Flannery O'Connor and the Christ-Haunted South by Ralph C. Wood

she thought of it as a symbol and implied that it was a pretty good one. For example, in a letter she recounted a story of a dinner party discussion about the Eucharist: “Mrs. In reading O’Connor’s stories, we must understand that she herself resisted attempts to reduce narratives, images, and symbols into a formulated meaning, content, or moral. Set in the “Christ-haunted” (MM 44) American South and featuring violence, racism, poverty, and deeply flawed characters, O’Connor’s fiction is often described as “grotesque.” Nevertheless, amidst the brokenness and sin, O’Connor proposes that her characters are candidates for divine grace, which often interrupts their lives in strange, shocking, and perplexing ways. She maintained regular and wide-reaching correspondence, some of which were published in 1988 in The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor (Henceforth: HB). She also wrote essays and lectures, some of which are collected in 1969’s Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose (henceforth: MM), in addition to book reviews. O’Connor wrote two novels, Wise Blood (1952) and The Violent Bear It Away (1960), and published two collections of short stories: A Good Man Is Hard to Find (1955) and Everything That Rises Must Converge (published posthumously in 1965). In 1964 she died from complications from lupus. There she wrote, maintained an active speaking schedule and correspondences, and raised peacocks.

Diagnosed with lupus in 1952, the same disease which took her father’s life in 1941, O’Connor returned to Andalusia to live with her mother, Regina. She attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and worked as a writer in New York and Connecticut. O’Connor graduated from Georgia State College for Women, where she drew cartoons for the student newspaper. In 1940, the O’Connor family moved to Milledgeville, Georgia, to live on Andalusia Farm. Mary Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964) was born and raised in Savannah, Georgia. Please help me to get down under things and find where you are ( Prayer Journal, 3-4). I do not know you God because I am in the way.

The crescent is very beautiful and perhaps that is all one like I am should or could see but what I am afraid of, dear God, is that my self shadow will grow so large that it blocks the whole moon, and that I will judge myself by the shadow that is nothing. You are the slim crescent of a moon that I see and my self is the earth’s shadow that keeps me from seeing all the moon. Session 1: Introduction to O’Connor Prayerĭear God, I cannot love Thee the way I want to.

Flannery O'Connor and the Christ-Haunted South by Ralph C. Wood