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Literary analysis on flannery o'connor
Analysis of Flannery O'Connor's writings
Flannery o'connor character analysis
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There are many widely recognized characteristics that are apart of Southern literature that are present in Flannery O’Connor’s novel Wise Blood. Among the most familiar characteristics of Southern literature is a writing style that is based upon imagery. Another common characteristic which can be drawn from Southern literature is the struggle to understand the difference between what is real human experience as opposed to what is believed to be real, as well as the human/God relationship. Flannery O’Connor’s use of consistent imagery reinforces one of the major themes of Wise Blood – that man seems to only scratch the surface of things, and not see deeper into them.
The novel begins as Hazel Motes, the novels key character, is aboard a train searching to find some sort of truth. While on Board the train, Hazel is “looking one minute at the window as if he might want to jump out of it, and the next down the aisle at the other end of the car” (9). This is the first time that eye imagery is brought into play, as not only characters’ eyes are an important feature of the novel but also what they are looking at. In fact the first five paragraphs are filled with a plethora of references to eyes. “Haze looked at her a second,” then, “stared down the length of the car again” (9). Mrs. Wally Bee Hitchcock “turned to see what was back there but all she saw was a child peering around one of the sections and, farther up at the end of the car, the porter opening the closet where the sheets were kept” (9-10). “He didn’t answer her or move his eyes from whatever he was looking at” (10). “But his eyes were what held her attention the longest. Their settings were so deep that they seemed, to her, almost like passages leading somewhere a...
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...that Christ Jesus had redeemed him” (112), and also, as he tells his landlady, Mrs. Flood, “if there’s no bottom in your eyes, they hold more” (222). Mrs. Flood’s residence is where Hazel spends his final days. In an act of possible repentance, Hazel invests in his passionate belief in suffering as he binds himself, puts stones and glass in his shoes, and sleeps with barbed wire around his chest. Wanting to make some quick money, Mrs. Flood plans on asking Hazel to marry her, but ends up developing strong feelings towards him. After informing Hazel of her plans for them to get married, Hazel wanders off for three days until the cops find him on the side of the road barely conscious. Hazel dies while being driven back to Mrs. Flood’s place, where his body is taken back to. It is then that Mrs. Flood decides that Hazel can stay as long as he wants, and for free.
In Barbara Kingsolver’s novel The Poisonwood Bible, characters Adah and Rachel Price differ in their outlooks on life. Adah contrasts Rachel with her inside reality, her dark fiction, as well as her dependence on others due to her slant. Rachel, on the other hand, loves the outside reality, compares her life to that of a light fairy tale, and is independent. Kingsolver’s choice of two vastly different characters aids in the demonstration of the complexity each character has. In order to portray each character’s aspects, Kingsolver uses forms of diction, metaphors, and symbolism.
Many Characters in the novel Grand Avenue, by Greg Sarris, are wearing masks. Masks that conceal themselves and their culture in an attempt to fit into the world that has enveloped their history and stifled their heritage. The key to these masks is the eyes. The eyes of the characters in the novel tell stories.
In the world of Appalachia, stereotypes are abundant. There are stories told of mountaineers as lazy, bewildered, backward, and yet happy and complacent people. Mountain women are seen as diligent, strong, hard willed, and overall sturdy and weathered, bearing the burden of their male counterparts. These ideas of mountain life did not come out of thin air; they are the direct product of sensational nineteenth century media including print journalism and illustrative art that has continuously mislead and wrongfully represented the people of Appalachia. These stories, written and told by outsiders, served very little purpose to Appalachian natives other than means of humiliation and degradation. They served mostly to convince readers of the need for so-called civilized people and companies to take over the land and industry of the region, in particular the need for mineral rights, railroads, and logging as the mountain folk were wasting those valuable resources necessary for the common good.
The South is a region of the United States known for lively bluegrass and jazz music, African American literature, fine cuisine, family unity, a strong prevalence of religion and racial stereotypes. These customs, important to this area, have spurred artists to write about their experiences in the South. Black American poet and educator, Terrance Hayes, has been greatly influenced by the culture of the Southern United States. Terrance Hayes’ works reflect Southern influences and how being a member of the black community in the South has shaped his identity and his perception of the world.
Their Eyes Were Watching God is a novel that presents a happy ending through the moral development of Janie, the protagonist. The novel divulges Janie’s reflection on her life’s adventures, by narrating the novel in flashback form. Her story is disclosed to Janie’s best friend Phoebe who comes to learn the motive for Janie’s return to Eatonville. By writing the novel in this style they witness Janie’s childhood, marriages, and present life, to observe Janie’s growth into a dynamic character and achievement of her quest to discover identity and spirit.
