Rights
Military service as a “way out.”
UC DAVIS Course good outline of themes and context

5. Flannery O’Connor
Southern writer of short stories and novels in the “Southern Gothic” style, which included regional setting (rural Georgia) and “grotesque” characters. A devout Catholic, her stories examined ethics and morality. Born in Savannah, GA very near the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist. Her father died of Lupus, which she later contracted. She spent some time in New York, after a successful college career. Her final days were with her mother in Milledgeville, GA. Where she wrote and tended her pea cocks.

6. Catholic Orthodoxy
Flannery O'Conner Reading "A Good Man is Hard to Find“ PDF "The Life You Save may be Your Own" O’Connor believed that a writer’s function could only be stated in terms of religion. I see from the standpoint of Christian orthodoxy. This means that for me the meaning of life is centered in our Redemption by Christ and what I see in the world I see in its relation to that. She claimed that readers have had the “moral sense” bread out of them, like chickens bread to produce more white meat. (Lamar Nisly, Impossible to Say: Representing Religious Mystery in Fiction… 2002)

7. “The Life You Save may be Your Own” 1955
PBS
Characters
Her protagonists have well-established views of themselves, of human nature, and of the world. They attempt to order their lives in accordance with their views of the world. The pattern of action in the stories moves toward a moment in which the main characters recognize the falseness of their views. These views and their consequent actions are presented within the context of Christianity. Characters represent flawed interpretations of the nature of God and the world.
Use of characters who embody either “evil” or “goodness” set in opposition to one another.
The absurdity, extreme acts and generally mis-guided and “freakish” behavior of characters place them in the category of “grotesques” common in Southern Fiction of the 20th c.
Wise Blood
Wise Blood

8. Grotesques Flannery on the Grotesque
When we look at a good deal of serious modern fiction, and particularly Southern fiction, we find this quality about it that is generally described, in a pejorative sense, as grotesque. Of course, I have found that anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the Northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic. But for this occasion, we may leave such misapplications aside and consider the kind of fiction that may be called grotesque with good reason, because of a directed intention that way on the part of the author. In these grotesque works, we find that the writer has made alive some experience which we are not accustomed to observe every day, or which the ordinary man may never experience in his ordinary life. We find that connections which we would expect in the customary kind of realism have been ignored, that there are strange skips and gaps which anyone trying to describe manners and customs would certainly not have left. Yet the characters have an inner coherence, if not always a coherence to their social framework. Their fictional qualities lean away from typical social patterns, toward mystery and the unexpected. It is this kind of realism that I want to consider.

9. Point of View and Narrative Structure
Setting and context
Most of O’Connor’s stories are set in the rural south. Isolated individuals or families, outside the major cultural trends of an increasingly secular America. O’Connor was writing during the 50’s and 60’s – the beginning many movements in America that challenged the traditions of religious up bringing and conventional morality. Use of imagery in the description of the landscape often carries with it religious symbolism.
Point of View and Narrative Structure
Told in the 3rd person- a narrator who is external, not in the story.
In “The Life You Save” the narrator does not tell the story from the perspective of a single character as in a true 3rd person singular or “limited omniscient,” but remains on the outside.
Types of 3rd person narrators:
3rd person singular (through the mind and/or experiences of a single character)
3rd person omniscient (the narrator may take the view point of any or all characters, or stand outside the characters)
Plots are usually straightforward: told in the sequence of events as they actually happen, without shifts in time or large gaps.