How Violence Brings Moment Of Grace Short Story

How Violence can Bring Moments of Grace

Violence, Humanity, Grace. These are three reoccurring themes throughout Flannery O’Connors short stories. As one looks at O’Connor’s stories one starts to see a pattern, or a similarity between each of the stories. One might describe it as “getting to know a personality” (Mays 419). As we focus on three stories, A Good Man is Hard to Find, Everything That Rises Must Converge, and “Good Country People”, by American fiction writer Flannery O’Connor we start to see distinct characteristics. O’Connor’s stories are set in the deep south where racism is often times prevalent. O’Connor’s characters often find themselves in difficult situations which can even be tragic. Most of her stories start out on a happier

O’Connor is quoted as saying “violence is strangely capable of returning characters to reality and preparing them to accept their moment of grace”. In all three of these stories the character’s usually at the end accept reality as what it is and take their moment of grace. Moments of grace can happen anywhere at any time, and often times happens because of a violent or traumatic event. O’Connor’s first story is A Good Man is Hard to Find. This story is set in the deep south, and the main character is a grandmother, and a man named the Misfit. The grandmother in this story, who is unnamed, is very judgmental as well as often times sees herself as superior to others by her saying she is “a lady” (Mays 429). We see throughout the story that the grandmother is very selfish, and hypocritical. She claims to do things because of her guiding conscious and morals but in reality everything she says and does is for herself. In the story the grandmother causes her family to get into a wreck on an old dirt road which leads to her families tragic demise by a man named the misfit. The misfit is another important character in the story. He is violent and in his opinion misunderstood. Unlike the grandmother he

This story takes place in the south during the civil rights movement when people were trying to eliminate poverty and racism from the society that they lived in. There are four important characters in this story, and the two main ones are Julian and his mother. Julian is a recent college graduate who lives with his mother but knows “some day [he’ll] start making money” (Mays 448). Julian sees the world as ever changing during the civil rights movement and does not like or condone racism. Although this is true he subconsciously is small minded and petty just like his mother. His mother often makes racist remarks and will not find herself sitting next to a black African American adult. She often would bring up the topic of race to Julian “every few days like a train on an open track” (Mays 449). She also makes her son ride the bus with her to the YMCA because of the new changes due to the civil rights movement and in some ways this makes Julian mad. As they begin to board the bus Julian and his mother argue but quickly board. Shortly later a black woman and her son named Carver board. Carver sits next to Julian’s mother, she does not mind, and Carver’s mother sits next to Julian. Carver’s mother is an impatient woman who ironically wears the same hat as Julian’s mother. The hat in many ways is a symbol of the ever changing south during the civil rights movement. It symbolizes the social equality between