“A Horror and a Phantasm”: Heidegger Quotation as a Gothic Device in Flannery OʼConnorʼs “Good Country People”

Abstract

This paper explores the parodic rendition of the prominent Gothic convention of “found manuscript” in Flannery O ʼ Connor ʼ s “Good Country People”. In Gothic narratives, parents are often confronted with some compromising textual evidence of their children’s disturbing secrets. In O’Connor’s story, Mrs. Hopewell stumbles upon a book her daughter is reading. A passage from this tome functions as a parodic “found manuscript” of the Gothic: its incomprehensible and bizarre content appears to the benighted Mrs. Hopewell as “an evil incantation in gibberish”. However, the fragment in question is an excerpt from Martin Heidegger ʼ s What Is Metaphysics? The reference to the proverbially esoteric author ironically highlights the textual uncommunicativeness of the Gothic. However, the quotation in question is not just a part of mere Gothic parody for it can also be read as a meta-commentary on the nature of Gothic textuality itself.