Flannery O Connor's Critical Analysis

Flannery O’Connor’s thought-provoking fiction often encourages readers to use critical analysis between her works. O’Connor is known for her fictional novels and short stories which are often described as “Southern Gothic”. However, she disagreed with this title, saying that it portrayed her fiction in a negative light. She much preferred the term “Catholic realism”, as it gave the idea that her works focused on the lighter side of things (O’Connor 301). There is an abundance of essays analyzing her extensive novels, including Everything That Rises Must Converge. On the contrary, one of O’Connor’s most distinguishing works is one made up of only a few pages. In A Good Man is Hard to Find, she manages to provide such a powerful message in very little words. Everything That Rises Must Converge and A Good Man is Hard to Find …show more content…
The grandmother in A Good Man is Hard to Find and Julian’s mother in Everything That Rises Must Converge are both close-minded and oblivious when they interact with other people. For example, the grandmother when she was pleading to the Misfit in A Good Man is Hard to Find and the mother when she was rummaging through her purse to give a penny to an African-American child. The two women were not thinking about how their actions will be viewed by others. O’Connor placed this very similar quality in both of these characters in order to put into perspective how easy it is to be trapped in one’s own mind and not notice how others may feel about a situation. The setting of the two works is also similar. A Good Man is Hard to Find takes place in Georgia during the 1940’s. Everything That Rises Must Converge is set in an unnamed town in the south during the 1960’s. The closeness in location and time period can explain the resemblance between the characters in both works. This also demonstrates why the characters’ dialogue and some personality traits are the