Flannery O'Connor: Ms. Meanness

That Springsteen was heavily influenced by the stories of Southern Irish Catholic writer Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964) is no secret. To anyone familiar with her fiction, that the tone of Nebraska is so utterly dark as a result is no surprise.
Springsteen cites her direct influence on the album three seperate times (Marsh, 335; Songs, 136; Percy/ ed. Skinner Sawyer, 307). In each statement he lucidly points out different dimensions of her writing that in large part accounted for the stripped down, dark, and cruel fillaments that make up this seemingly 'outta left field' album. However, upon closer inspection, it may be that the "lower-class Catholic guilt" (Marsh, 335) that fueled O'Connor's fiction sparked within Bruce the need to reevaluate some of the more positive imagery that gained him popularity with Born To Run andthus allowing himself to go deeper into the darkness he experimented with in a song like "The River", the exact location (and title of the story) where O'Connor depicts a five year old boy to drown himself in a misguided attempt at transcendance.

The lack of understanding inherent in childhood is the first of four major connections that can be made between these two writers. Bruce claimed that, "the songs on Nebrasksa are connected to my childhood more than any other record I'd made" and "I often wrote from a child's point of view" (Songs, 136-137). Although O'Connor never writes in the first person with a child narrating as Springsteen does in "Used Cars", she does explore what it means to be a child in a world that does not lend itself to much coherent understanding, even for adults.
In her first novel Wise Blood (1949) a young boy named Enoch Emery lives in a world of confusion along side a vicious and nihilistic man named Haze Motes. All Enoch does know is that his blood is the answer to unknown questions, but other than that, "He was not a foolhardy boy who took chances on the meanings of things. For the time, he knew that what he didn't know was what mattered" (73). Enoch's lack of understanding can be somewhat humorous at times, especially set against the knowledgable cruelty of Haze. However, in O'Connor's story "The River", five year old Harry mistakes the riverside preacher's metaphorical language of baptism as a literal route of escape from his neglectful parents. He drowns in the river as he attempts to swim to the Kingdom of God but, "since he was moving quickly he knew he was getting somewhere" (52).
Although "Mansion on the Hill" and "My Father's House" are the products of the memory or dream of a child, it is in "Used Cars" where Springsteen allows a child to sing. Through this technique the listener/reader is given the clearest glimpse into what it means to see a dark world with the faith of a child. *** anything else would be my song entry... ? *****

In Songs, Sprinsgteen said he "wanted the blood on [Nebraska] to feel destined and fateful" (138). The concept that blood is somehow tied up with destiny or even such a scarry word as Providence comes directly out of Wise Blood. Enoch is convinced that the world holds great possibilities for him. "He knew something was going to happen to him. His blood stopped beating" (55), but he "never nagged his blood to tell him anything until it was ready" waiting for it to "shout some order at him" (75). In truth, Enoch is just a plain and lonely boy following around the worst guide looking for answers that don't exist in Any blood.
The only song that references blood on the album is "Highway Patrolman". Blood first appears as a positive image of brotherly communion as Joe and Frank laugh and drink because "nothin' feels better than blood on blood". It is a strange phrase to describe brotherly affection, as if they are inextricably tied to the actions of the other. The next time we see blood in the song it is coming from the head of a kid Frank had injured. It is the spilling of this blood that leads to the inevitable closure of the fateful line "Frankie ain't no good" that separates Joe from his brother and his intergrity. Like so many characters on the album, Joe is left in need of cleansing, but the last note is played with Joe utterly alone.

