A Circle in the Fire

Flannery O’Connor penned “A Circle in the Fire,” the seventh story in her collection A Good Man Is Hard to Find, in early 1954. Shortly thereafter, the Kenyon Review accepted the story for publication in its spring 1954 edition. Many elements of the story mirror experiences in O’Connor’s life, beginning with the similarities between Andalusia and Mrs. Cope’s farm, where Mrs. Cope and her daughter live together, possibly echoing O’Connor and her mother. Like other stories, O’Connor derived inspiration from articles in local newspapers, such as one in the Atlanta Journal about a baby born in an iron lung, the first piece of conversation between Mrs. Pritchard and Mrs. Cope. In Powell’s homesickness, O’Connor potentially recreates the nostalgia she experienced as a teenager for Sorrel Farm, the location of her family’s summer retreats when she was a child. After her family moved to Milledgeville, O’Connor and her cousins would visit Bernard Cline’s Sorrel Farm during the summer months. The farm, later renamed Andalusia, served as O’Connor’s home for most of her adult life. Other elements related to the three arsonists in the story draw from O’Connor’s life, such as the real threat of wildfires to Andalusia and other farms in the area. Biographer Brad Gooch chronicles that “fires were indeed an ever-present danger much remarked on by Mrs. O’Connor at Andalusia, with all its flammable pine” (249). In addition, O’Connor told Maryat Lee in a letter that “the reformatory is about a mile away and the lads escape about this time of year. Last week we had six one day, one the next, and two the next” (The Habit of Being, 339), thus paralleling the escapees from the reformatory and the three boys who appear at Mrs. Cope’s farm. Marking the story’s overall success, “A Circle in the Fire” received a 1955 O’Henry Award and was published in The Best American Short Stories of 1955, in addition to its initial publication in the Kenyon Review.

The main focus of “A Circle in the Fire” surrounds O’Connor’s purpose in warning readers against spiritual inadequacy, which she accomplishes through symbolically displaying the destruction caused by the three boys. Essayist Melita Schaum characterizes “A Circle in the Fire” as a story that draws “on Biblical prophecy and modern theology to advance its radical lesson about property and eternity, about sacrifice and transformation” (23). While in numerous other stories O’Connor also urges readers to avoid spiritual stagnation, in this story, O’Connor shows her recognition of “the necessity of disruption, the difficult ‘price restoration’ in suffering, upheaval and loss” (Schaum 23), which indicates O’Connor’s use of symbolic destruction to convey her message. In his book Catholicism, professor and Catholic priest Richard P. McBrien defines sacramentality, a pillar of O’Connor’s Catholic tradition, by saying that “the Catholic sacramental vision ‘sees’ God in all things: other people, communities, movements, events, places, objects, the environment, the world at large, the whole cosmos. The visible, the tangible, the finite, the historical – all these are actual or potential carriers of the divine presence” (10). Therefore, scholar John R. May concludes that “McBrien’s explanation of sacramentality, broad and encompassing as it is, best exemplifies the sense of world that we find in O’Connor’s fiction,” which is “permeated with this sense of sacramentality” (212). Ultimately, the three boys serve as the sacramentality, the symbolic warning, for Mrs. Cope in “A Circle in the Fire” that instructs her against her spiritual inadequacy, thereby embodying O’Connor’s purpose.

O’Connor first develops Mrs. Cope as a character who lacks spiritual maturity, providing the foundation for her chance to redeem herself in the story’s end. For instance, Mrs. Cope’s obsession with her property results in boastfulness, which she reveals when she “pointed the trowel up at Mrs. Pritchard and said, ‘I have the best kept place in the county and do you know why? Because I work. I’ve had to work to save this place and work to keep it’” (“A Circle,” 178). While numerous Biblical verses encourage hard work, such as Proverbs 13:4, which states that “lazy people want much but get little, but those who work hard will prosper” (NLT), the Bible ultimately condemns boasting. James, the half-brother of Jesus, warns against people who “boast in [their] arrogance,” stating that “all such boasting is evil” (James 4.16 ESV). Instead, Mrs. Cope believes that “every day you should say a prayer of thanksgiving” because “we have a lot to be thankful for” (“A Circle,” 177), which indicates at least an elementary level of spiritual adequacy. However, she undermines her mild spirituality by confessing that she “thank[s] the Lord all these [negative] things don’t come at once. They’d destroy me” (177), thus revealing spiritual immaturity. While the Bible commends giving thanks to God through prayer, various Biblical writers add that, in spiritual maturity, believers take comfort in praying about all things, such as when Paul instructs the people of Philippi to not “worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace” (Phil. 4.6-7 NLT). Mrs. Cope’s misunderstanding of the practice of prayer identifies her as a spiritually immature person, a person who “need[s] someone to teach you again the basic things about God’s word” (Heb. 5.12 NLT), against which the author of Hebrews warns.

