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Commentary on Flannery O'Connor's short stories

 

            The literature of Flannery O'Connor can appear to be distant and unemotional, as well as unbelievably harsh and violent. Her short stories characteristically conclude with horrific fatalities or an individual's emotional ruin. While O'Connor's mentality seems to be futile and interspersed with senseless brutality, in actuality, her writing is full of symbolism and meaning that is concealed beneath a flawless narrative approach. Through assessment of the writer's motives, outlooks, and styles, an explanation for her grotesqueries can be unearthed. .
             As a Christian writer, Flannery O'Connor's work is message-oriented. She has created a style of writing that exists on both literary and religious grounds, and excels in doing justice to both. The mode of entry into O"Connor's dimension of the holy is primarily through the secular or the vulgar. (Oates, 44) It is necessary to look at how O'Connor achieved the presumably unfeasible task of producing thought-provoking Christian fiction by exploring elements of faith, style, and theme found in her stories. .
             Minimal biography is required before analyzing the range of aspects that compose the noteworthy writing of O'Connor. Born in Savannah, Georgia on March 25, 1925 to dedicated Catholic parents, Mary Flannery O'Connor first attended Vincent's Grammar School and Sacred Heart Parochial School. She later went on to Georgia State College for Women and State University of Iowa where she received her MFA in 1947. In 1951, it was discovered that she had developed the same lupus that killed her father ten years earlier. Regardless of her illness, she wrote two novels and thirty-two short stories while acquiring success and praise. She passed away on August 3, 1964 at thirty-nine years old. (Galloway).
             O"Connor's deep acknowledgment of her family's Southern legacy plays a strong role in the attitudes of her short stories. (Bence) A Good Man is Hard to Find is supported by her belief that modern society was radically changing for the worse.


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