Messages And Themes In Flannery O Connor's Short Stories

When reading a few of Flannery O’Connor’s stories, one cannot help but make a connection with her intensive stories and those of a television show. Both take mostly everyday people and exaggerate them into an absurd nature. Her stories and television shows use shock factors to draw in readers and viewers, respectively. While television shows tend to vary in themes and messages, Flannery O’Connor’s short stories tend to be focused on a few limited messages and themes. Television shows are mostly mindless channels of entertainment, Flannery O’Connor uses her characters not only to entertain, but to also cause readers to reflect inward and think. While television shows don’t necessarily reflect the ideals and values of the creator, O’Connor’s tend to do just that. Flannery O’Connor’s life in the south and her belief in Christ greatly influenced the vitality of her characters, the messages articulated within her stories, and the style in which she wrote her work. The vitality of her characters: The characters in

She put her imperfect characters in often times disturbing conditions. Her writing delved into religion and the morality of her characters when such situations arose. O’Connor brilliantly uses dark twists and foreshadowing to give her stories an additional appeal. In “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”, the story opens with the grandmother not wanting to go to Florida on account of the fact that a murderer had escaped and was on the loose(361). This exemplifies O’Connor’s proficient use of foreshadowing. In “Good Country People”, the bible salesman is not as good as Hulga is led to believe. He steals her leg and runs, leaving her in a hayloft to fend for herself (384). This type of twist is what makes O’Connor’s writing so exciting and compelling. O’Connor’s life in the south greatly influenced the style and dialogue within her