 |
|
FLANNERY O'CONNOR
(1925-64) |
 |
BACKGROUND
- Savannah & Milledgeville, Georgia
- LUPAS
- rare, incurable blood disease
- disseminated, like her father
- 1950
- relived by shots of cortisone derivative
- weakened her bones
- from 1955+ (30) she needed aluminum crutches to get
around
- wrote, traveled, lectured until 1964
- when lupus reactivated & killed her
- 39
|
BACKGROUND
- *black humor
- *refusal to indulge in
self-pity
|
 |
|
|
THEMES
- self-righteousness, zealotry
- alienation
- anti-materialism
- (Matthew 6: 19-34, God or Mammon, “For where your
treasure is, there will your heart be also.”)
- (“progress in the world is retrogression in the spirit”)
- death and rebirth
- transformation, enlightenment
- the perverse mother
- ROMAN CATHOLICISM:
- allusions, parodies,
- BUT not indoctrination
- her version of Christianity
- (not necessarily Christian orthodoxy)
|
THEMES
- ROMAN CATHOLICISM:
- NO BIOGRAPHICAL READINGS:
(from CA)
- O'Connor wrote: "I see from the standpoint of
Christian orthodoxy.
This means that for me the meaning of life is centered in
our Redemption by Christ and that what I see in the world I
see in relation to that." Andre Bleikasten, however, wrote
of the "heresy" of Flannery O'Connor and warned that
"O'Connor's public pronouncements on her art--on which most
of her commentators have pounced so eagerly--are by no means
the best guide to her fiction. As an interpreter, she was
just as fallible as anybody else, and in point of fact there
is much of what she has said or written about her work that
is highly questionable.... The truth of O'Connor's work is
the truth of her art, not that of her church. Her fiction
does refer to an implicit theology, but if we rely, as we
should, on its testimony rather than on the author's
comments, we shall have to admit that the Catholic orthodoxy
of her work is at least debatable.... Gnawed by old
Calvinistic ferments and at the same time corroded by a very
modern sense of the absurd, O'Connor's version of
Christianity is emphatically and exclusively her own....
Flannery O'Connor was a Catholic. She was not a Catholic
writer. She was a writer, and as a writer she belongs to no
other parish than literature."
- more of a “theological writer”
- CHRISTIAN THEMES:
- evil within
- attack on self-righteousness & self-sufficiency
- “violent grace”
enlightening through force
|
|
|
|
STYLE
- mostly short stories
- traditional, no experimentation (like James Joyce)
- PLOT = #1:
- storytelling, telling a detailed story to its conclusion
- (since no real "meaning," the story is the all, the fun
& details & story of it all)
- --> characters = 2-dimensional, no inner lives
- --> characterization = 2nd to plot
- CHARACTERIZATION:
- ordinary, real people
- no racial stereotypes
- Alice Walker: “white folks without
magnolia […] black folks without melons or superior racial
patience”
- BLACK (dark) HUMOR:
- grim Gothic humor,
- the folly of the self-righteous, self-sufficient
(self-alienation)
- related to her religion/faith
- *fascination with HUMAN
SPEECH, with people talking
- clichés about life, death, universe
- vivid rendering of character through speech
- mocked
- characters = forced, through violence, from cliché,
rote, ritual
|
STYLE
- *GROTESQUE
- (or realistic, depending on reader's POV)
- Southern Gothic tradition
- *VIOLENT CONCLUSIONS:
- all stories move in the same direction:
- towards a conclusion with a
violent awakening/realization
- ends = violent:
- in which a character (usually a woman) must confront a
situation that cannot be handled with her usual traditional
responses & clichés;
- characters = forced, by violence, from cliché,
rote, ritual
- “Revelation”
- “Good Country People”
- “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”
- violence = necessary
- to force them from the ruts of their lives
- beyond clichés & habits
- see Shirley Jackson
- see post-modern drama,
Zoo Story
- REGIONALIST
- speech patterns
- gestures
- humor
- speech-clichés
|
|
|
|
FOC LINKS
"A Good Man Is Hard to Find"
|
FOC
LINKS
"Good Country People"
|
|
LINKS
LINKS
|
