Transcript Slide 1

“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
1925-1964
Born: Savannah, GA, moved to Milledgeville, GA at age
of 12; systemic lupus eventually took her life at age 39.
Uniqueness of O’Connor
•Profoundly religious –
Catholic upbringing; called
herself “the Catholic novelist
in the Protestant South”
•Painstaking & disciplined
writer
•Southern Gothic Style –at
times a deeply sardonic
sense of humor
•
•
•
•
Increasingly concerned with race relations towards the end of her life
Lupus –caused her to develop a deep sensitivity to misfits & outsiders;
showed sympathy to pain & suffering of others
Influences: Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne (interested in the
grotesque realm & dark side of human nature)
Fascinated by birds of all kinds; raised ducks, hens, geese, and any
sort of exotic bird she could obtain; often incorporated images of
peacocks in her books
Her Works
►2 novels:
Wise Blood (1952)
The Violent Bear It Away (1960)
► 2 books of short stories:
A Good Man Is Hard to Find &
Other Stories (1955)
Everything That Rises Must
Converge (posthumously in 1965)
► 32 short stories
"Anybody who has survived his
childhood has enough information about
life to last him the rest of his days."
Her Formal Education
• 1945: graduated from GA
•
State College for Women
1947: finished masters degree
in creative writing from Univ. of
Iowa (prestigious writers’
workshop)
“I am a writer because writing is
the thing I do best.”
Her Home
Each year the University
of GA gives out an award
called The Flannery
O’Connor Award
for short fiction.
Birth place & childhood home
of Flannery O’Connor –
Lafayette Square,
Savannah, GA
O’Connor Remembered
Right: O’Connor, later in life, as
lupus began to take its toll;
Below: the typewriter where
she pounded out her Southern
Gothic stories.
The Atlanta Journal
observed that
O'Connor's "deep
spirituality qualified
her to speak with a
forcefulness not
often matched in
American literature."
One Critics Remarks:
“Flannery O'Connor is a Christian
writer, and her work is messageoriented, yet she is far too
brilliant a stylist to tip her hand;
like all good writers, crass
didacticism is abhorrent to her.
Nevertheless, she achieves what
no Christian writer has ever
achieved: a type of writing that
stands up on both literary and the
religious grounds, and succeeds
in doing justice to both.”
Patrick Galloway, Critic
One month before she died
in August 1964 she made
this chilling comment: “The
wolf, I’m afraid, is inside
tearing up the place.”