The narrator’s father is being freed from slavery after the civil war, leads a quiet life. On his deathbed, the narrator’s grandfather is bitter and feels as a traitor to the blacks’ common goal. He advises the narrator’s father to undermine the white people and “agree’em to death and destruction (Ellison 21)” The old man deemed meekness to be treachery. The narrator’s father brings into the book element of emotional and moral ambiguity. Despite the old man’s warnings, the narrator believes that genuine obedience can win him respect and praise.
Tate, Allen. “A Southern Mode of the Imagination.” In Essays of Four Decades. Chicago: Swallow Press, 1968; (Third Edition) Wilmington, De: ISI Press, 1999.
While Flannery O’Connor’s Wiseblood is a story of religion, it is also a story of violence. Self-mutilation, graphic expletives, and emotional violence pepper the novel. When weaving together these two narratives of brutality and belief, a new story emerges, one that explores the relationship between religion’s social power and violence. The social power of Christianity, which can be understood as the ability to exert influence over the thoughts, beliefs, and actions of individuals and society, is widely known and well established. Yet, violence complicates religion. Violence can become a way of demonstrating power that erodes and problematizes church doctrine. Violence undermines the social power of the church by concretizing the intangible
Eyes in “The Displaced Person” tend to be illustrated with violent terms. The eyes are harsh and very rarely are they described softly; Mrs. McIntyre has eyes like “steel or granite,” characters’ gazes often “pierce,” and “icy blue eyes” and other similar descriptions are common.
Moshe the Beadle’s eyes are an example of depicting what he is thinking and feeling before and after the catastrophe. In the beginning, Moshe’s eyes are described as “dreamy” and “gazing off into the distance” (Wiesel 3). This shows his calm and content nature. But, after the catastrophe, Moshe has lost the “joy in his eyes” and has become distant (Wiesel 7). This shows how the events had taken a toll on Moshe and changed his nature. These are clear examples of how Moshe’s eyes connect to his mind and soul, as the depictions of his eyes before and after the events describe what he is feeling as well as his character.
An ardent Catholic as she was, Flannery O’Connor astonishes and puzzles the readers of her most frequently compiled work, A Good Man Is Hard to Find. It is the violence, carnage, injustice and dark nooks of Christian beliefs of the characters that they consider so interesting yet shocking at the same time. The story abounds in Christian motifs, both easy and complicated to decipher. We do not find it conclusive that the world is governed by inevitable predestination or evil incorporated, though. A deeper meaning needs to be discovered in the text. The most astonishing passages in the story are those when the Grandmother is left face to face with the Misfit and they both discuss serious religious matters. But at the same time it is the most significant passage, for, despite its complexity, is a fine and concise message that O’Connor wishes to put forward. However odd it may seem, the story about the fatal trip (which possibly only the cat survives) offers interesting comments on the nature of the world, the shallowness of Christian beliefs and an endeavour to answer the question of how to deserve salvation.
... advertisement” (Fitzgerald pg. 160). Wilson understands the symbolic meaning of the eyes and how they truly do watch over all the corrupt, shameful things the main characters do.
Imagery of the eye appears throughout Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. From the opening scene depicting an eye glaring upon the dystopian future of Los Angeles, to Dr. Chew’s genetic laboratory with hundreds of replicant eyes, to finally the graphic scene with Roy gouging out Tyrell’s eyes, eye imagery evidently plays a certain significance. What are we to make of Scott’s tremendous fascination with eyes? Traditionally, eyes have been used in literature and film as a motif representing identity, surveillance, vulnerability, and the window to one’s soul. Scott builds upon these existing definitions and uses the eye motif to help us better understand the film’s main characters and themes, as well as to help answer the fundamental question that Blade Runner offers us: What does it mean to be human?
In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching, written by Zora Neale Hurston, was a great inspirational book. Hurston wrote this fictional novel based on the society around early 1900s. She was born in the town Eatonville, Florida, where the characters were from in this book. This novel is one of my favorite books that I have read in the class because even though it was fiction, the book was realistic and historical. I enjoyed it because Hurston wrote this novel as the main character Janie Crawford telling her whole life story to her best friend Pheoby Watson. In the beginning of the novel, I was confused by the way the characters talked, talking in a southern accents but through the middle I started to pick up on the way they spoke. I also liked how Hurston toward the end of the novel when the hurricane was occurring, she mentioned the title of the book, “They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God” (151). I
It doesn’t go as well as they had planned when they met the author face to face at the author’s house. He is a drunk man, talking nonsense and criticize Hazel and Augustus by saying that, ‘like sick children.. you say you don’t want pity, but your very existence depends upon it’. Hazel felt disappointed and upset because she still can’t know the ending from the author himself. However, Peter Van Houten’s assistant, Lidewij Vligenthart, invited Hazel and Augustus to visit Anne Frank’s house in Amsterdam.