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Grotesque Theme In Flannery O Connor's Literary Work

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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

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