ipl-logo

Grotesque Theme In Flannery O Connor's Literary Work

1233 Words5 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Literary analysis for flannery o'connor

Flannery O’Connor’s literary work is heavily debated due to its irregular nature. Most short stories follow a typical plotline in which there is a happy ending, while Flanery O’Connor’s work defies this by using an untraditional ending. “She did not wear rose-colored glasses, and her eye seized upon the depraved, the vulgar, and the grotesque.”(Jordan 48) The topics and themes that she tackles such as race, narcissism, and religion are typically omitted from other writings due to their controversial nature. She also does not focus on the positive or good features of these themes and uses violence to depict them. She tackles issues from a different perspective that leads the reader to think deeper. “It makes us wince even while we laugh,” (Jordan …show more content…

Common recurring themes are race, region, narcissism, and grotesque nature. She typically uses multiple themes together to complement each other. The grotesque theme draws most readers to O’Connor because it makes her so unique as a writer. Raegal states that she uses this grotesque factor of her work to teach others to be “watchful for the intervention of grace in the lives of her characters,”(Ragen 387). She uses the grotesque to force the reader to dig deeper into the surface level of the story. Her unique view on religion is a result of the grotesque intertwining with spirituality. She discusses the unfavorable traits of Christianity, which include “judgment, as well as mercy, and the fear, as well as the love, of the Lord.”(Ragen 393) However she still demonstrates her own christian beliefs. She showed the traditional Christian figure as the ideal character and the atheist as the grotesque. Another recurring theme in O'Connor's stories is narcissism or arrogance, which is demonstrated through her characters and their personalities. This is shown through the grotesque type of character that is simply only concerned with themselves and believes that they are above everyone else. O’Connor however incorporated this idea of narcissism into Christianity. “Christianity is necessary for psychological health: the nonbeliever is necessarily narcissistic”(Scheurich and Mullen 548) This implies that Christianity is better and the ideal in her

Show More
Related
1050 Words | 5 Pages

One example of O’Connor’s stylistic elements is the presence of headstrong women as the main focus in her stories. For example, the grandmother in “A good man is hard to find” is

Read More
1744 Words | 7 Pages

Flannery O’Connor uses the literary device of the epiphany in many of her short stories. The epiphany, typically used at the conclusion of the short story, highlights the redemptive possibilities for characters that have become engulfed by the increasing secular world. That being said, the chance for redemption is not a smooth and carefree process. Several of O’Connor’s short stories contain a protagonist that experiences an epiphany that transforms them, only then to suffer from some act of violence that solidifies their move towards Christianity. In Good Country People and Revelation, the development of the protagonists and their eventual epiphanies reveal the fullest implications of the stories’ themes.

Read More
1504 Words | 7 Pages

The Church of Flannery O’Connor Flannery O’Connor is nothing more than a preacher hiding behind a mask of literary devices. O’Connor was a devote Catholic, and it comes as no surprise that her literary works often contain biblical “lessons”, one just has to dig through all of her figurative language to see this. Flannery O’Connor will never quote bible verses, noris never going to say “here you go, here is the message about God and Faith that I want you to understand”, one will never find it that black and white. Instead, she is going to put the reader’s heart through immense pain, heartbreak, and suffering, then allow them to find the biblical meaning on their own. In a way, Flannery’s goal is for readers of her books to go and use the

Read More
936 Words | 4 Pages

Jalissa Sheppard Professor Conway April 7th, 2015 Flannery O'Connor is a writer who is well known for stories like "A Good Man Is Hard To Find" and "The Life You Save May Be Your Own". Although both stories rely on theme and foreshadowing, she uses these elements to paint a larger picture. Her stories can sometimes show violence and or redemption, but there is always a lesson in the end. O'Connor uses theme in order to foreshadow to readers her inevitable endings. In "A Good Man Is Hard To Find", a family vacation suddenly ends violently.

Read More
1086 Words | 5 Pages

Brinkmeyer is an English professor at the University of South Carolina. He has written two books “Remapping Southern Literature: Contemporary Southern Writers and the West, Katherine Anne Porter's Artistic Development”. The article was written in 1986, the article closely relates to the Catholicism upbringing of O’Connor and how she was influenced to write on divine grace and how each character could possibly be saved or turned to love God. Brinkmeyer states “O'Connor shows no such reticence in most of her fiction, and in this lack of timidity she resembles many evangelical preachers” (Brinkmeyer). Mrs. Turpin shouted out racist things and thought of herself to be above all.

