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Joshua Dorio

Mr. Vigil

British Literature and Composition

14 March 2018

Grace Through All Things

Flannery O’Connor, a prominent twentieth century writer and pious Catholic, contributed

to The Church through her concern of society’s lack of religious literature and acumen. She

expressed her perspective of God in her short stories, however her view of God is not always

represented clearly in the text. She served The Church through unorthodox ways of writing,

primarily subtle religious suggestions that support her Christian motifs of grace. Flannery

O’Connor’s “Good Country People” and “A Good Man is Hard to Find” contain implicit

religious worldviews as fundamental elements, reflecting her devotion to her faith. Both these

short stories use the central theme of grace to convey O’Connor’s adherence to her faith.

O’Connor was born and baptized in Savannah, Georgia in 1925. She was raised in the

strong Catholic household, where she grew up under the umbrella of The Church, quite literally

living a few paces from her local cathedral. Flannery was sent to Catholic school by her parents,

which ultimately acted as the foundation for her passion towards faith. After leaving the South

and earning a master’s degree at the University of Iowa, O’Connor moved to the East Coast with

dreams of becoming a writer. However she was plagued by lupus, a terminal and painful disease

that had also killed her father, and was forced to move back to the South with her mother. There

she realized she must abandon her dreams for herself as a prominent columnist in the North and
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serve her vocation: to follow and serve Christ by using her talent as an author. She knew she

must use her writing ability to glorify God.

Flannery’s devotion to her faith was reinforced by her daily routine. She began each day

by attending morning Mass, followed by breakfast, and then wrote for consecutive hours

everyday, uninterrupted, until lunch. After lunch, she would venture out on her 544-acre dairy

farm, where she would feed her forty-four peacocks. Also during this time, she would read,

receive visitors, and write letters. Subsequently, she ate dinner, read some more, then concluded

by reading the “Summa” of St. Thomas Aquinas and praying her night prayers. As a result of her

active liturgical life, personal prayer life, and her daily disciplines, Flannery O’Connor’s passion

for writing developed a profound passion for her faith which prompted her to execute her

primary vocation: promoting Catholicism.

O’Connor peaked in her writing at a time when religious devotion was dramatically

decreasing. She believed that her writing would not make an impression on everyday people if

she only wrote about ordinary characters and their dedication to Christ, thus she opted to mortify

her audience with scummy characters and gruesome murders. By pointing out the flawed moral

codes of mid twentieth century society, O’Connor hoped that her peculiar and omniscient style

of writing would shock the general public and aid in her mission to evangelize the secular.

When explaining her writing, O’Connor stated:

The novelist with Christian concerns will find in modern life distortions which are

repugnant to him, and his problem will be to make them appear as distortions to an

audience which is used to seeing them as natural; and he may be forced to take ever more

violent means to get his vision across to this hostile audience. When you can assume that

your audience holds the same beliefs as you do, you can relax a little and use more
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normal means of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to

make your vision apparent by shock—to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the

almost-blind you draw large and startling figures.

This passage emphasizes O’Connor’s vocation to be a disciple of Jesus. Through her style of

writing she is able to fulfill her primary and particular vocations. O’Connor wrote stories that

dealt with the fallen nature of humanity and our need for a Savior, and the bulk of her audience

did not believe in God, sin, or redemption.

However, O’Connor never wrongs a character without providing an offer of saving grace.

In “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” one of O’Connor’s most prominent and controversial short

stories, The Misfit is presented and subsequently denies the option of salvation. When The

Misfit and the grandmother exchange dialogue after he slaughters her family, the grandmother

surprisingly praises the convict as “a good man”. By complementing The Misfit, the

grandmother is attempting to redeem a man who has lost all sense of morality. This dialogue

acts as a parable about the unconditional love from God and His forgiving nature. The

grandmother’s words are an offer to reverse wrongdoing and aspire for salvation. While

attempting to preserve her own life she is subsequently making an effort to retrieve his morality

and therefor save his soul. O’Connor offers redemption to The Misfit through the grandmother’s

good gesture:

[The grandmother] saw the man's face twisted close to her own as if he were

going to cry and she murmured, "Why you're one of my babies. You're one of my own

children!" She reached out and touched him on the shoulder. The Misfit sprang back as if

a snake had bitten him and shot her three times through the chest. Then he put his gun

down on the ground and took off his glasses and began to clean them. (O’Connor 32)
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Unfortunately, after some contemplation, The Misfit refuses salvation and kills the woman. By

providing such an extreme example, O’Connor is emphasizing the idea that all people are offered

grace constantly, yet they often reject it through their sinful nature, which derived from

humanity’s lack of faith and the want for sociological and scientific responses to most issues

rather than trusting the spiritual. Not only does O’Connor accentuate society’s need for

redemption, but also fuses elemental teachings of the Catholic Church into her writings, fulfilling

her role as a lay person and demonstrating her allegiance to her faith. As a lay person of the

Catholic Church, one can be expected to strive towards the teachings of The Church while

sharing the principles of Catholicism with those around them. Her analogy of “a snake had bitten

him,” broaches the devil influencing The Misfit to “[shoot the grandmother] three times through

the chest.” The significant number of three symbolizes Holy Trinity in The Church. Through the

concealed innuendos within her works, Flannery O’Connor is able to function as a lay person,

advocating for her beliefs.

