profoundly troubling. The psychoemotional baggage and behavior determine the through line of the narrative and the moral weight of ethical argument that O'Connor makes as she describes not only what happens but also what the characters, particularly Julian, are thinking. Julian, a recently graduated college man, is stultified and embarrassed by and resentful of his narrow, provincial, snobbish white Southern family roots, which his liberal education has allowed him to outgrow and disdain. As Julian comments to himself about his mother, "She lived according to the laws of her own fantasy world, outside of which he had never seen her set foot" (O'Connor 1286).
Financially dependent on his mother, who is preoccupied with status and slightly embarrassed by her life of genteel poverty and who shares the traditional and racist presumptions and attitudes of most white Southerners, Julian despises both her and her attitudes and congratulates himself on his notions of racial equality. Indeed, he blames her "lack of foresight" (1286) for his dependence on her. The priorities of Julian's mother are of status and social position, and she is always slightly embarrassed by the fact that her family has little of the wealth of previous generations. But only slightly: "All of her life had been a struggle to act like a Chestny without the Chestny goods, and to give him everything she thought a Chestny ought to have" (O'Connor 1286). Forced to live in straitened circumstances, Julian's mother clings to an idea of her innate superiority, and she uses every opportunity to invest the family memory with some importance and so explain why she is really above the ordinary. It is this precisely and programmatically that Julian despises, the more so because a part of him wishes for a life of decorum and ease:
Well let's talk about something pleasant," she said. "I remember going to Grandpa's when I was a little girl. Then the house had double stairways t...