Read More
790 Words | 4 Pages

Wise Blood and The Catholicism By Reem Abbas 43380421 Flannery O’Connor is one of the greatest Southern writers during the twentieth century. She is considered as a faithful and a good Christian writer. In her fiction, she never neglects her Catholic concerns. The large respect for O'Connor’s religion appears in most of her literary works.

Read More
855 Words | 4 Pages

She disliked the comparisons between herself and Carson McCullers, a writer of contemporary novels and short stories. O’Connor was also compared to the author Tennessee Williams she preferred to be compared to Nathaniel Hawthorne who was also a writer. I think that O’Connor’s being raised in a religious home played a big part in her stories. In her book (A Good Man Is Hard To Find) the grandmother talks about Jesus a good bit with the Misfit she doesn’t show a lot religious tendencies, throughout the rest of the story she doesn’t really bring it up until the end of the story when she thinks that Jesus might save her from being killed.

Read More
543 Words | 3 Pages

We even see this theme again in Good Country People. Hulga’s pessimistic view of the world is central to the story, allowing her to quickly judge the salesman for what he truly is when he pulls a flask out from inside the bible. This reoccurring theme, concerning our background and the way we judge people, must have been very important to O’Connor. Skillfully, O’Connor knits the theme into both short stories, miraculously basing the entire plot and characters around this central

Read More
688 Words | 3 Pages

The general theme is used in O’Connor’s story mentioned. The tone develops the theme through the character’s dialogue, actions, and the gender roles of

Read More
1142 Words | 5 Pages

Flannery O’Connor is a renowned Southern author, noted for her gothic works and heavily Catholic themes. She focuses predominantly on racial tensions, morality, and divine grace. The religious and moral themes of her short story, A Good Man is Hard to Find, converge on the character of the grandmother. Despite the self-proclamations of fulfilling what it means to be a Southern lady, Grandmother holds a superficial grasp of her religion. Throughout the story, the Grandmother never truly changed, only her ostensible actions did.

Read More
909 Words | 4 Pages

Through these ironic and satirical methods, O’Connor takes a stance against racism. She humorously displays the grandmother in the caricature of the racist old woman who unwittingly makes offensive and contradictory comments about racism and peoples. For many readers they will find it amusing simply because they can relate to it in their own experience with the elderly, everyone, however, can appreciate the irony behind her contradictions. These contradictions show the inherent problem with racism, that it simply has no logical sense behind it. The story format is the perfect platform to humorously display this too, because it gives the reader a bird 's eye view.

Read More
1129 Words | 5 Pages

Flannery O’Connor’s short story, “Revelation,” explores the harsh epiphany of a southern woman named Ruby Turpin. It seems appropriate that O’Connor created a story that was centered around a life-changing realization given the fact that O’Connor’s life stopped abruptly due to lupus shortly before she published “Revelation.” Nevertheless, her unfortunate condition did not stop O’Connor’s ability to employ rhetorics in the story which significantly supports the theme of judgement, religion, and racism. O’Connor’s exceptional capability to appeal to audience makes “Revelation” a compelling yet realistic story to read.

Read More
1077 Words | 5 Pages

O’Connor proudly admits to being a devout Catholic and having a “modern” conscience that causes her to struggle with “contemporary” issues (396). Even to this day, “Revelation” could be considered a controversial story, which means O’Connor must not have cared about being popular, nor to conform and be like everyone else. Josephine Hendin spoke to a woman who witnessed O’Connor at a wedding shower. According to the witness, O’Connor was standing apart from the other women and frowning. Hendin says, “Neither the devil nor her mother could make her say yes to this fiercely gracious female society, but Flannery O’Connor could not say no even in a whisper” (398).

Read More
1873 Words | 8 Pages

Beauty and the Beast is a well known Disney story everyone knows. The story follows a man who was once beautiful, but his arrogance led to him being turned into this terrifying monster known as the Beast. The Beast is a well known grotesque character because he symbolizes what arrogance will do to a man[or woman]. The definition of grotesque is “Odd or unnatural in shape, appearance, or character; fantastically ugly or absurd; bizarre”(Dictionary.com). Flannery O’Connor is a well known writer who writes in a Southern Gothic writing style to convey a grotesque image in her characters and settings because she believes that its the only way to get people to see the way she sees as she’s stated in her quote, “I am interested in making a good case

Read More
1130 Words | 5 Pages

Aligning the Psychological with the Theological: Doubling and Race in Flannery O 'Connor 's Fiction. " Flannery O 'Connor Review, vol. 13, Jan. 2015, pp. 78-89. EBSCOhost, https://thomasaquinas.edu/pdfs/alumni/everything-that-rises.pdf

Read More

More about Grotesque Theme In Flannery O Connor's Literary Work

Related Topics

Open Document