Flannery O’Connor Essay

Flannery O’Connor has been hailed as one of the most influential contemporary writers. What makes her stories so unique is her use of grotesque themes and its effect on her mostly Christian themes. O’Connor truly sees her characters as “religious” heroes; even though some come across as evil, they know what they believe and expose their beliefs to others. “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”, “Good Country People” and “Revelation” show the Christian contrast between Evil and Innocence, which is portrayed through these so-called heroes and their prey.

Critic Dorthy Walters commented that O’Connor deals deeply in the “human Spirits” of her characters, as well as, the worlds in which they surround themselves, either by choice or fault (23). As she reveals the characters and the world in which they live, she seems to project a negative sense of righteousness in them instead of what one would expect from religious characters. Critic Fredrick Hoffman pointed out that “Miss O’Connor writes about intensely religious acts and dilemmas in a time when people are much divided on the question of what actually determines a “religious act”(20).
O’Connor takes her ideas of religion from the Protestant South but also from the point of a Roman Catholic, which gives her characters their differences. The Protestant views inflict the reality of God in the characters and seem to condemn them to be surrounded by Him, whatever their outcome or original position concerning Him.

In the story “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, the Grandmother conveys to the reader that she knows what she believes in, but when she encounters the Misfit she is thrown off by his questions and statements, leaving her questioning her original thoughts. In the story “Good Country People”, Hulga states that she believes in nothing and yet when confronted with the Bible Salesman you see a change in her beliefs; it’s almost as if she wants to believe in Christianity. And as for Mrs. Turpin in the story “Revelation”, she is portrayed as seeing herself as a good Christian woman, but through the events of the day she finds herself confronted with her “real self” and realizes her faults in being a so-called good Christian woman.

Flannery O’Connor used grotesque themes and situations to make her stories differentiated from the common story. Many of her works are classified as “Southern Gothic” because of her strong feelings and strong use of moral and physical themes. Critic Dorthy Walters points out that O’Connor uses such grotesque implications so that the reader has the image that the world can and does have hurtful and even shameful alterations (29).

In the story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”, O’Connor labels the Misfit as a demented man who said and believed “It’s no real pleasure in life”(133). The Misfit was a character, who, while he believed in Jesus, also said “Jesus thrown everything off balance. It was the same case with me except He hadn’t committed any crime and they could prove I had committed one because they had papers on me”(131). This is why the Misfit was so demented and why he caused others, to rethink God and why He would allow this to happen to someone who believes in Him, and why someone who believes in Him could do such a thing. In “Good Country People”, Hulga is a thirty-two year old woman with a wooden leg and no respect for the common person. O'Connor’s use of grotesque is through Hulga’s deformity. She uses the wooden leg at the end story to show how the leg is not Hulga’s true deformity. Her true deformity is her willingness to believe in “nothing” without really knowing what “nothing” is, which brings her to her ultimate failure and end. As the Bible Salesman leaves Hulga, he tells her “you aint so smart. I’ve been believing in nothing since I was born!(291)” In “Revelation”, O’Connor uses the young girls appearance as her grotesque theme “the poor girls face was blue with acne”(490), and she proceeds to refer to her as “the ugly girl” throughout the story. The girl is shown to have a sour attitude and a great dislike for Mrs. Turpin. Overall the reader is not given a choice to how they might see the girl because O’Connor blatantly shows her to be rude and judgmental by her use of grotesque. After studying O’Connor use of Grotesque, critic Dorthy McFarland commented that “Beneath the grotesquerie of the surface, however, a deeper level of meaning is suggested by tonal shifts and by various significant cues and allusions. For instance, religious allusions and conventional platitudes are present in most of the stories as part of the cultural baggage of the characters, and are apparently no to be taken seriously (117)”.

O’Connor’s so-called Heroes represent the Evil in her stories and the Innocent are their prey. O’Connor sees the Evil as Heroes because even though they go against Christianity, they expose the so-called Christian characters as fake. They are “fake” because they protest to believe in something whether it is religious or atheistic, and are either swayed by Evil or are exposed to not really know the origin of what they believe in.

In “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”, the Grandmother and Family representing the innocent and the Misfit is labeled as evil. Unlike most good vs. evil stories, it shows a kind of “senseless” evil and “artful” innocence. For Example, Critic Abigail Hamblen labels the Grandmother as crafty and cunning by lying about the hidden panel, secretly taking the cat, and being rather calm when she tries to conjure some sense of sympathy from the Misfit (270). In “Good Country People”, the Bible Salesman is considered evil and Hulga is innocent. The Bible Salesman is the Hero because he finds that not only does Hulga not understand what “nothing” is but also she seemed to crave for what she thought he believed in. The story’s twist is that the reader believes that the Bible Salesman is the innocent one and Hulga, the Atheist, is evil. When the Bible Salesman’s scheme is revealed, the reader realizes he is the evil hero and the impact of his plan comes into effect, leaving the reader in awe. The ugly girl represents the evil in “Revelation” and Mrs. Turpin represents the innocent. O’Connor uses the girl to make Mrs. Turpin realize who she is and what she is not. She created Mrs. Trupins character as one who thinks herself a good woman and thinks she’s doing good by thanking God for who she is, but she is wrong when she thanks Him for not making her someone else because of their social status. The people in the waiting room represent all the people she could have been. As she judges them, she places herself above them only by their appearance. When the hero tells her “Go back to hell where you came from, you old wart hog”(500), she becomes upset and that makes her think on what she is as a person.

Throughout these short stories Flannery O’Connor shows us how even the common person has a hidden past or a secret identity within themselves that even they might not be aware of. Their identities deal mostly with what they believe and how they respond to how the Heroes condemn them for their lack of knowledge or lack of faith behind their religions. Most of O’Connor’s so-called Heroes have to expose themselves for what they are, before they expose the truth behind others. She combines Heroes and grotesque themes to create a lasting style of writing that can only be heard through the pages of the short stories by Flannery O’Connor.
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