Being products of the Catholic Tradition, both O'Connor and Springsteen were keenly aware that there was one man's blood that was supposed to be able to clean or atone for the sickness all humanity was born with. In his interview with Percy Springsteen said of O'Connor, "There was some dark thing - a component of spirituality - that I sensed in her stories, and that set me off exploring characters of my own. She knew orginal sin- she knew how to give it the flesh of a story" (307). What could be a darker side of spirituality than the theological confession that you are damned from birth for the poor produce choice of the first bipeds? Perhaps the only thing that dims the lights in that eternally condemning room is that the one door out invloves the blood of a Jewish peasant killed two millenia ago to wash that stain away. Neither of these writers were oblivious to this theological dilema, and they used the abstract construct to view the conditions of characters toiling in a world that makes you feel your being punished for the sin's of some unknown other.
In her story "A Good Man is Hard To Find", O'Connor gives us a character called the Misfit. Much like characters we see in the album, the Misfit is a criminal who believes he was doomed from the start. He tells an old woman before he kills her, "I found out the crime don't matter. You can do one thing or you can do another, kill a man or take the tire off his car, because sooner or later you're gonna forget what it was you done and just be punished for it" (27). In the construct of original sin this is good logic. All embryos have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. If that is the world you are born into than a Misfit is all there is to be. Haze Motes echoes this sentiment as he preaches the "Church Without Christ" saying, "There's no person a whoremonger who wasn't something worse first. That's not sin nor blasphemy. The sin came before them" (Wise Blood, 45).
Nebraska is littered with characters in bad situations outside of their control. The world appears to be against them from the start and many respond violently in the face of their apparant futility. In "Atlantic City" the narrator tries to do things by the book but he admits that despite his efforts he still has "debts that no honest man can pay." He can't find a job on the wrong side of winning and losing. His toils are a social representation of the spiritual condition original sin puts all of us in, tired of being born into the losing end. In "Johhny 99" we see the same perdicament. Ralph can't find a job so he turns to crime. He acknowledges to the judge that he also has unpayable debts which is why he thinks it would be better to die than struggle in vain. In his honest courtroom speech he eloquently and briefly sums up the feeling that outside forces are pulling him down as he says "it was more 'n' all this that put that gun in my hand." "My Father's House" illuminates the sadder side of the problem. Instead of resorting to crime in an unfair world, this character sincerely seeks out restoration but finds that none is offered now that he is forever separated from his father. At the end he is left "on that dark highway where our sins lie unatoned." Neither Springsteen or O'Connor were satisfied in their writing to use a deus ex machina resolution like the Catholic version of the Atonement. That leaves them with characters riddled with pain and lacking any tangible comfort.

Again in his interview with Percy Springsteen cites another facet of O'Connor's influence on the album saying her her stories were, "a big, big revelation. "She had got to some part of meanness that she never spelled out... It was always at the core of everyone of her stories - the way she left that hole there, that whole that's inside of everybody" (307). Springsteen's evaluation is accurate as O'Connor's collection of short stories A Good Man is Hard to Find opens with the title story where the Misfit and his boys kill an entire family that they come across on the road. It ends with the Misfit shooting an old woman three times in the chest, but before this he tells her, "Nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best you can - by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him. No pleasure but meanness" (28). In "The Life You Save May Be Your Own" Mr. Shiflet marries a poor old woman's retarded daughter so that he can steal the family car. Of course he could have simply drove off alone, but instead he chooses to marry the girl, take her to a diner, then leave her lost and alone. In "The Artificial Nigger" a grandfather takes his young grandson into the big city for the first time. Once there he gets them lost, exhausting the boy. When the boy falls asleep the grandfather hides to teach him some obscure and cruel lesson. He wakes in a panic and runs, colliding with an old woman. The boy turns to his grandfather who was trailing the scene and the grandfather denies he knows the boy. A scenario with more meanness than those three is hard to imagine. Enter Charles Starkweather.
Springsteen chose to open his musical collection of short stories with a title cut as well in which he almost directly appropriates the Misfit's words. The song ends with the murderer saying without any remorse "well, sir, I guess there's just a meanness in this world." Starkweather was mean to say the least. After being arrested for killing ten people he told his first psychiatrist that killing people was like smashing bugs. He later told a second psychiatrist that he wished he had a bomb to kill the first. Springsteen said he considered the song to be the center of the album and it ceratainly sets the stage for a mean show.
After shooting a night clerk Ralph (Johhny 99) is sentenced by Mean Joe Brown who gives him 99 years in jail. Ralph's life is taken from him in an instant, and in this mean world "the sentence fit the crime". It is an endless circle of mistreatment. Ralph's material life is taken from him and he responds by taking an innocent strangers entire life. It takes only a Mean Judge to complete the loop.