Hamlet & The Misfit: What was Flannery O'Connor Thinking?

In Hamlet, after the prince hears news from Horatio about the sighting of a ghost that appears to be Hamlet's father, Hamet says to Horatio:

HAMLET:
I would I had been there.

This reminds me of what The Misfit in a Flannery O'Connor story says to the grandmother just before he shoots her:
"I wisht I had of been there..."

[Image via USPS.com]

In Flannery O'Connor's famous short story, "A Good Man is Hard to Find" - a favorite of many fiction writers, including the late Raymond Carver - the Grandmother asks the Misfit to pray to Jesus. The Misfit comments that Jesus messed things up by rising from the dead:

MISFIT:
"I wasn't there so I can't say He didn't," The Misfit said. "I wisht I had of been there," he said, hitting the ground with his fist. "It ain't right I wasn't there because if I had of been there I would of known. Listen lady," he said in a high voice, "if I had of been there I would of known and I wouldn't be like I am now."

One might wonder: Was O'Connor thinking of Hamlet and the prince's similar statement when she gave The Misfit these lines?

O'Connor's short story was first published in 1963, when Oedipal readings of Hamlet were very trendy (they are still) in light of Freud's earlier writings, and also Ernst Jones' 1949 book, Hamlet and Oedipus.

O'Connor gives us a nice Oedipal touch regarding what the prison doctor told The Misfit about the source of his problems:

MISFIT:
"It was a head-doctor at the penitentiary said what I had done was kill my daddy but I known that for a lie. My daddy died in nineteen ought nineteen of the epidemic flu and I never had a thing to do with it. He was buried in the Mount Hopewell Baptist churchyard and you can go there and see for yourself."

Haha. A little Oedipal joke there. O'Connor doesn't want to show The Misfit as fully understanding the doctor's point but allows the reader an opportunity to understand it more than The Misfit does.

For The Misfit, wishing he'd been there to witness the resurrection of Jesus (and assuming he would not be like he is now, if he had in fact been there) is ironic: The Misfit will soon shoot the grandmother at the very moment when she has become most compassionate, loving, and Christ-like after trying and failing at many conversational attempts to save her own neck.

So in a way, The Misfit, does witness the death and resurrection of Jesus, but just in reverse order, and in the person of the grandmother: He witnesses her rising to a new, more Christ-like life, stripped of her efforts at self concern, and then he kills her.

Christian (including Catholic) baptism includes language about dying to self and rising anew in Christ: Baptized Christians supposedly commit themselves to a life of spiritual self-improvement, to be remade in the image of Jesus. The Misfit witnesses the spiritual death and resurrection of the grandmother, rising anew to become a better woman. In the end, the grandmother is a dynamic character who changes, who improves; she is one of the good men (a-hem) who is hard to find (in part because she's a woman, in part because she has to change to become more good; yet we still have the memory of how self-centered she was).

The Misfit knows and articulates the fact that the grandmother became a better person in their conversation before her death. Note the following exchange with one of his accomplices near the end of the story:

"She was a talker, wasn't she?" Bobby Lee said, sliding down the ditch with a yodel.

"She would of been a good woman," The Misfit said, "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life."

Some early O'Connor readers assumed that The Misfit was the devil or the anti-Christ. But O'Connor, remarkably, thought otherwise. In a collection of her nonfiction called Mystery and Manners, (107-18), she writes,

I don't want to equate the Misfit with the devil, I prefer to think that, however unlikely this may seem, the
old lady's gesture, like the mustard-seed, will grow to be a great crow-filled tree in the Misfits' heart, and will
be enough of a pain to him there to turn him into the prophet he was meant to become.

In other words, she thinks The Misfit may have a conversion like Saul on the road to Tarsus, knocked from his horse, later becoming Paul. Saul was a Pharisee, supposedly responsible for persecuting Christians, which included having them stoned to death like Stephen, as described in the Acts of the Apostles (7:60).

For Hamlet, if we believe in the communion of Saints - that we cannot define ourselves by the limits of our skin, and that we belong to larger mystical bodies - then Hamlet doesn’t have to miss his father or wish he had been there: In a way, his father’s mystical body (good and bad?) includes and is inside of Hamlet, prince and son, and perhaps others in the kingdom, the body politic.

And perhaps for this reason (among others), the king and father who is in purgatory still lives, via this communion of the saints, inside of Hamlet, so Stephen Greenblatt titles one of his well-known books, Hamlet in Purgatory: The father is in purgatory, and still lives in the son, and the son is in purgatory as well, trying to work things out before his own death.

