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Personal analytical reflection on southern gothic literature
Southern gothic essays
Southern gothic essays
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There are many great writers here in the United States. Flannery O’Conner is one of the greatest Southern writers. O’Conner’s stories evoked the rhythms of rural southern speech and manners in insulated settings where widely diverse characters mingle. She had many stories such as, Everything That Rises Must Converge and Wise Blood (O’Connor). She was born in Savannah, Georgia in 1925. Shortly after being born, she moved to Atlanta with her family, but then moved to Milledgeville, Georgia. Her father was then diagnosed with Lupus, which is a disease or condition marked by inflammation of the skin. O’Conner’s story “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” published in 1955, is one of her most famous short stories about Southern Gothic literature. Southern Gothic writing is mostly about eccentric characters, strange events, and local color to create a moody and unsettling description of how life was in South America. There were many historical events that happened in the 1950s such as, Disneyland Opens, Emmett Till murdered, James Dean dies in a car accident, Rosa Parks refused to give her seat up on a bus, and Warsaw Pact signed. Also another big thing that happened was the Korean War begun.
Flannery O’Conner was a Catholic, which influenced almost all of her fictions stories. O’Conner lives a spiritual life in a secular world. She takes a broad approach to spiritual issues by providing morals, social, and psychological contexts that offer a wealth of insights and passion that her readers have found both startling and absorbing. Characters in her story are changeling to understand. They initially seem radically different from people we know, but then turn out somehow familiar, somehow connected to us. The protagonist of this story is the gra...
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... Misfit has a doubt in Jesus, it leads him to think that there is no ultimate point in life, and that there is no right or wrong. The grandmother has a moment of divine grace that might transform the grandmother and the Misfit.
Flannery O’Connor once said “All my stories are about the action of grace on a character who is not very willing to support it, but most people think of these stories as hard, hopeless and brutal” (Flannery O’Connor quote).
Works Cited
"Flannery O'Connor quote." Brainy Quote. Xplore, n.d. Web. 1 May 2014. .
O’Conner, Flannery. “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. Michael Meyer. 9th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011.
Ruppersburg, Hugh. “Short Stories of Flannery O’Connor.” New Georgia Encyclopedia. 26 August 2013. Web. 01 May 2014.
Douglas, Ellen. "O'Connor's 'A Good Man is Hard to Find.'" Contemporary Literature Criticism. Eds. Carolyn Riley and Phyllis Carmel Mendelson. Detroit, MI: Gale, 1976. Vol. 6. 381.
Religion is a pervasive theme in most of the literary works of the late Georgia writer Flannery O'Connor. Four of her short stories in particular deal with the relationship between Christianity and society in the Southern Bible Belt: "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," "The River," "Good Country People," and "Revelation." Louis D. Rubin, Jr. believes that the mixture of "the primitive fundamentalism of her region, [and] the Roman Catholicism of her faith . . ." makes her religious fiction both well-refined and entertaining (70-71). O'Connor's stories give a grotesque and often stark vision of the clash between traditional Southern Christian values and the ever-changing social scene of the twentieth century. Three of the main religious ingredients that lend to this effect are the presence of divine meanings, revelations of God, and the struggle between the powers of Satan and God.
Flannery O’Connor was an American writer who wrote several short stories. O’Connor was known for shocking her readers with violence. O’ Connor had strong Christian beliefs that were reflected in her writings. O’ Connor once said:
O’Connor, Flannery. "A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” The Story and Its Writer. Charters, Ann. Compact 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/ST. Martin's, 2011. 676-687. Print.
Although Flannery O’Connor didn’t even live to see her 40th birthday, her fiction endures to this day. In “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and “Everything that Rises Must Converge,” O’Connor effectively deals with the two huge themes (topics) of religion and racism. These two themes are crucial to understanding much of O’Connor’s great works and are relevant to all readers of O’Connor throughout all ages.
Flannery O’Connor teaches a lot of lessons in Good Country People that can be applied to anyone’s everyday life. O’Connor gives perfect examples and reasoning on why people should have faith and believe in some type of religion. She also teaches the lessons that people should have an open heart and see beyond themselves and their beliefs, instead of being so arrogant and thinking they know it all. Identity, symbolism, and reality was communicate in this story’s theme, which revolves around man’s arrogance in thinking that he knows it
A common aspect of Flannery O’Connor’s literary works is her use of heavily flawed characters. O’Connor’s characters often exhibit gothic and incongruous characteristics. O’Connor’s short story, “Good Country People,” is no exception to her traditional writing style with characters such as Hulga Hopewell, Mrs. Hopewell, Mrs. Freeman, and Manley Pointer. O’Connor uses gothic characterization and symbolism to produce a great short story about a few ruthless country people.
Flannery O’Conner, a winner of the National Book Award for fiction, was a prominent Southern Gothic short story author whose works deal with the protagonist, usually having a deformity or disability, is met with a challenge of faith and a conflict of intelligence. Although both challenge and conflict are found in all of her works, however it is very apparent with in Good Country People and The Lame Shall Enter First. O’Conner uses character relations and minor characters that are broken prophets to generate and create each story.
As I read Flannery O’Connor’s short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, I find myself being completely consumed by the rich tale that the author weaves; a tragic and ironic tale that concisely and precisely utilizes irony and foreshadowing with expert skill. As the story progresses, it is readily apparent that the story will end in a tragic and predictable state due to the devices which O’Connor expertly employs and thusly, I find that I cannot stop reading it; the plot grows thicker with every sentence and by doing so, the characters within the story are infinitely real in my mind’s eye. As I consider these factors, the story focuses on two main characters; that of the grandmother, who comes across as self-centered and self-serving and The Misfit, a man, who quite ingeniously, also appears to be self-centered and self-serving. It is the story behind the grandmother, however, that evidence appears to demonstrate the extreme differences between her superficial self and the true character of her persona; as the story unfolds, and proof of my thought process becomes apparently clear.
A story without style is like a man without personality: useless and boring. However, Flannery O’Connor incorporates various different styles in her narratives. Dark humor, irony, and symbolism are perhaps the utmost powerful and common styles in her writing. From “Revelation” and “Good Country People” to “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” all of O’Connor’s stories consist of different styles in writing.
O'Connor, Flannery. "A Good Man Is Hard to Find." The Story and Its Writer An Introduction to Short Fiction. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford / St. Martin's, 2011. 1042-053. Print.
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.
Flannery O’Connor’s short story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” is about the misfortunes a family experiences while embarking on a vacation, but it goes further to depict the divergence between the superficial conflict in everyday life and the true battles in life threatening situations. O’Connor’s use of tone, syntax, and diction helps to develop the characters and illustrate the struggle of good versus evil, shedding light on the harsh reality of the prevalence and depth of real evil.
Whitt, Margaret. Understanding Flannery O’Connor. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1995. 47-48, 78. Print.
However, not all characteristics of the characters are bad; it is that a mixture of good and bad is found in most of the characters. Two authors who express the Southern Gothic writing style are William Faulkner, who wrote “A Rose for Emily,” and Flanner O Conner, the author of “Good Country People” and “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” A great example of this type of writing is “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O' Conner. It is a story about a family trip gone that has turned out bad, a selfish grandma causes her entire family to be stranded after the car crashes and is put into a ditch.