L. Lamar Nisly, "Percy's Edgy Satiric Fiction" in Wingless Chickens, Bayou Catholics, and Pilgrim Wayfarers: Constructions of Audience and Tone in O'Connor, Gautreaux, and Percy. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2011.
Percy used and satire and the indirect approach because he thought the direct method would not succeed. Nisly asserts, "An important impetus behind his use of indirection, I believe, is his belief that the religious establishment has largely emptied the Christian Language of meaning through overuse and abuse of these terms" (162-163). For example, words like sin, repentance, and salvation. Percy observes, "it's almost impossible for a novelist because you have to use standard words like 'God' and 'salvation' and 'baptism,' 'faith,' and the words are pretty well used up" (CWP 41). Lewis Lawson wrote about Percy's first two novels that Percy's audience was religious, it required him to use "indirect communication" to attract the readers in the aesthetic stage and then--"without ever directly discussing religion or lapsing into a serious tone--attack their religious illusions from behind" (Following Percy 6). Percy's method seems similar to Kierkegaard.
Nisly asks the question, how can we say that Percy's method is indirect when many critics have claimed that his later novels "contain overt attacks on societal ills?" (163). One must remember Percy's purpose in his writing. He is attacking problems in society to point to a greater need, an absence of God. Percy argues, "It becomes possible, whether one believes in God or not, soul or not, to agree in an age in which the self is not informed by cosmological myths, by totemism, by belief in God--whether the God of Christianity, Judaism, or Islam--it must necessarily and by reason of its own semiotic nature be informed by something else" (Lost in the Cosmos 178). Percy believes that everyone "must believe in something, even if it is not God" (163). A common strategy of Percy is to attack substitutes for belief in God for the purpose of pointing to God. Percy often said that the novelist is one of the few pointing to original sin. Percy asks, "Is it too much to say that the novelist, unlike the new theologian, is one of the few remaining witnesses to the doctrine of original sin, the imminence of catastrophe in paradise" (MB 106). It is questionable that all novelists are "witnesses" of original sin, but it is true of Percy. Percy is pointing out the problems in society, exploring the darkness of sin in the modern world.Percy thinks that it is the novelist's vocation "to explore the darker recesses of the human heart, there to name the strange admixture of good and evil, the action of the demonic, the action of grace, of courage and cowardice and vice versa; in a word, the strange human creature himself" (SSL 36). Since humans cannot find true fulfillment without believing in God, Percy "satirically exposes, undercuts, and indicts elements of American culture that humans turn to in place of belief in God" (164).
Nisly points out four satiric themes observed in Percy's fiction. The first target is Southern Stoicism. This is a part of the view of the Southern Aristocracy as modeled by Percy's Uncle Will. Percy thought that Southern Stoicism had a bigger influence on the South than Christianity. Percy asserts, "how curiously foreign to the South sound the Decalogue, the Beatitudes, the doctrine of the Mystical Body. The South's virtues were the broadsword virtues of the clan, as were her vices, too--the hubris of the noblesse gone arrogant" (SSL 84). Percy often points out how the Southerner treated the African American. Percy argues that the "Stoical attitude" made an inner call "to duty, to honor, to generosity to his fellow men and above all to his inferiors--not because they were made in the image of God and were therefore lovable in themselves, but because to do them an injustice would be to defile the inner fortress which was oneself" (SSL 85). Percy experienced the emptiness of Southern Stoicism through his relationship with his father and his Uncle Will. He used satire to pinpoint the weaknesses of Southern Stoicism throughout his fiction. We will look at the three other themes for satire in the next post.
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