Furthermore, Mrs. Cope takes the greatest pride in the woods on her property, “always worrying about fires in her woods. When the nights were very windy, she would say to [Sally Virginia], ‘Oh Lord, do pray there won’t be any fires, it’s so windy,’ and the child would grunt from behind her book or not answer at all because she heard it so often” (“A Circle,” 176). Mrs. Cope’s pride in her woods ultimately underscores her obsession with maintaining them. For instance, according to scholar Margaret Earley Whitt, “Mrs. Cope has her priorities out of kilter; the property has become her life’s purpose” (69), signaling O’Connor’s construction of Mrs. Cope as a character obsessed with working and the materiality of her property. Therefore, Schaum asserts that “Mrs. Cope’s prized woods emerge as the emblem of her earthly holdings, her pride in her own self-sufficiency and success” (17), thus fueling Schaum’s conclusion that Mrs. Cope’s “material greed has become an order so rigid it has turned sterile, a self-inflicted blindness and murder of the spirit” (18). The Bible warns against obsession and pride in one’s possessions when the disciple John writes that people should “not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2.15 ESV). Subsequently, John defines “the things of the world” as “the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions” (1 John 2.16 ESV), thereby classifying Mrs. Cope’s obsession with her property as spiritually naïve. Therefore, O’Connor uses the boastful, work-obsessed Mrs. Cope to represent spiritual immaturity that ultimately results in downfall.

Leading up to the story’s dramatic end, multiple instances of foreshadowing alert readers to a tragic, theologically-based moment of revelation for Mrs. Cope. The already ominous title of the story creates further suspense when Powell Boyd indicates that Mrs. Cope’s property is perhaps the circle in the fire. On one occasion, “Powell’s eyes seemed to be making a circle of the place” (“A Circle,” 179), and that later “Powell sat down on the edge of one of the chairs and looked as if he were trying to enclose the whole place in one encircling stare” (181). Additionally, fire imagery emerges throughout the story, such as when Mrs. Cope confesses that she is “afraid of fires” (181), when she insists that “the barn’s full of hay and I’m afraid of fire from your cigarettes” (182), and when one of the boys tells Mrs. Cope that “one time [Powell] locked his little brother in a box and set it on fire” (184). Powell’s encircling vision of the property combined with Mrs. Cope’s constant fear of fire foreshadows her property as a literal circle of fire.

Application of the prophet Ezekiel, who sees wheels in a fiery sky, to Mrs. Cope and her property foreshadow a tragic moment for Mrs. Cope as a theologically-based event, which furthers O’Connor’s warning against elementary spirituality. In the Book of Ezekiel, the prophet Ezekiel receives a vision from God warning the Israelites against their disobedience, ultimately calling them to abandon their evil ways and return to God. In his vision, Ezekiel sees “fire inside [a] cloud, and in the middle of the fire glowed something like gleaming amber” (Ezek. 1.4 NLT) as well as “four wheels touching the ground beside [four figures], one wheel belonging to each. The wheels sparkled as if made of beryl” (Ezek. 1.15-16 NLT). In the context of Ezekiel, the foreboding sun, a fire in the sky, may be the wheel Mrs. Cope sees, specifically since the sun “was swollen and flame-colored and hung in a net of ragged cloud as if it might burn through any second and fall into the woods. [...] The sun burned so fast that it seemed to be trying to set everything on fire” (“A Circle,” 184). Schaum concludes that “naturally, this intrusion of the heavenly in the form of a wheel of fire presages the apocalypse to come” (17), referring to Mrs. Cope’s foreshadowed, tragic, theologically-based moment of revelation in her burning woods at the story’s conclusion.

