Flannery O'Connor

A Good Man is Hard to Find” was in some way frightening and shocking to me, especially because it starts out peacefully and ends with a terrible ending: the death of the grandmother, Baily, his wife, and his three children. I thought that in the sequence of the story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” resembles “The Lottery,” in which the story starts with a good day and ends with the scene where a woman who is chosen from the town lottery is stoned to death. They are also very similar in the way…

Southern Gothic is a subgenre of Gothic fiction in American literature, it was born in the early twentieth century with the works of Edgar Allan Poe. Some of the greatest authors of this movement were William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor. The themes employed by this style are death, violence, madness, and supernatural events. Authors during this movement used characters that feel “damaged” to make their stories more interesting, and also to show deeper meanings of unkind Southern…

Ambrose Bierce said it best. “All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher.” Delusion plays an important role in all of our lives, and the analysis of it can broaden our perspective on the world we live in. In Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” some of the characters represent and exhibit several distinct types of delusion. We do not see all types of delusion in their behavior, for there are countless forms of it in our world. However, the…

irony. Irony occurs when what a reader expects to happen is the complete opposite of the actual outcome. Irony helps illustrate humor especially in the works “Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” by Mark Twain and “Good Country People” by Flannery O’Connor. “Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” is a framed narrative that tells the tale of Jim Smiley who is really good at winning bets; More rather, he is good at manipulating the game to win bets. In the end of this short story, the…

From the beginning Flannery O’Connor’s writing developed into the style most commonly known as “Southern gothic”. Southern gothic is a style of literature that misleads and disrupt characters in malevolent situations. O’Connors writing not only expresses religion and morality in her stories, but also shows how the two meet head-on. O’Connor also describes her fiction subject as “the action of grace in territory held largely by the devil” (3). Many of O’Connor’s stories begin with real-life…

Many interesting points and ideas are discussed in Flannery O’Connor’s essay “The Element of Suspense in ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’”. These ideas are not only concurrent with O’Connor’s short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, but they can also be broadened and applied to all aspects of literature. O’Connor’s primary theory; one that I believe is prevalent not only in writing, but in everyday life, states that violence is the only thing capable of bringing a person back to reality, it is the…

Chris Baldick defines characterization as “the representation of persons in narrative and dramatic works. This may include direct methods like the attribution of qualities in description or commentary, and indirect (or ‘dramatic’) methods inviting readers to infer qualities from characters' actions, speech, or appearance.” (Baldick, The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms 3 ed.) Rabindranath Tagore’s use of characterization in The Child’s Return is very effective in understanding the text. One…

as well, because the religion they are brought up in. It can influence what their opinions are, and the way they carry themselves can also influence the way people perceive how they think or feel. In the short story, “Revelation”, written by Flannery O’Connor, both an eye motif and biblical allusions are used to reveal the character’s inner thoughts and emotions. Eyes aren’t just a way for the person who they belong to see, they also let others see inside. The person who this most closely…

Jhordyne Donaldson Band:H Mask Identity: Regaining Identity in Cheevers’ “ The Swimmer” and O’Connors’ “Good Country People” Thesis: Both John Cheever’s “The Swimmer” and Flannery O’Connor’s “Good Country People” use the motif of regaining of identity through the characters’ inner thoughts and actions to capture the idea of finding comfort as a shield from the outside views entailing one’s perspective and opinions from people in society. Neddy tries to swim to his fantasy world in…

The 20th century was changing the world, slaves were no longer legal, the country was being quickly industrialized, and the idea of moral ambiguity was making its way into literature as seen in the works of Ernest Hemingway, James Thurber, and Flannery O’ Connor. Jack Smurch, a character from the short story “The Greatest Man In The World, by James Thurber, is the first man to try, and succeed to fly around the world without stopping. When he accomplishes this feat, the media rushes to get…