Life and Faith of Flannery O'Connor in her Short Stiries - Research Paper Example

IntroductionThis is an essay showing how Mary Flannery’s life and faith are reflected in her short stories. Her stories like “The River”, “A good man is hard to find”, and “The life you save may be your own” reflect different ideas about baptism, serial killers, human greed, and exploitation respectively. In most of her stories, there is the feeling of coldness, dispassionate, violence and a bit of starkness. For instance, there is notable meaningless and mindless cruelty and exemplary void in “A good man is hard to find, Greenleaf, and Everything that Rises Must Converge.

It is easily notable that most of her stories result to an ending of freak fatalities or emotional devastation in most of the characters. This idea of writing may have its roots from the life she had as she was growing up. Her parents were not wealthy enough so she did not have a satisfactory life. In her writing, there is some essence of Catholicism hence proving that Flannery was of the catholic faith. Catholics believe in death and Mary portrays it when the old woman dresses in her Sunday best clothes and waits to die in a car accident.

Later in the story, the old grandmother is involved in an accident and it is probably because of her faith that she was involved in one. As stated above, Flannery is a catholic Christian and in her writing, she has accomplished the non-didactic Christian fiction through examining elements of faith, style, and different themes. Despite being a Christian, her life has not been a bed of roses, a reason for concluding that faith is not a comfort zone. In her creative writing, Flannery regularly disparages the cupidity and religious indifference of modern people.

She condemns the current rationalism for its repudiation of the need for spiritual conviction and deliverance. Mary’s parents brought her up in Savannah, Georgia and most of her characters developed due to this place for instance in the story “Good Country People”. Using sights and characters from her native home, she portrays the vicious and frequently peculiar religiosity practiced by non-catholic fundamentalists. She tries to show that they are like an expression of religious existence besieged to survive in a non-spiritual world.

She repeatedly describes a bucolic home raided by a criminal or wicked interloper. This intruder is usually of hazy shape and portrays a character with arrogance, intellectualism, and covetousness. The rural home portrayed is probably an imitation of the place that Flannery was brought up and the arrogant intruder being the harsh life she had to undergo. In Flannery’s well-known short story, “A Good Man is hard to Find,” a self-complacent grandmother is stunned into divine consciousness by a killer who murders her relatives then her.

Probably, Flannery describes this story with the intention of describing the disease that first took her father then later took her life. The disease is described as the wicked intruder that despite pleas from hospitalization still took her life. In all her stories in the publication, “A good man is hard to find” there is evidence of God being the main subject. This could be used to show Flannery has continued belief in God despite some critics labeling her as an atheist. Probably, this is the reason she uses the character Joy in the story Good country people to illuminate the critics claim of atheism.

Joy could be Flannery since she lives with her mother, suffers from an illness, and receives rebellion for being an atheist. Since her stories are fictional, they sear our imaginative ability and bring out the Christian mind in the author.ConclusionFlannery has written many stories with the aim of depicting real life situations in her own way of writing. Despite writing in prose, she has achieved a lot of success especially from all those who understand her writing technique. In all her stories, she shows complete belief in God and disapproval of being an atheist.

Work citedGooch, Brad. "A Life of Flannery O'Connor." Little, Brown and Company (2009): Pp.27-29. Print.O'Connor, Flannery. "A Good Man Is Hard to Find ." O'Connor, Flannery. A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories . New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992. Pp.449-459. Print.—. Everything That Rises Must Converge. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1965. Print.O'Connor, Flannery. "Good Country People." O'Connor, Flannery. A Good Man is Hard to Find and other Stories. New York: Harcourt Proco Javanavich, 1992. Pp.460-473. Print.—.

Wise Blood. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007. Print..