Flannery O’Connor (1925-1962) was a preeminent writer in the American South. O’Connor drew her stories from her rural Georgian experiences and her Roman Catholic faith. She wrote about morality and ethics in the post antebellum South. O’Connor’s Southern Gothic writing style involves deeply flawed characters engaged in sinister plots. In O’Connor’s A Good Man is Hard to Find comprised of a collection of short stories, she writes an interesting short story titled A Circle In The Fire. The story parallels the Book of Daniel and interestingly parallels the 2016 Presidential Election.
By replacing the characters in A Circle In the Fire with the cast of the 2016 election candidates and pundits, we find O’Connor’s short story traces this election’s story. Focusing on the protagonist Mrs. Cope (played by Mrs. Clinton) and her plantation (the Democrat Blue Wall), O’Connor paints Mrs. Cope as a paranoid and secretive woman scared of losing control of her farm (her power) and is obsessed in guarding her privacy (her home email server). She believes she has complete control of her plantation and the people working on it. Like the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar, Mrs. Cope demands her subordinates to idolize and worship her. Her friend and assistant, Mrs. Pinchard (played by Huma Abedin) does her best to make Mrs. Cope comfortable and shield her from the real world. While working with Mrs. Cope each day on the farm, Mrs. Pinchard shares tragic stories (of regular Americans). Mrs. Cope is interested in these misfortunes because they have not befallen her or her farm. She has servants (played by Bernie Sanders and a few Millennials) that are picked on by Mrs. Cope for doing their work wrong because they are lazy and stupid.
One day, three teenage boys show up on the farm and trespass onto the plantation. The boys names are Garfield Smith (played by Newt Gingrich), W.T. Harper (played by Rudy Guiliani), and their leader Powel Boyd (played by Donald Trump). Powel is wild and an unpredictable outsider who uses foul language, smokes cigarettes, and has little respect for the elite plantation structure. Powel is on the farm to rekindle something lost from his idyllic childhood (Making America Great Again). Mrs. Cope doesn’t want this basket full of deplorables on her farm, but she allows them to stay even when they prove too much for her to control. She offers them sandwiches and drinks, but similar to the Book of Daniel 1:11-13, the boys refuse it because Mrs. Cope wants them to submit to her orders. Instead, the boys walk outside to the barn and steal milk. Mrs. Cope is concerned their cigarette smoking will start a fire since the farm has suffered a summer long drought. Night falls and the boys want to go to sleep in the barn, but Mrs. Cope insists they sleep in the field due to her fear that they will burn down the barn. The following day, the boys wake up and defy Mrs. Cope by riding her horses and letting the bull loose. Later in the afternoon, Mrs. Cope sees the boys throwing rocks at her mailbox and tells them she is going to call the police. The boys disappear, but as night falls Mrs. Cope smells smoke and sees the forest on her property is on fire. As she gets her servants, she approaches the fire and hears the boys laughter dancing in the fiery furnace of her forest. As fire engulfs the property, Mrs. Cope’s biggest fears have been realized. Her fortress was more fragile than she thought and her control is gone.
For Mrs. Clinton, the main stream media, Wall Street, the Washington DC elites, Hollywood, academia, Democrats, and the GOP establishment; the future will no longer be the same. Many will be fired and replaced. This election, the outsider broke through the farm gates and burned the establishment down. However, there is a technique in forest management called a controlled burn which is used when a forest is lit on fire in order to save it. Moving forward, Donald Trump has the match in his hands and has the opportunity to control burn the Washington establishment to try to save it. It should be all our hope that President Trump can manage and steward the forest we call America.
Joseph is a senior majoring in accounting and business administration with a minor in economics.