Flannery O

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Flannery OConnor
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Biography

• Southern Gothic writer
• Born in Savannah, GA an only child
• She grew up in the region part of the
  Christ-haunted Bible Belt.
• She was diagnosed with lupus and bound to
  crutches.
• She died at the age of 39.

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OConnor said

• Whenever Im asked why Southern writers
  particularly have a penchant for writing about
  freaks, I say it is because we are still able to
  recognize one.

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Continued Each story is

• The action of grace in territory is held
  largely by the devil.
• an action that is totally unexpected, yet
  totally believable.
• An act of violence, which is the extreme
  situation that best reveals what we are
  essentially.

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OConnor said . . .

• She felt a good deal more kinship with the
  Souths backwoods prophets and shouting
  fundamentalists than with those politer
  elements for whom the supernatural is an
  embarrassment and for whom religion has become a
  department of sociology or culture or personality
  development.

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• The freak in modern fiction is usually
  disturbing to us because he keeps us from
  forgetting that we share in his state.
• She describes her short fiction as nine stories
  about original sin.
• What has given the South her identity is the
  knowledge that evil is not simply a problem to be
  solved, but a mystery to be endured.

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• I suppose the reasons for the use of so much
  violence in modern fiction will differ with each
  writer who uses it, but in my own stories I have
  found that violence is strangely capable of
  returning my characters to reality and preparing
  them to accept their moment of grace.

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Nihilist Views

• A nihilist believes in nothing.
• Life is without objective meaning, purpose, or
  intrinsic value.
• Hulga thinks she believes fully in this.
• Where do we see that actually Hulga believes in
  something?

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Nietzsche

• Hulga highlights a passage in one of her
  textbooks by this philosopher
• The premise of that quote was that nothing
  becomes of nothing.
• He also argued that atheism is an intellectual
  triumph over Christianity.

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Manley Pointer

• What does Manley personify?
• His name implies that he will point out something
  to her.
• What does he ultimately show her?

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What is OConnors theme?

• Is she trying to say Nihilism ultimately wins?

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• Which characters reach a state of grace? Does
  the violence cause this state?
• Where is the humor in the stories?
• What are some key elements of OConnors style?

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