FLANNERY O’CONNOR Writer on a Mission

O’Connor Timeline: Raised in Savannah, Georgia as an only child In 1941, father dies of Lupus, a debilitating autoimmune disease that attacks the skin, joints and organs in the body. Graduates from Georgia State College in 1945 Receives a M.F.A. from Iowa State University in 1947 Relocates to New York in 1948 to pursue writing career Diagnosed with lupus, in 1951, and told she had about five years to live. At the time, there is no cure for the disease. O'Connor is treated with steroid drugs with crippling side effects. Complications from lupus force her to return to her mother’s diary farm in Georgia. O’Connor spends the rest of her life there, writing prolifically and raising chickens and peacocks in her spare time. Dies of Lupus, in 1964, at the age of thirty nine.

The Ironist and Catholic Visionist O’Connor uses her vision of what man ought to be to measure what he is. And from the light of the vision, she tells us what we are – absurd and grotesque. She reasons that we must be so, in God’s eyes, if we are not yet what we ought to be. It is out of her fierce belief in a fundamentalist Catholic Christianity that Flannery O’Connor draws the moral standards by which she judges what man is. O’Connor considered judgment just as much a matter of relishing as condemning. Drawing on the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas, O’Connor added a Thomistic underpinning to her understanding of truth – that it must be accepted no matter where it is found. In most of her stories, this awakening to truth comes right before the death event for many of her characters. Prescribed Formula for Her Fiction Characters are often unlovely, unholy and unlovable. Many often have a physical deformity. Many often guilty of the most abysmal human crime of cruelty, pride, selfishness and avarice. O’Connor always brings her characters to a moment when it is no longer possible for them to continue in their accustomed way. All pieces of O’Connor’s body of work present movement that is directed toward one end goal – redemption.

O’Connor’s Particular Belief about Grace :  Defines grace as a gift from God designed to enlighten the minds of people and help them. Even though O’Connor’s vision was essentially religious, she chose to present it mainly as an last-chance offer, where many of her characters are forced to accept it when faced with death.  O’Connor believed that “grace” is offered to human beings chiefly in extreme and unexpected situations where they may be shocked into spiritual insight.  O’Connor saw death as supremely valuable in its effect of blasting the sinner into the truth of eternal reality whereby the proud become humble, the ignorant become illuminated and the wise are repeatedly shown to be ignorant. Roman Catholic Doctrine on Grace:  “Habitual grace is a constant supernatural quality of the soul which sanctifies man intrinsically and makes him just and pleasing to God.” Grace is a virtue that allows a person to live in accordance with God’s will which is to strive to do good and to avoid sin.

Challenges of Reading O’Connor It is exactly the task of unearthing the judgments sunk in her work that is often the most difficult for the reader of O'Connnor's fiction. She forces us to return to those fictional characters -- her characters and their situations in order to find out more about those judgments. Overcoming Obstacles Flannery’s Catholic worldview so fully permeates her work (her sense of urgency and duty) - that what she is doing is larger than any of her personal concerns - that many young readers claim to benefit from a writer like O’Connor suffused with a passion. B ecause O’Connor’s religion so profoundly formed her cultural and artistic senses, understanding her fiction can be a complex process. By its nature, the irony O’Connor encrypts (whether it be wit, malice, or affection) is inherently fugitive making it difficult for readers to attain necessary moral equilibrium that comes from perceiving where the author stands. I think the novelist does more than just show us how a man feels," she said. "I think he also makes a judgment on the value of that feeling. It may not be an overt judgment. Probably it will be sunk in the work but it is there because, in the good novel, judgment is not separated from vision." (Flannery O’Connor)

O’Connor’s Legacy :  The authenticity of O’Connor’s view of life and death, the violence and distortion of her startling figures that disturb through the truth conveyed through them remains endlessly datable.  The mystery of Miss O’Connor and her unique urgency of vision continues to fascinate readers to this day, fifty years after her death.