In "The Lame Shall Enter First" Flannery O'Connor created three versions of the type known as grotesques. Sherwood Anderson defined such characters as people who "seize on one 'truth', an idea or an ambition, and allow it to become an obsession. In their single-minded passion for an overriding idea, they lead lonely, possessed lives, cut off from those who pursue other 'truths' or have a more balanced view of life". O'Connor's three characters in this story, a father, a son, and a delinquent boy, all have hold of the kind of 'truths' and obsessions that Anderson talks about. Norton, the son, is obsessed by his dead mother because he has no conception of what it means that she is dead. The boy, Rufus Johnson, having had religion beaten into him, is consumed with the idea that he is in the hands of the devil and yet can still be saved at any moment he chooses to repent. The third character, Sheppard, works harder at his obsession.
The two boys have come by their grotesque qualities as the result of someone else's action--neglectful parents in both cases--or of accidents--the mother's death and Johnson's clubfoot. They are children, though Johnson is making the transition to adulthood and is making the decisions that leave him in the grip of his obsession. Sheppard, on the other hand, is an adult. The story makes it clear that Sheppard chose his obsession. For whatever reasons Sheppard chose to see himself in a particular way. The question the story raises is why Sheppard behaves as he does.
Sheppard is very willful about seeing what he wants to see. In the case of each boy his interior monologue first states his view of the boy and then he perceives what he expects to see there. If he assumes Norton is dull and selfish then, no matter what the child does, it will be seen as a symptom of this dullness or selfishness. Sheppard views Johnson in the same way--connecting with the idea of his intelligence, but refusing to ...