HOW NOT TO CHASE A TURKEY 29 While Flannery O’Connor’s account of this breathless pursuit makes for exciting reading, the author is more concerned with her subject’s thoughts than with his movements. Few of us, perhaps, would try to track down a wild turkey if we encountered one outdoors. I have had the pleasure of crossing paths with the large, colorful birds in several forests, but the urge to run after them never seized me yet. Why does young Ruller take up the hunt? He has a vision of himself carrying the turkey home, receiving lavish attention and praise because he conquered the beast. When he first charges after the turkey, the lad imagines his family “all screaming, ‘Look at Ruller with that wild turkey!’” Later, after he runs into a tree, the bruised youth imagines his father saying “Man! That’s a bird if ever I saw one!”, which sustains his determination to capture the fleeing fowl. Finally, when he hesitates to drag the dead creature away, the boy thinks of how his family will see him if he returns with a catch: “Ruller gets our turkeys for us.” That idea of the praise and attention he will receive leads the impulsive eleven-year-old to grab the carcass, concluding that the turkey’s providential death will bring about his own elevation. As the boy snatches it up and heads for home, he dreams of his family’s awe-struck admiration at his triumph. Glimpses of Self-Centered Ambition Ruller is not the only character in Flannery O’Connor’s fiction who hungers for other people’s recognition and respect. Her short stories exhibit a crowd of characters motivated by the self-centered ambition to be somebody or to be the center of attention, a need that is not limited to young boys. In “The Geranium,” an elderly man who moves from the South to New York City to live with his daughter recalls life in Georgia. Old Dudley remembers that he liked to catch fish and share them with his fellow boarding-house lodgers, a group of elderly ladies who would say “it took a man to get those fish.” Dudley would announce his return and loudly toss down the fish, causing the women to praise him as “the man in the house.” Another story, “Good Country People,” tells of a woman named Joy whose extensive education isolates her in her thirties from her rural family. When a Bible salesman comes to the farmhouse door, he dotes on Joy,
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