Although grace is often denied, an emphasis on free will is evident through the open-

ended conclusion of the story. The idea that God provides multiple opportunities for redemption

is shown through The Misfit’s self-reflection after the grandmother’s murder. He repeals his

statement that there is “no pleasure but meanness in life” (O’Connor 31), and affirms that there is

truly no actual pleasure in life at all. He feels dissatisfied after the murders, coming to the

conclusion that there is no reward for his sinful actions. This realization presents the reader with

a prediction that The Misfit has the ability, and potentially the desire, to redirect his lifestyle.

The presence of God’s grace is evident through the reevaluation of his choices, however the

reader never learns whether the convict accepts redemption. By ending the story at such a

pivotal point, O’Connor incorporates the Catholic belief in free will. Much like the Creator in
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Genesis, the writer has crafted her own (literary) world and given her antagonist the choice

between sin and salvation. She leaves the option of redemption to The Misfit, refusing to

interfere with his final decision and thus granting him free reign over his life.

Nonetheless, a moment grace is offered in all O’Connor’s in her stories. In “Good

Country People”, Hulga (who changed her given name, Joy) is offered grace in devastative

manner. Hulga considers herself liberated from religious delusions and inhabits a rational world,

where she believes in the philosophy of nihilism and looks down upon “good country people.”

However, her position changes with the introduction of the character Manly Pointer, who acts as

the prototype for “good country people” through fulfillment of Christian service. Hulga is

attracted to Manly Pointer and intends to seduce him. Much to her surprise, Pointer is not the

innocent person he portrays. Once Hulga coaxes Manly to go up to the hayloft, Manly strips

Hugla of her identity (her hardness, pride, nihilism) through his deceptive betrayal. Hulga

surrenders her leg, which represents her soul and her identity, to Manly Pointer. In this moment,

Hulga feels “entirely dependent on him” (O’Connor 249). She allows him remove her symbol of

her identity:

As a child she had sometimes been subject to feelings of shame but education had

removed the last traces of that as a good surgeon scrapes for cancer; she would no more

have felt it over what he was asking than she would have believed in his Bible. But she

was as sensitive about the artificial leg as a peacock about his tail. No one ever touched it

but her. She took care of it as someone else would his soul, in private and almost with her

own eyes turned away. (O’Connor 248)

Consequently, through her belief in nihilism (the rejection of all faiths and moral principles,

often in belief that life is meaningless), the destruction of her faith must derive from her own
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intellect, where only through the betrayal of one whom she rationally decides to believe in.

Thus, Hulga’s nihilism and intelligence causes her to believe that she is superior to all. As a

result, Hulga carries her leg as “someone else would his soul,” which demonstrates how her

nihilistic ways force her to believe that an artificial objects is the equivalent as a soul. When

Hugla allows Manly to remove her artificial leg, she becomes vulnerable, rendering herself

handicapped both physically and metaphorically. Manly then steals her leg (identity and soul)

thus leading to her to a moment of grace where she has the opportunity to abandon her nihilistic

ways which lead to her downfall. This incident strips Hulga of intellect and identity, offering her

redemption from her nihilistic ways.

One of the most prominent disciples of the Catholic faith was not even a priest. Flannery

O’Connor’s passion for writing about elements of Catholicism, such as Freeport will, holy

trinity, redemption, and grace, originated from her active liturgical life, her personal prayer life,

and her daily disciplines. Her profession of faith is through her writing reflects her life and

societies need for redemption and grace. She acted as a lay person, where she promoted to word

of God through her particular vocation. Flannery O’Connor’s “Good Country People” and “A

Good Man is Hard to Find” use grace to advocate the Catholic faith. Although there are many

implications of how O’Connor writes and her suggestive meaning in the context, they are reflect

back to her devotion of faith embedded deep within her.

WORK CITED

“Flannery O'Connor, Faith, and a Wooden Leg.” The Gospel Coalition,

www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/flannery-oconnor-faith-and-a-wooden-leg/.

“The Vocation of Flannery O'Connor | Word on Fire.” The Vocation of Flannery O'Connor |
Word On Fire, www.wordonfire.org/resources/blog/the-vocation-of-flannery-oconnor/1610/.
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O’Connor, Flannery. A Good Man is Hard to Find, and Other Stories. Harcourt, Brace, 1983.