Flannery O Connor's Background

Fitzgerald, Sally. “On Faith.” Letters of Flannery O’ Connor, The Habit of Being, edited by Sally Fitzgerald, Macmillan, 1988, page 90.

Flannery O’Connor was an American author who often wrote about characters who face violent situations. These situations force the characters into a moment of crisis that awakens or alters their fate. Her short stories reflect her Roman Catholic faith and frequently discuss questions of morality and ethics. O’Connor’s Catholic upbringing influenced most of her short stories, often accumulating criticism because of her harsh portrayal of religion. O’Connor incorporates the experience of a moment of grace in her short stories to contribute to the meaning of her works and to represent her faith.

An ardent Catholic as she was, Flannery O’Connor astonishes and puzzles the readers of her most frequently compiled work, A Good Man Is Hard to Find. It is the violence, carnage, injustice and dark nooks of Christian beliefs of the characters that they consider so interesting yet shocking at the same time. The story abounds in Christian motifs, both easy and complicated to decipher. We do not find it conclusive that the world is governed by inevitable predestination or evil incorporated, though. A deeper meaning needs to be discovered in the text. The most astonishing passages in the story are those when the Grandmother is left face to face with the Misfit and they both discuss serious religious matters. But at the same time it is the

Known for her unique collection of short stories, Flannery O’Connor had a major impact on the writing industry during the 20th century. She is still to this day considered one of the most famous American authors. She very well shows that your life really impacts your writing technique, and tone of writing.

Flannery O’Connor was a short story author from Savannah, Georgia. She has produced many critically acclaimed pieces and has won several awards for them. Two distinct pieces she wrote are titled The Life You Save May Be Your Own and Good Country People. While both of her stories are unique, the underlying storyboard and character creation process that O’Connor used is the same throughout her stories. Her stories usually involve one or more self-centered woman, a younger person who become the victim of egregious crime, and a conniving male driven by his own motives. Good Country People and The Life You Save May Be Your Own do not stray from this rule. In either story, the narrative is driven around a shocking tragedy that is very unexpected. Even though in the tragedies committed in the book always have a belligerent and a victim, it is not easy to discern who amongst the two are the antagonist and the protagonist. In either of these narratives, the tragedy that occurred within the stories blurs the line between antagonist and protagonist.

The violence over the main character is very usual in Flannery O'Connor stories in order to experience conversion. The most important purpose of O'Connor was to shock her smug protagonists, like Mrs. May, out of their complacency and bring them violently into an awareness of their inadequacy before the eyes of God. The violence which accompanies the revelation of God's grace and the agent of this grace (the bull) is not a penance; for O'Connor, this violence is more similar to a blessing.

Flannery O’Connor believed in the power of religion to give new purpose to life. She saw the fall of the old world, felt the force and presence of God, and her allegorical fictions often portray characters who discover themselves transforming to the Catholic mind. Though her literature does not preach, she uses subtle, thematic undertones and it is apparent that as her characters struggle through violence and pain, divine grace is thrown at them. In her story “Revelation,” the protagonist, Mrs. Turpin, acts sanctimoniously, but ironically the virtue that gives her eminence is what brings about her downfall. Mrs. Turpin’s veneer of so called good behavior fails to fill the void that would bring her to heaven. Grace hits her with force and

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

Flannery O’Connor was born on March 25, 1925, in Savannah, Georgia. She was an American writer. O’Connor wrote two novels and 32 short stories in her life time. She was a southern writer who wrote in Southern Gothic style. In the Article, Female Gothic Fiction Carolyn E. Megan asks Dorothy Allison what Southern Gothic is to her and she responded with, “It’s a lyrical tradition. Language. Iconoclastic, outrageous as hell, leveled with humor. Yankees do it, but Southerners do it more. It’s the grotesque.”(Bailey 1) Later she was asked who one of her role models was and she stated that Flannery O’Connor was one she could relate to. One of O’Connor’s stronger works was “Good Country People” which was published in 1955.

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.

She has been said that she was one of America’s best Christian writers though. Her Christian views and her Catholic views were very difficult to catch in her writings, they were so complex critics couldn’t decide whether she was a Christian or a Roman Catholic. Her perpetual writing gifts seem to add up to the writing styles of early 19th century writers and late 20th century writers (Dunne). Flannery had her own ordinary writing style of writing, she writes in an extraordinary and exciting new style in every book (Schleifer). She expressed great figurative language throughout her writings leaving reader’s in suspense throughout all her novels

Throughout her short stories, particularly in “Good Country People,” Flannery O’Connor provides clear insight into the importance of her own Catholic faith, and the disdain she holds for any philosophy that contradicts or bastardizes it. While studying at the University of Iowa, O’Connor was exposed to many who adopted the writings of Nietzsche and the ideology of nihilism as their own, in a corrupted sense, religion. She stayed true to her faith, though. Rather than embracing the trendy worldview of her colleagues, she viewed the belief of nothing with contempt. Three years after she was diagnosed with lupus, O’Connor created “Good Country People,” a story which provides an incarnation of the faux religion through, ironically, a bible salesman

Gooch’s book A Life of Flannery O’Connor is a guide to O’Connor’s work and life. She was born in Savannah, the only child of two Irish Catholics on the rebound and named after the wife of a Civil War hero and distant cousin, Captain John Flannery. Gooch makes to our understanding of O'Connor is his thorough of her early life in Savannah and in Milledgeville, Ga. Her father, Edward O'Connor, died of lupus when she was 15 and her mother, Regina, was a strongminded and conservative woman. Gooch is a sympathetic critic of O’Connor’s life and writings. O'Connor earned a master degree in fine arts and was the first famously successful writer to come from a background of such education. Gooch is a good literary critic but never quite faces up to what is a fascinating aspect of O'Connor's art. Time and again her stories end in

Flannery O’Connor was a writer on rented time. Confined to her house throughout the final days of her illness, critics theorize that she spent a good amount of time thinking about how her life was coming to a close. Andre Bleikasten, author of “Beginnings and Endings in Flannery O’Connor,” believes that the reason why many of her stories end with such a finality