Flannery O'Connor

Paper Summary:

Virtually all of Flannery O'Connor's short stories contain the receiving of grace by an unworthy protagonist at the tale's climatic moment. The hero of "Parker's Back" gets a Catholic, Byzantine tattoo of Christ on his back to please (unsuccessfully) his fundamentalist Protestant wife. The grandmother of "A Good Man is Hard to find" sees the face of the divine in the escaped convict known only as the 'misfit.' Even in the hearts of the most sinful of O'Connor's characters, it is possible for human beings, the author suggests, to receive grace. This paper shows how grace comes unexpectedly to these characters, as it does to all human beings in O'Connor's theological understanding of the world, but it does come, blessedly and however briefly, and the human heart is changed for the better as a result.

From the Paper:

"Grace is sudden, democratic and traumatic, in O'Connor's terms. Even the epileptic girl who attacks Mrs. Turpin in "Revelation," is a catalyst "in the process of spiritual redemption." (Bernardo, "Flannery O'Connor," 2003) Like her counterparts in other O'Connor stories, she jars Mrs. Turpin out of her easy assumptions about life, and catapults Mrs. Turpin into a newer and more profound relationship with the Divine power of God to work miracles in the world, that the woman previously and smugly assumed as a given, something she already knew and was well versed in because of her superior lifestyle and economic gifts. (Bernardo, "Flannery O'Connor," 2003)"

More papers on Flannery O'Connor:

• Comparison Essay # 71219 : "Flannery O'Connor and Alice Walker"
• Analytical Essay # 33793 : "Irony in the Works of Flannery O'Connor"
• Book Review # 119068 : "Flannery O'Connor"
• Analytical Essay # 7728 : "Flannery O'Connor: "A Good Man is Hard to Find"

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