The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor

The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor Summary | "The Geranium" Summary

"The Geranium" is the first in this collection of thirty-one stories. O'Connor writes from the point of view of Old Dudley, an aged father of a woman from the South, now living in a depressing walk-up apartment in New York City. Old Dudley's observations of his "new world" are written through dialect and as internal dialogue. O'Connor reveals her feelings about racism in a period of upheaval in the country at that time, as resentments and adjustments by both whites and blacks are becoming more and more common.

Old Dudley's longing for "home" is poignant and vivid; he sits for hours watching a red geranium in a pot on the windowsill of an apartment across the alley way, worrying that the sun is too hot for it and that it needs water. O'Connor's genius is in her use of the description of the old man worrying about the plant as a symbol of himself in an alien environment. His homesickness becomes even more painful when he finds out the black man next door to his daughter's apartment is not a servant, but the new tenant. His lifelong belief in segregation in his beloved South finds this untenable.

Within a day or two, his daughter sends him downstairs to a friend's apartment to borrow a dress pattern; he goes too far and has to retrace his steps, but manages to get the pattern and start climbing back up the stairs. He hesitates part way up, with dizziness and mild discomfort, when a helping hand assists his climb. Horrified, he realizes it's the "nigger" from next door. The only black Old Dudley had related to before this was a hired hand named Rabie he had gone fishing with "back home." The well-dressed black man is considerate and kind, with manicured fingernails and polished shoes. This is a traumatic encounter for Old Dudley. When he gets back into his daughter's apartment, he goes back to his seat by the window and the geranium across the way is gone from its sunny windowsill. A man is looking at Old Dudley from the geranium's window, and he sees the broken pot down on the cement alleyway, six floors below. The man taunts him, suggesting he go down and get it, if it's that important to him, and to quit looking in his window. The geranium is like Old Dudley's life. Too many changes have uprooted him, just like the dying geranium down on the ground.