30 pages • 1 hour read
Flannery O'ConnorA Late Encounter with the Enemy
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1953A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Procession
“Procession” is the term the General uses to refer to Sally’s graduation ceremony. Like a funeral procession, he imagines the ceremony as dull and somber, connected with history and with death. His aversion to the procession symbolizes his fear of confronting the past.
The procession in this story is associated with the passage of history—it occurs at graduation, when a generation becomes adults and joins society, and the commencement speaker discusses history and the importance of remembering the past to create a more productive future. However, the General states that he prefers parades (which are associated with superficial beauty and commercialism), rejects the commencement speaker’s assertions, and is ultimately overwhelmed by the procession. Further, Sally prioritizes her grandfather over the procession—she leaves the procession to tend to him during the graduation ceremony and looks at him when she crosses the stage. Thus, Sally is caught between the procession and her grandfather, just as she is caught between generations, while the General pointedly rejects the procession and the passage of time.
“Beautiful Guls”
Several times in the story, the General talks about his enjoyment of “beautiful guls” (136). This repeated motif supports the characterization of the General as out of touch and superficial.
The General mentions “beautiful guls” (136) at two key moments in the story. The first is when he is recounting his experiences at the movie premiere in Atlanta. However, Sally corrects his memory—there were no women present. The second instance is when he is being ushered off the stage at the premiere, shouting about how happy he is to be there with “all these beautiful guls” (139) These two instances highlight the degree to which the General values his own vanity above all else. The (imaginary) beautiful young women from California serve as a signifier of his own status as a man worthy of the presence of such women.
“See Him! See Him!”
Sally repeats this phrase numerous times in her mind, in an incantatory fashion, as she fantasizes about accepting her diploma with her grandfather in his uniform on the stage behind her. It illustrates the degree to which she treats her grandfather not as an independent person but as a visual symbol of her own importance. Sally desperately hopes her elderly grandfather will stay alive just a bit longer, not because she loves him but because she craves his presence on that stage as evidence of her connection to a noble Southern tradition.
The General has no problem being used in this way, and in fact he relishes the chance to sit on a stage in his uniform and be admired. His fondest memory—in fact his only significant memory—is of a film premiere in Atlanta, at which he was brought onto the stage with a new uniform and announced as “General Tennessee Flintrock Sash,” not his real name. Throughout the story, the General (who was never actually a general at all) is reduced to a spectacle: an object to be admired, representing a hollowed-out, idealized image of the past. He scrupulously avoids thinking about the actual past: He has forgotten his participation in the Civil War, forgotten his son’s death in the Spanish-American war, and has even forgotten his son. The emptiness of his memory represents the emptiness of the spectacle he has become—standing for a past that has been stripped of content.
Coca-Cola
Appearing at the graduation and often in connection with John Wesley, Coca-Cola symbolizes contemporary America and commodification and contributes to the story’s broader theme of Modernity and the Fetishization of the Past.
Coca-Cola is juxtaposed with the General at Sally’s graduation. When John Wesley first gets a drink, he leaves the General “scowling and hatless” (141); when Sally sees them, she must leave the procession and direct John Wesley to the stage. After the graduation, John Wesley returns to the machine once again. This time, he must wait in line, a fact that emphasizes the popularity of Coca-Cola among wider society. This time, Sally must wait for the return of the General, and the General himself has already died. John Wesley’s prioritization of Coca-Cola is depicted as negative in the story. He exposes his great-grandfather to the sun and fails to notice he is dead because he is so preoccupied with getting a drink. The story thus derides the consumerist values of contemporary American culture.
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By Flannery O'Connor
