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Flannery O'Connor uses animal imagery in most or all of her works of fiction; sometimes the animals are primates. Red Sammy Butts keeps a gray monkey chained to a chinaberry tree outside of his barbecue restaurant ("A Good Man Is Hard to Find"). Julian's mother smiles at the woman on the bus as she would to a monkey who has stolen her hat ("Everything That Rises Must Converge"). Wise Blood contains several references to primates. Hazel watches two monkeys dance in a tent at the carnival, and when he first meets Mrs. Leora Watts, his heart beats like that of a little ape. O'Connor compares Asa Hawks to a mandrill, and Enoch Emery visits the monkey house in the zoo daily. Enoch's encounters with Gonga are central to his plot. These examples of imagery all serve to develop the subject of Flannery O'Connor's fiction, which is accepting or rejecting grace. A life without redemption lacks a spiritual dimension and is devoid of meaning.
I suggest man's distance from the natural world is part of what separates him from the spiritual world, from the primal energy that comes from nature, from God. Animals are close to this energy, and man's relationship to animals is the subject of my work. Behind Glass is a series of photographs of primates in captivity. O'Connor's fiction is one of my inspirations for making this work, and it is worth considering...