You ever wonder where a masterpiece actually starts? For Flannery O’Connor, it didn’t start with a bang or a freakish prophet in the woods. It started with a potted plant. Specifically, a sickly pink geranium sitting on a windowsill in New York City.
The Geranium was O’Connor’s first published story. She wrote it in 1946 while she was still a student at the University of Iowa. Most people skip over it to get to the "good stuff" like A Good Man is Hard to Find, but that’s a mistake. Honestly, if you want to understand why O’Connor became the queen of the Southern Gothic, you have to look at this specific, awkward, and deeply uncomfortable story. It’s the DNA of everything she did later.
It’s about Old Dudley. He’s an elderly Southerner who has been uprooted and moved to a cramped apartment in New York City to live with his daughter. He hates it. He spends his days waiting for a neighbor across the alley to put a geranium out on the windowsill. That’s his only connection to anything resembling life. It's a small story, but the implications are huge.
What Really Happened with The Geranium and Why It Haunts Her Legacy
Here’s the thing: O’Connor was obsessed with this story. She didn't just write it and move on. She rewrote it three different times over the course of her life. It evolved into "An Exile in the East," then "Getting Home," and finally, right before she died in 1964, it became "Judgement Day."
That’s eighteen years of chewing on the same bone.
Why? Because The Geranium captures the exact moment O'Connor realized that "home" isn't just a place—it's a spiritual condition. Old Dudley isn't just a cranky old man; he’s a man who has lost his place in the social hierarchy and, by extension, his sense of self. In the South, he knew who he was. In New York, he’s just another body in a hallway.
The story is raw. It lacks the polish of her later work, but that’s why it’s so vital. You can see her wrestling with race, displacement, and the crushing weight of urban life. When Dudley encounters a Black neighbor in the hallway who treats him with a casual, neighborly equality, Dudley has a total internal collapse. He can’t handle a world that doesn't recognize his imagined superiority.
O'Connor doesn't give him an easy out. She never does.
The New York Displacement
It’s kind of funny thinking about O’Connor in New York. She was this quiet, sharp-tongued girl from Georgia suddenly dropped into the middle of the intellectual elite. The Geranium reflects that culture shock.
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The city in the story is cold. It’s gray. The daughter is well-meaning but totally disconnected from her father's soul. She treats him like a piece of furniture that needs to be moved around. This is a recurring theme in O'Connor's world: the way "charity" can actually be a form of cruelty.
When you read the descriptions of the apartment, you feel the walls closing in.
"The room was big enough, but it was too high. It was like living in a jar."
That’s a classic O’Connor line. Simple, weird, and perfectly descriptive of a specific kind of misery.
Why the Geranium Itself Matters
The plant is a pathetic symbol. It’s not a grand oak tree or a lush garden. It’s a "precarious" thing. Dudley watches it because it’s the only thing in his view that feels organic, even though it’s dying.
When the neighbor finally drops the plant and it smashes on the ground, the story ends. There’s no resolution. No big speech. Just a dead plant and a man realizing he’s never going back to the life he knew. It’s brutal.
Actually, it’s beyond brutal. It’s O’Connor finding her voice—the voice that says the world is broken and you probably aren't going to fix it.
Breaking Down the Evolution into Judgement Day
If you compare The Geranium to "Judgement Day," the differences are wild. In the original 1946 version, Dudley is mostly just sad and confused. By the time O’Connor reworked it into "Judgement Day" on her deathbed, the stakes were much higher.
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The protagonist in the final version, Tanner, is more aggressive. The racial tensions are sharper. The violence is more explicit.
It shows how O'Connor's view of the world darkened as she got older and sicker. She went from writing about a man who lost his plant to writing about a man who wanted his dead body shipped back to Georgia in a coffin just to make a point.
- The Geranium (1946): Focused on nostalgia and the loneliness of the city. It’s a student work, but a brilliant one.
- Intermediate Drafts: She experimented with different endings, trying to find the right level of "shock."
- Judgement Day (1964): The ultimate version. It’s more theological. It’s about the soul's desperate need to be "placed" before the end.
Most scholars, like Sally Fitzgerald (who was a close friend of O'Connor), point out that O'Connor's return to this story at the end of her life was an act of "closing the circle." She started with Dudley, and she ended with him.
Flannery O'Connor The Geranium: The Misconceptions
People often think this story is just a "practice run." That’s wrong.
Some critics argue that The Geranium is too sentimental compared to her later work. They see the crying Dudley as "soft." But if you look closer, the "softness" is actually a trap. O'Connor is showing how Dudley’s sentimentality is tied to a racist past that he can't let go of. He misses the South not because it was "good," but because he was "important" there.
By exposing that, O'Connor is doing something much more sophisticated than a standard "fish out of water" story.
Also, let's talk about the race element. Some readers get uncomfortable with the language and the attitudes in the story. You should be. O'Connor isn't endorsing Dudley's views; she's dissecting them. She’s showing how white supremacy rots the person holding onto it, leaving them unable to function in a changing world.
It’s not a "nice" story. It’s an autopsy.
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The Technical Genius of a 21-Year-Old
Think about being 21. Most people are writing bad poetry about their exes. O'Connor was writing about the metaphysical displacement of the Southern male ego.
The pacing is strange. It lingers on Dudley’s memories—fishing with his friend Rabie—and then snaps back to the cold reality of a New York apartment. This "rubber-banding" of the narrative creates a sense of vertigo. You feel as disoriented as Dudley does.
She also uses the "double" technique. Dudley has a Black friend back home (Rabie) whom he thinks he understands. Then he meets the Black neighbor in New York who he definitely doesn't understand. The contrast between these two figures is how O'Connor forces the reader to see Dudley’s blindness.
It’s subtle. It’s smart. And she did it in her first try.
Actionable Insights for Reading (and Writing) Like O'Connor
If you're a student of literature or just a fan, there are a few things you can take away from The Geranium that apply to your own life or work.
Watch the details, not the big picture. O'Connor didn't start with "The Concept of Alienation." She started with a man who couldn't find his socks and a pink plant. If you want to communicate a big idea, find a small, physical object to anchor it.
Don't be afraid to repeat yourself. The fact that she wrote this story four times tells you that it’s okay to not get it right the first time. Sometimes a story needs twenty years to ferment. If a theme keeps coming back to you, don't ignore it. Explore it until it’s dead.
Look for the "moment of grace" (or the lack of it). In O'Connor's world, grace usually arrives like a car crash. In The Geranium, Dudley is offered a moment of connection with his neighbor, and he rejects it. He chooses his pride over human connection. Watch for those moments in your own life—the small crossroads where you choose to be open or to stay closed.
Practical Next Steps for Further Exploration:
- Read the bookends: Read The Geranium (found in The Complete Stories) and then immediately read "Judgement Day." Observe how the prose tightens and the themes darken.
- Check the letters: Look into The Habit of Being, the collection of O'Connor's letters. She mentions her early writing process and her struggles with her Iowa years.
- Map the geography: Notice the specific "New York" markers O'Connor uses. It’s an outsider’s view of the city. If you’re a writer, try describing a famous city from the perspective of someone who hates everything about it.
- Research the "Southern Agrarians": To understand why Dudley misses his "old home" so much, look into the social movements O’Connor was reacting to. It adds a whole new layer to the conflict.
The geranium eventually falls. The pot breaks. The dirt gets on the floor. It’s messy, it’s loud, and it’s exactly what Flannery O’Connor wanted us to see. Life isn't a tidy garden; it's a fragile plant in a precarious place, just waiting for the wind to blow.