Ultimately, Powell Boyd, W.T. Harper, and Garfield Smith align with McBrien’s explanation of sacramentality and achieve O’Connor’s purpose of warning readers against spiritual inadequacy by providing a chance for Mrs. Cope to redeem herself through burning down her woods. The boys’ conversation with Hollis, one of the African American workers on Mrs. Cope’s farm, foreshadows the presence of the boys as sacramental. Mrs. Pritchard reports that one of the boys “said, ‘She don’t own them woods,’ and Hollis said, ‘She does too,’ and that there little one he said, ‘Man, Gawd owns them woods and her too’” (“A Circle,” 186). As a result, the boys define themselves as defenders of God, foreshadowing their intent to reveal Mrs. Cope’s spiritual immaturity by setting her woods on fire. As Whitt explains, “The visiting boys provide Mrs. Cope’s opportunity to see more clearly; their perpetration of the fire is her” chance for redemption (70), thereby characterizing the boys as having a theologically-based purpose.

In the context of the boys as Mrs. Cope’s redeemers, “A Circle in the Fire” echoes the story of King Nebuchadnezzar and the Fiery Furnace in the Book of Daniel. Angry because Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refuse to worship his golden calf, King Nebuchadnezzar “throw[s] them into [a] burning fiery furnace” but rises in astonishment when he sees “four men unbound, walking in the midst of the fire, and they are not hurt; and the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods” (Dan. 3.20, 24-25 ESV). The three boys echo Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego while Mrs. Cope’s woods, once the boys have set them on fire, mirror the fiery furnace into which King Nebuchadnezzar throws Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Therefore, the boys setting the woods on fire represents Mrs. Cope’s chance to deliver herself from spiritual immaturity and lack of focus on God, which parallels King Nebuchadnezzar’s chance to deliver himself by worshiping God instead of his golden calf. King Nebuchadnezzar proves his newfound understanding by decreeing that “any people, nation, or language that speaks anything against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego shall be torn limb from limb, [...] for there is no other god who is able to rescue in this way” (Dan. 3.29 ESV). However, Whitt claims that, while “the king understands that there is a God more powerful than the golden image he was demanding his people to worship, Mrs. Cope feels anew the old misery that she cannot comprehend” (69), signaling that she fails to take advantage of her moment of redemption and conclusively remains spiritually inept. Ultimately, O’Connor uses Mrs. Cope’s missed moment of redemption, enacted by Powell, W.T., and Garfield, to graphically and tragically warn readers against spiritual negligence.

Works Cited

ESV Study Bible: English Standard Version. Translated by Crossway, ESV text ed., Wheaton, Crossway Bibles, 2011.

Gooch, Brad. Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor. New York, Little, Brown, 2009.

Holy Bible: New Living Translation. Translated by Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Tyndale House Publishers, 2015.

May, John R. “Flannery O'Connor and the Discernment of Catholic Fiction.” Inside the Church of Flannery O’Connor: Sacrament, Sacramental, and the Sacred in Her Fiction, edited by Joanne Halleran McMullen and Jon Parrish Peede, Mercer UP, 2007, pp. 205-20.

McBrien, Richard P. Catholicism. San Francisco, HarperCollinsPublishers, 1994.

O'Connor, Flannery. “A Circle in the Fire.” The Complete Stories, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971, pp. 175-93.

---. The Habit of Being. Edited by Sally Fitzgerald, New York City, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1979.

Schaum, Melita. “‘Erasing Angel’: The Lucifer-Trickster Figure in Flannery O’Connor’s Short Fiction.” Southern Literary Journal, vol. 33, no. 1, fall 2000, pp. 1-26. MLA International Bibliography, https://doi.org/10.1353/slj.2000.0013.

Whitt, Margaret Earley. Understanding Flannery O’Connor. Columbia, U of South Carolina P, 1997.