Flannery O'Connor

Paper Summary:

This paper provides brief biographical information on the life of Flannery O'Connor, discusses the influence of her religious upbringing on her writing, and analyzes the themes, characters, and story lines of several of her stories.

From the Paper:

"A devout Catholic peering critically at Southern evangelical Protestant culture, Flannery O'Connor never separates faith and place from her writings. Her upbringing and her life story become inextricably intertwined with her fiction, especially in her short stories. O'Connor was born Mary Flannery O'Connor on March 25, 1925, the only daughter of Regina Cline and Edwin Francis. Having grown up in Savannah and living most of her life in Georgia, Flannery possessed a uniquely disturbing yet reverential perspective on Southern life and culture. Moreover, her Catholic belief and upbringing lent the overtly Biblical symbolism to her stories, many of which twist the sacred into the profane and vice-versa. Flannery, who dropped her first name when she attended the University of Iowa, wrote throughout her entire life, in spite having a debilitating disease called disseminated lupus, which caused her early death in 1964. However, even in her weakest physical conditions, O'Connor discovered the will to write her characteristically strange, poignant short stories. She also published two novels as well as various essays, but Flannery is best known for her short stories like "A Good Man is Hard to Find", and "Good Country People". Thematic threads run throughout her stories and her two novels, and in fact, readers can discover distinct similarities between characters in different tales. Among the most common elements found in almost all of O'Connor's fiction include religious hypocrisy, warped personalities, the dichotomies of Southern culture, and macabre, even violent situations, people, and relationships."

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