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The Benefits Of Southern Gothic Writing: Flannery O Connor

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The Benefit of Believing
Southern Gothic writing has been around since the 18th century. Many have written under this genre, but writers such as Flannery O’Connor have perfected it and made it popular. In Flannery O’Conner’s literary works, she gives both the characters and various events a grotesque persona in order to give an exaggerated point of view of life. She over stresses in order to show how life can be horrible if you don’t put your faith into something. Having no faith leaves one feeling baron, empty, and in tragedy. A few of O’Conner’s stories that display this theme are Wise Blood, ‘Good Country People,’ ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find,’ and ‘Greenleaf.’
In Flannery O’Conner’s novel, Wise Blood, the main character, Hazel Motes, is …show more content…

The grandmother’s characteristics regrettably make her the worst character of the whole family. While her grandchildren are annoying and sassy, she is manipulative, persistence (in a negative way), and a liar. She hears about a killer and tries to scare her child so that she can get the family vacation she dreamed of. She tells Bailey, "Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is loose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida and you read here what it says he did to these people. Just you read it. I wouldn 't take my children in any direction with a criminal like that loose in it. I couldn 't answer to my conscience if I did” (pg. 454). When her son doesn’t comply, she convinces them to at least visit a plantation during their trip. She thinks she knows where she’s going, but her lie leads to the car crashing. After the wreckage, a man appears. They all think its help, but they are wrongly mistaken. When The Misfit appears, he slowly executes the grandmother’s whole family, except for her. The entire time, she speaks to him about how well he is and how there’s still time for him to change who he is. She attempts to communicate and change the mentality of The Misfit. Constantly, she tells him, "Pray, pray," the grandmother began, "pray, pray . . ." (pg.) The pressure she puts on him to embrace his religion only irritates him. Due to his loss of faith, religion, and hope, he feels no remorse. Trying to help him find his faith, “She reached out and touched him on the shoulder. The Misfit sprang back as if a snake had bitten him and shot her three times through the chest” (pg.467). She is shot due to her belief and

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In the first part, Flannery O'Connor builds a structure using archetypes so she can use them to deliver a powerful message in the second part. In this story, the author's intent was to write a tragedy where an innocent character is tormented and then killed. The treatment of the grandmother in the early section of the story sets her up to this pattern. This comes about in many ways.

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And because of her actions, she puts her family and herself in a terrible situation, which leads to the demise of them all. Grandmother’s dishonesty begins when she brings her cat along for the trip to Florida. She does so behind her son’s back, because she knows that he will not approve. This would seem harmless initially, however, secretly bringing the cat along turns out to be a terrible idea. Another example of the grandmother’s dishonesty is when she lies about the old house that she wants to see.

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The speaker’s grandmother is originally presented in a way that causes the ending to be a surprise, saying, “Her apron flapping in a breeze, her hair mussed, and said, ‘Let me help you’” (21-22). The imagery of the apron blowing in the wind characterizes her as calm, and when she offers to help her grandson, she seems to be caring and helpful. Once she punches the speaker, this description of her changes entirely from one of serenity and care to a sarcastic description with much more meaning than before. The fact that the grandmother handles her grandson’s behavior in this witty, decisive way raises the possibility that this behavior is very common and she has grown accustomed to handling it in a way that she deems to be effective; however, it is clearly an ineffective method, evidenced by the continued behavior that causes her to punish the speaker in this manner in the first place.

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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.

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She only looks for problems in the world around her and is quick to criticize people other than herself. Her interaction with The Misfit clearly shows how selfish she truly is. When The Misfit shows up after their car veers off the road, the grandmother and her family’s life is put in danger. She never once seems to care about the fate of her grandchildren when their lives are threatened by The Misfit (Mitchell). Instead, the first thing that the grandmother does is think about herself and question The Misfit’s will to murder a lady (referring to herself).

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The grandmother is trying to save herself by constantly talking and trying to convince the Misfit not to shoot her, saying, "You've got good blood! I Know you wouldn't shoot a lady! Pray!" (408). Her constant rambling and attempt to make the Misfit feel guilty eventually leads to the death of her family and herself.

