An Example of Southern Literature and Imagery: Flannery O’Connor’s "Wise Blood"

Hawthorn’s naming of Brown’s wife “Faith” has a duel mean. Brown’s “Faith” represents his spiritual faith along with his loving wife who he characterizes as being “a blessed angel on earth,” (526). When Brown exclaims “My Faith is gone!” (531) not only is Brown referring to the fact that he believes he may have lost his dear wife, but he loses his spiritual faith and the faith in others as more is unfolded on his journey to the communion. When he encounters his wife the next day, unsure as to whether or not the previous nights events occurred he “looked sternly and sadly into her face, and passed on without a greeting,” (534). This experience Brown had transforms him from being a man strong to “a stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man,” (535).

“A Good Man Is Hard To Find” and “Good Country People” are two short stories written by Flannery O’Connor during her short lived writing career. Despite the literary achievements of O’Connor’s works, she is often criticized for the grotesqueness of her characters and endings of her short stories and novels. Her writings have been described as “understated, orderly, unexperimental fiction, with a Southern backdrop and a Roman Catholic vision, in defiance, it would seem, of those restless innovators who preceded her and who came into prominence after her death”(Friedman 4). “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” and “Good Country People” are both set in the South, and O’Connor explores the tension between the old and new South. The stories are tow

Elie Wiesel used eyes as a motif in his narrative, Night, as windows to characters’ inner souls. He used eyes to assist the theme of surviving at all costs throughout the story by giving the audience an insight of people’s true emotions and status. Without eyes, we would have been blind to see past characters’ outer layers of fake emotion. There is more than the eye can see. One has to look deep into another’s eyes to see the true light or darkness within them.

Many authors choose to use biblical allusions in their stories, but no one does it like Flannery O’Connor. Her complex but yet important allusions are very key to understanding a lot of her short stories. Especially in one of her most famous stories, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” In “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” Flannery O’Connor uses biblical allusions to allow readers to receive a deeper understanding of her short story. The Misfit’s characterization, the grandmother’s characterization, and the Timothy allusion are all major examples of these biblical allusions.

Once Brown is deep into the forest, he is surrounded by people from his town acting wicked and sinful, people who he had always assumed were noble and righteous. As he is led to the altar to be received into this association of evil, he is joined by his wife, Faith. Brown cannot believe his religious and heavenly wife is there. She represents what is good to him, and he cries to her to look heavenward and save herself. But

The speaker is thinking in a childish manner, caught dwelling on how her “wool winter suit scratched.” (Shore 2) and the idiosyncrasies of her mother. Her attention is consistently darting from object to object, unable to relax her thoughts. Further into the text, feelings of doubt and skepticism emerge. When thinking that she is the chosen one, she questions God’s intentions. “Why would God choose me. . .” (Shore 57) she asks herself. The speaker wonders how could someone so seemingly insignificant and feeble lead a congregation to victory? Then, once feeling empowered by the possibility of her being able to defend her people, a tone of acceptance arises. She gains self-pride and confidence knowing that she is capable of interpreting what is occurring around her. As a Jew, she is aware of what her faith requires of her yet is unsure of how to approach them. During her visit at the synagogue, she began pondering about these responsibilities and how she should fulfill them, thus resulting in the chain of events that led to the acceptance of her obligations to her religion.

But our Everyman starts as a truly “fake” Christian and whether or not she deserves any redemption is questionable. Though she perishes like a martyr, as the Misfit confesses when he tuned to perpetrating evil deeds, the Grandmother responds that he should have started praying and that “Jesus would help”. Again, O’Connor’s attempt here is to present, by means of religious motifs, how superficial the faith of Southerners is. Grandmother’s advice comes out of convenience, not of genuine worship of God and is a commentary on how people turn to religion in the event of sickness, deathbed or

Flannery O’Connor, undoubtedly one of the most well-read authors of the early 20th Century, had many strong themes deeply embedded within all her writings. Two of her most prominent and poignant themes were Christianity and racism. By analyzing, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and “Everything that Rises Must Converge,” these two themes jump out at the reader. Growing up in the mid-1920’s in Georgia was a huge influence on O’Connor. Less than a decade before her birth, Georgia was much different than it was at her birth. Slaves labored tirelessly on their master’s plantations and were indeed a facet of everyday life. However, as the Civil War ended and Reconstruction began, slaves were not easily assimilated into Southern culture. Thus, O’Connor grew up in a highly racist area that mourned the fact that slaves were now to be treated as “equals.” In her everyday life in Georgia, O’Connor encountered countless citizens who were not shy in expressing their discontent toward the black race. This indeed was a guiding influence and inspiration in her fiction writing. The other guiding influence in her life that became a major theme in her writing was religion. Flannery O 'Connor was born in Savannah, Georgia, the only child of a Catholic family. The region was part of the 'Christ-haunted ' Bible belt of the Southern States. The spiritual heritage of the region profoundly shaped O 'Connor 's writing as described in her essay "The Catholic Novelist in the Protestant South" (1969). Many

These eyes, the eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg, represent many things to the characters in this novel. He represents, hope, despair, and God, all while staring

Brutality, humor, religion, and violence are a few themes portrayed throughout many of Flannery O’Connor’s short stories. In many of her short stories, O’Connor exposes the dark side of human nature and implements violent and brutal elements in order to emphasize her religious viewpoints. In the short stores “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” and “Revelation”, O’Connor explicitly depicts this violence to highlight the presence and action of holy grace that is given to a protagonist who exudes hypocritical qualities.

O’Connor borrowed these characteristics from her life and used them in the complex characters she would later create. Her Catholic faith is another point that drove O’Connor’s writing, especially given that she grew up in a Protestant-majority region. “Flannery O'Connor put much conscious thought into her dual role of Catholic and fiction writer” (Galloway). Her devout faith plays a huge role in her writing, as most of her characters grapple with salvation and grace. O’Connor’s influences in life were so powerful, they became the same topics that impacted her philosophy in writing.

He uses that story to say that she has not believed a long time and that she does only believe in God because she is so easy to influence.

The gaze is an important part of any literary work in that it defines the viewpoint from which the reader sees the rest of the story. The gaze, however, is also much more than a particular point of view. It is a conveyance of power, and a way in which a narrator is able to completely shape the way readers understand other characters in the story, imparting their own standards and beliefs onto an often unrealizing audience.

Hazel suffered from egocentric righteousness that day, which is, “the natural tendency to feel superior in the light of our confidence that we are in the possession of THE TRUTH.” (Paul and Elder). Hazel’s entire life, everyone she knew and respected, every situation she was submersed in preached that desegregation was fundamentally wrong. She had had no organic interaction with a view that would challenge her own, nor did she want to. Operating outside of an egocentric