Analysis Of General Sash 'By Flannery O' Connor

1255 Words6 Pages

“For his part, the General would not have consented even to attend her graduation if she had not promised to see to it that he sit on stage.” The flashy life of Flannery O'Connor's General Sash is used to dig up the truth throughout her story, A Late Encounter With the Enemy. In this story General Sash parades his title as a General in the Civil War and creates a new life around this persona. Flannery O’Connor uses General Sash as an extended metaphor and expands her message of facing the uncomfortable truth through foreshadowing and extremities. O’Connor uses foreshadowing to break down the facade of General Sash, an icon of his small southern town. Although, early on in the story O’Connor hints at the fact that General Sash may not have …show more content…

For instance, John Wesley is asked to roll General Sash into the auditorium and stand with him during Sally’s graduation. The two would make a nice picture and, “She thought how sweet it would be to see the old man in his courageous gray and the young boy in his clean khaki.” The two are described in very different ways, showing how the generations have changed. The old is seen as courageous while the young are clean. The difference between the two shows how society has changed and sooner or later the truth will be revealed. John ends up being the one who rolls General Sash’s dead body off the stage. O'Connor uses the young boy to show how the old beliefs will be rolled away eventually and will be replaced by the younger generations. Additionally, O’Connor challenges the difference between forgetting and not remembering. She has General Sash say, “The past and the future were the same thing to him, one forgotten and the other not remembered.” General Sash says that the past is forgotten, but it isn’t. The South has tried so hard to create a new story of the war while the truth has been not remembered, not forgotten. The South has chosen to not remember the truth. O'Connor uses John Wesley to show how the new generations will bring in the truth. These two seemingly extreme differences aren’t as different as they may appear. The past will be the future's demise just like how the new generations will be the ones to sweep out the old ways. The reader is forced to see past the comfortable and courageous past they have been told and into the future that will force history to come