The Geranium

"The Geranium" is an early short story by the American author Flannery O'Connor. It was first published in Accent: A Quarterly of New Literature in 1946 and is one of the six stories included in O'Connor's 1947 master's thesis The Geranium: A Collection of Short Stories. It later appeared in the 1971 collection The Complete Stories.

O'Connor was fond of the story and rewrote it into "An Exile in the East" (1954), "Getting Home" (1964), and "Judgement Day" (1964). As "Judgement Day," it appeared as the final story of Everything That Rises Must Converge in 1965. All four versions of the story were published together in Flannery O'Connor: The Growing Craft in 1993.

Critical Reception
Criticism of the story is mixed. Lite Reads Review states "I think The Geranium by Flannery O’Connor is an incredibly mixed bag. The symbolism and style both work so well that I want to love it, but I would also much rather read stories about racism from the perspective of those it targets than those who perpetrate it.". Tim Lieder also notes the racism but concentrates on the mechanics of the work with "there's a lot of exposition because this story is 90% exposition about how he moved to New York City because his daughter insisted. His son-in-law doesn't like him and he used to go fishing and even had a guide who knew the river" and also notes that the University of Iowa writing style tends to emphasize character sketches without judgment.