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The Grandmother is the only member of the family still alive at this point. The misfit holds the grandmother at gunpoint. The grandmother uses faith as a way to escape death and pleads for the character to spare her life. “Pray!” The grandmother pleads pathetically.

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"Faith is what someone knows to be true, whether they believe it or not," said Flannery O 'Conner, who is the author of " The Life You Save May be Your Own" (BrainyQuote). Flannery O 'Connor was a Roman Catholic and she often reflect her faith in her writings. She is one of the most famous American Literature writer who writes in the style of Southern Gothic (Holt 940). And this short stories of hers has gothic humor in it because it contains both horror and romance. In "The Life You Save May be Your Own", O 'Connor used symbolism and imagery to bring out her theme, which is moral corruption and the search of the meaning of life.

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and they are all planning a trip to Florida. Although it has been decided that they are going to Florida, the grandmother is frustrated and tries to convince her son and his family that they should go to Tennessee instead since more family lives there and there are sights to see there. She also argues that going to Florida would only put the family in danger as there was a serial killer on the loose who goes by the name of “Misfit”. This, in itself, already raises a red flag for readers since they just so happen to be travelling to a place where a serial killer is running loose. Despite the grandmother’s protests against their trip to Florida, they all get in the car and begin their journey.

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Flannery O’Connor’s short story, Good Country People, is a masquerade of characters who pretend to be something they are not. The wisdom of Mrs. Hopewell and Mrs. Freeman hide only shallowness, the pious Manley Pointer is a cunning, deceptive trickster with a perverse hobby, while the nihilist Hulga hides, behind of seeming indifference towards faith and contempt for the simple-minded people surrounding her, a much profound and repressed need for the spiritual side of life. The first clue to Hulga’s search for divinity is her resemblance to O’Connor herself. The author’s “crippling, killing disease” (Horner), lupus, forced her to stay at home, and her life might have taken an entirely different direction had she not had this condition.

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She is only trying to convince the misfit that he is a good man because she wants to be freed, and her life is in shambles. Also, the grandmother has already gone back on her word multiple of times, calling the misfit a big, bad, and scary man. Now all of the sudden he is a good man. Therefore, the grandmother still has not changed a

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The grandmother is the central character who grows and changes as the story develops. She regularly passes judgment on others. She assumes that her conscience is a guiding force in her life, such as when she tells Bailey that her conscience would not allow her to take the children in the same direction as the Misfit. She attacks the children’s mother for not traveling to a place that would allow the children to be broad. She also takes any opportunity to judge the lack of goodness in people in the world

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The story opens with a man named Bailey who is going on a trip with his family to Florida. However, his mother had other plans and becomes the "manipulative grandmother lecturing her apathetic son" (Sparrow). At first she tries to convince her son to change the trip destination saying ""(O 'Connor). It might be inferred that she meant well by warning Bailey about the prison escapee traveling in the same direction. Unfortunately, later in the story the reader finds out that .

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In two southern short stories “Barn Burning” by William Faulkner, and “Sweat” by Zora Neale Hurston, the main characters resolve conflicts in an ironic manner. In “ Father’s and Son’s: The Spiritual Quest in Faulkner’s “Barn Burning”, Oliver Billingslea briefly discusses the irony within Faulkner’s “Barn Burning”. Irony in a persistent theme within southern gothic literature. In Faulkner’s “Barn Burning” Sarty choses to solve his problems through defiance, his rebellion can be seen as a replication of his father’s, the very thing he is resentful of.

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The grandmother uses Jesus as a scapegoat to show how she is a child of God while the Misfit tells of how he really perceives Jesus and that there is no justification of his actions. In the event of the car accident, the Grandmother was left with a physical crisis that quickly showed as her family was sent off into the woods to be killed one by one. This soon transitioned to a spiritual crisis both between the Grandmother and the Misfit as she uses Jesus's name to try and escape her fate. This spiritual crisis leads the characters to express their personal conception of reality and how they perceive the revelation of the situation that they are in. The Grandmother has a sense that reality should revolve around her and that she should manipulate tools such as religion to benefit her outcome.

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