Flannery O'Connor's "The Artificial Nigger," the Baltimore Catechism, and the Inferno

What is it about?

Flannery O’Connor wrote in her Prayer Journal that "Hell, a literal hell, is our only hope." Hell gives hope because it provides real stakes for a choice between sin and grace, between a rejection of divine love and a decisive turning back to God. The Baltimore Catechism informed O'Connor's thinking about hell, especially its pains of sense and of loss. In her short story “The Artificial Nigger,” she updates Dante's Inferno and relocates it to the city of Atlanta, where a grandfather and his grandson visit, become lost, and are eventually found, before returning home. For O’Connor, as for Dante and Virgil, a trip through hell might be terrifying, but it also spurs pilgrims toward a free acceptance of God’s sacramental grace.

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Why is it important?

O'Connor's debt to Dante Alighieri and The Divine Comedy has been commented upon but deserves closer attention. Like other Roman Catholics of her generation, O'Connor's idea of hell was formed by definitions in the Baltimore Catechism, and her anxiety about becoming an orphan stoked childhood fears. It was Dante, however, who fired Flannery O'Connor's imagination, shaped her writing, and provided her with a definite vision of hell.

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