Flannery O'Connor's Stories Flannery O'Connor

"And they lived happily ever after." This picturesque phrase can hardly be described as a typical ending to a Flannery O'Connor work. In a 'standard' O'Connor piece, one can expect to find several allusions to religion, sardonic situations, and...

In Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," a lively family embarks on a trip fueled by foreboding images. Masterfully, O'Connor displays a crisp slice of Southern life. However, this picture of 1950s pastoral America is tainted with...

In "Everything that Rises must Converge" Flannery O' Connor compares the robustness of different methods of maintaining identity. The two identity schemas being compared are those of Julian, the highly individualistic, cerebral main character and...

Flannery O'Connor's Intellectuals: Exposing Her World's Narrow "Field of Vision"

by, Robin K. Brubaker

June 24, 2004

Some critics would argue that a fiction writer's Christianity, or understanding of ultimate reality in terms of the Fall of...

In the short story "The Lame Shall Enter First," author Flannery O'Connor describes a widower's attempts to mask his grief over his wife's death. In order to fill the void in his heart, the widower, Sheppard, throws himself into miscellaneous...

Horrific, extraordinary, macabre, or supernatural events and “an atmosphere of mystery and suspense” are the essentials of the American Gothic genre of literature (Phillips). The Southern Gothic sub-genre sets the events in the American South,...

In Wise Blood, Flannery O’Conner creates a spiritually empty world in which her characters attempt to live life without morals or religion. Hazel Motes, the protagonist, creates the Church without Christ to escape organized religion all together....

The idea of the grotesque is presented in both Naguib Mahfouz’s novel <i>Midaq Alley</i> and Flannery O’Connor’s short story “Good Country People.” Although the settings, plots, and characters differ, both works present an underlying...

Dehumanization of the protagonist is a common thematic element in both Kafka’s <i>The Metamorphosis</i> and O’Connor’s “A Late Encounter of the Enemy,” although the various aspects of dehumanization differ between the two works....

The destruction of tradition in the name of progress exists in Flannery O’Connor’s “A View of the Woods” and Ivan Turgenev’s <i>Fathers and Sons</i> through the main protagonists in each work. Bazarov is the central character of...

The Christian religion plays a key role in both Flannery O’Connor’s <i>Wise Blood</i> and Richard Wright’s <i>Black Boy</i>. Despite the authors’ ideological differences, both Wright’s childhood self and O’Connor’s...

Both Mrs. Turpin in Flannery O’Conner’s Revelation and the narrator in Raymond Craver’s Cathedral hold prejudiced worldviews. However, Mrs. Turpin is religious and expresses her self-satisfied thoughts openly, while the narrator dismisses others...

One of the most prominent and important features of Southern Gothic literature is its incorporation of a character that is a “freak” into the narrative, with this freak being someone who stands out due to a disability that is external, internal,...

Existentialism proposed the idea that one is a “free agent” in determining their own development through acts of one’s own free will and self-judgement. In Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” existentialist principles are embodied by...

Who doesn’t want to be a good human being? Being good could bring one to happiness, joy, faith, and grace. “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” by Flannery O'Connor, however, reveals a satiric reality in which not many people fully understand the...

The past plays a large role in William Faulkner’s A Rose for Emily, as well as in Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man Is Hard to Find. Both short stories involve women who bring up – and sometimes focus on – the past and how the world used to be....

Flannery O’Connor’s short story “Good Country People” mocks modern philosophy and those who follow it by suggesting that those who turn away from God will be taught, in one way or another, that God is real. The story, which takes place in the...

In a certain Nobel Prize acceptance speech delivered in Stockholm in 1950, William Faulkner famously declines to accept the end of man. Elaborating, Faulkner goes on to promise that “man will not merely endure: he will prevail.” This faith, he...

Flannery O’Connor’s short story appears to be greatly influenced by the time and place in which she grew up, and thus, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” lends itself easily in examination through biographical criticism. Psychoanalytic criticism can be...

Is being an intellectual dangerous? If having more knowledge than another person can cause trouble in 2014, then exceptional intelligence certainly brought even more risks to its bearer in Flannery O’Connor’s society. O’Connor, one of the most...

Flannery O’Connor’s short story “The River” tells the unfortunate story of a young boy named Harry who finds himself searching for meaning in his life. Due to the neglectfulness of his parents, he is left to figure out his own morals and beliefs...

At first glance, Flannery O’Connor’s work seems to begin and end with despair. In many of her works, she paradoxically uses styles that are grotesque and brutal to illustrate themes of grace and self-actualization. The use of violence returns her...

Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” was written in the 1950’s at a time where women were mostly homemakers. O’Connor herself was profusely talented and graduated from the most prestigious creative writing program at Iowa State...

In Flannery O’Connor’s “Everything That Rises Must Converge,” many deep-seated issues of the South are brought to the attention of the reader. While on the surface Julian, the protagonist, seems to reject the ideas of the old South such as slavery...