Or at least some Catholics might claim as much.

~~~
Regarding other light that O'Connor's story might shed on Hamlet, consider how so many scholars and critics express their great disappointment at Hamlet’s gift of his dying voice to Fortinbras to be elected the new king. Such scholars often make at least two mistakes:

First, they misread Hamlet's description of Fortinbras as a "delicate and tender" prince as a compliment, when in fact, the biblical use of the phrase (which would have been familiar in Shakespeare's time) should more often be translated as "pampered and spoiled." Figures in the bible who are described as "delicate and tender" tend to be full of themselves and so lacking compassion that in a time of famine, they'd eat their own children.

Second, they don't consider that Hamlet really had few other options: Fortinbras would take the kingdom anyway, so given the inevitable...

- Is it better for Hamlet to give Fortinbras his voice, to receive the kingdom as a gift, so that Fortinbras might start his rule with a debt of gratitude and reparation from the son of the man who killed his father?
- Or is it better for Hamlet perhaps to name Horatio as his preferred successor to the throne, and thereby perhaps make his friend Horatio a target of Fortinbras' aggression and resentment?

So I propose that we view the gift of his dying voice to Fortinbras as Flannery O'Connor views the mustard-seed-like gift that the grandmother gives to the Misfit before he shoots her: There's a chance it may grow to a great crow-filled tree in the heart of Fortinbras one day. In Fortinbras' case, it may make him, if not a prophet, a warrior for justice, compassionate about the sufferings and losses of others like him, who lost a father and an inheritance.

This is a radical hope that O'Connor has in the potential of grace to work in the heart of a Saul or The Misfit. But it's not unlike the radical hope of Gandhi, of how by nonviolent resistance (or “satyagraha,” the life-force of truth and love), the enemy’s heart is won over. Or the radical hope of that socialist rabbi, Jesus, that love of enemy can sometimes change hearts; or Paul, that by loving enemies we might sometimes pour burning coals on their heads (activating their consciences).

So given the fact that nonviolent resistance (satyagraha) eventually worked for Gandhi, why do so many Shakespeare scholars and critics assume that giving Fortinbras his dying voice is a terrible decision for Hamlet?

Well, it makes sense that they'd want a wiser leader for Denmark rather than a Fortinbras who is described as a kind of warrior-prince and insurgent leader (tho' he also bears a striking resemblance to Jephthah as well, as I've argued elsewhere on this blog). Maybe they assume that Fortinbras is incapable of having a character arc, incapable of growth or development?

Also, any hope that a gift of the kingdom to Fortinbras might make a difference seems perhaps a foolish thing to believe in, like nonviolent resistance and loving one's enemies. It often fails, or at least it seems to fail many times before it ever succeeds. People who love their enemies frequently get let down. Nonviolent protesters get arrested, beaten, killed.

But in the end, it’s surprising that it does succeed at all. It may not change some hearts, but it changes power structures which must adapt, and the powerless thereby gain more power.

Can receiving the kingdom as a gift, in part from Hamlet's dying voice, and in part by election, play a part in bringing about positive change in Fortinbras (as compared to having to fight for the throne)?
Why not? (No guarantees, but there's a chance.)

When corrected by his uncle, an apologetic and supposedly repentant Fortinbras receives from him the gift of money and support to raise an army against Poland. This gift of confidence in his talents, from that same uncle, may already have begun to work a change in him, though slight. (Or maybe the uncle is covertly funding an attack on Denmark?)

What Horatio hears as gossip, and what Claudius claims about Fortinbras, paints a negative picture of Fortinbras. But Claudius also lets something slip: He notes that Fortinbras has been writing letters to Claudius, asking for the land back which Norway lost when King Hamlet killed Old Fortinbras. This tends not to receive much attention: Horatio and Claudius would like to portray Fortinbras as brash, prone to violence, undisciplined. But it takes a mind interested in diplomacy to attempt letters before launching a military campaign to regain lost lands. (The biblical figure Jephthah showed a similar interest in attempting diplomacy before war, in that telling of the tale.)

[Also, as many have noted that Fortinbras, the prince from the north, seems to represent James I who took the English throne, the letters from Fortinbras may point to letter correspondence from James to Elizabeth and members of her court, some of which were friendly, but others of which annoyed and angered Elizabeth. Some historians have commented that James seemed to learn from certain early mistakes in his letters.]

So perhaps the ending of Hamlet is not about Fortinbras remaining the person we have known him to be up to that point. Perhaps he can change. Perhaps it’s about an act of justice (reparation) and reconciliation (charitable love) from Hamlet to another son like him, whose father was killed by Hamlet’s father. The gesture of reconciliation has the potential to change Fortinbras by making his election as king a process based in part on a gift from Hamlet, and not merely upon Fortinbras showing up in Elsinore and staking his claim to his rights of memory, or winning the throne by violence, or subterfuge (poison, like Claudius).