Temple Of The Holy Ghost Analysis

The following passages and their following explanations are excerpted from Flannery O’Connor’s “A Temple of the Holy Ghost “. The excerpts are an attempt to summarize what I believe to be the significance of this short story. The significance then of these passages are the representation of the struggle that one faces between being a “good person” and just being naturally imperfect and often not realizing that it is our imperfections that do make us perfect. Through the mischievous behavior and thoughts of our main character in the story, we are shown that these imperfections cannot be ignored and in fact are given to us by the Holy Ghost himself. It is through the cousin’s visit that the narrator realizes that it is ok to imperfect and

The narrator, the child, is falling out of her chair making suggestions because she is mocking them. She is a quick witted and sassy little girl and finds herself to be smarter than most of the people around her, especially her cousins, Joanne and Susan, who call themselves Temple One and Temple Two. Her cousins were visiting for a week from their convent, Mount St. Scholastica. That evening, during dinner, the narrator’s mother asks the girls why they refer to each other as temple one and temple two and they jokingly explain. The child knew the girls were mocking Sister Perpatua, but she did not find this funny, she actually felt gratified in this thought. The significance then of this passage to the story is not only to be introduced to why the girls call themselves temple one and temple two, but is a prime example or representation of how of how our narrator (or humans in general) struggle between these natural urges to not be so perfect and wanting to be a “temple of the holy ghost”. Our narrator cannot refrain herself from being a smart mouth but at the same time knows she likes the idea of being a “temple of the holy ghost” and tries her best to live up to