Flannery O'Connor Questions and Answers
Flannery O'Connor
How did Flannery O’Connor's life influence her writing?
Flannery O’Connor’s writings were influenced by both her Southern location and her Catholic upbringing. Unlike some writers whose adventurous lives are as exciting as the stories they tell (such as...
Flannery O'Connor
What things influenced Flannery O'Connor to write as she did?
Flannery O'Connor was influenced by several Southern writers of great repute, like William Faulkner and Eudora Welty, as well as Modernist writers like T.S. Eliot and Joseph Conrad. These are only...
Flannery O'Connor
Compare and contrast the characters of Mary Grace of "Revelation" with Hulga of "Good Country People."
Mary Grace and Hulga are similar in being angry young adult women who are living with their mothers. They do not conform to Southern norms about how genteel ladies are supposed to act or look. Both...
Flannery O'Connor
What are the similarities between "A Good Man is Hard to Find" and "Revelation"?
The two stories follow an extremely similar narrative structure, with almost indistinguishable protagonists. These protagonists are older women who do not understand or attempt to understand the...
Flannery O'Connor
What are the characteristics of the writing style of O'Connor, especially those which separate her from other authors?
A writer in the Southern Gothic style, Flannery O'Connor departs from other writers of this genre in several ways. Violence as a means of redemption While Gothic writers of the South often...
Flannery O'Connor
How might one compare and contrast two notable characters created by Flannery O'Connor -- the Misfit ("A Good Man is...
The above answer has addressed the question very thoroughly, so I will try to get at some core issues in both stories. In short, I would argue that while both are evil characters, Manley Pointer is...
Flannery O'Connor
Compare the revelation at the end of "A Good Man is Hard to Find" with the revelation at the conclusion of...
Both women realize that life is not as it seems and that the many of their ways were wrong and pointless. The protagonist in "Revelation" was rather rude and elitist and by the end of...
Flannery O'Connor
How are Manley Pointer and the Misfit alike?
Manley Pointer and the Misfit are both morally dubious characters who nevertheless bring about a spiritual re-evaluation in the protagonist of their respective stories. In "Good Country People,"...
Flannery O'Connor
Explain why Flannery O'Connor feels violence is necessary in her stories to get the attention of both characters and...
Flannery O’Connor often uses violence in her stories for a number of reasons. In the first place, O’Connor felt that most human beings, at least in the modern era, live complacent, comfortable,...
Flannery O'Connor
Explain how the title “Revelation” could actually apply to ALL of O’Connor's stories.
In all—or almost all—of O'Connor's stories, one of her characters has a moment of revelation or illumination, when the grace of God breaks into this person's life and shows a glimpse of God's love...
Flannery O'Connor
Compare Flannery O'Connor's characters: Joy-Hulga in "Good Country People" and Mary Grace in "Revelation."
Flannery O’Connor’s Roman Catholic beliefs color her stories which include violence and violent people alongside the faith and grace found by many of her characters. “Good Country People” and...
Flannery O'Connor
What questions does O'Connor's story "A Temple of the Holy Ghost" raise in terms of faith, community, and belonging?
The short story "A Temple of the Holy Ghost" by Flannery O'Connor tells of the visit of two 14-year-old girls, Susan and Joanne, to the home of a 12-year-old girl, referred to only as "the child"...
Flannery O'Connor
Reference to characters, why does Flannery O'Connor feel it's necessary to use violence in her short stories...
Flannery O’Connor believed she had to use violence to shock people into paying attention to her themes. She said in her letters that "if the Christian faith is present, readers will understand the...
Flannery O'Connor
How do the locations of Edora Welty's "Petrified Man" and Flannery O'Connor's "Good Country People" reveal their...
In Edora Welty's “Petrified Man” and Flannery O'Connor's “Good Country People,” the characters operate on the conviction that appearance and reality are essentially the same; this conviction...
Flannery O'Connor
Do you think that O'Connor's stories have anything to offer a reader who has no religious faith? Explain why or why not.
A story which has nothing to offer someone with no religious faith cannot have much to offer even those who do have faith. The fact that this question is asked of Flannery O'Connor at all is at...
Flannery O'Connor
How does "A Good Man Hard to Find" and "The Birthmark" compare and contrast in its thematic use of irony?
In "A Good Man is Hard to Find," the thematic irony is built around the disparity between the grandmother's view of herself and the reality. She feels that what defines a "good man" is the kind of...
Flannery O'Connor
How do the religious views of Mrs Hopewell in "Good Country People" compare to those of the grandmother in "A Good...
The views of Mrs. Hopewell from "Good Country People" and the grandmother in "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" toward religion are most likely similar, but the approach of the two women are somewhat...
Flannery O'Connor
What are the main themes of the stories "Everything That Rises Must Converge" and "A Good Man is Hard to Find" by...
In "A Good Man is Hard to Find," O'Connor illustrates the theme that God's grace can fall on any of us. The grandmother, a manipulative, narrow-minded, difficult person, might be the last person...
Flannery O'Connor
"The Geranium" and "Judgement Day" can be seen as two versions of the same story. Please describe the most...
In her analyses of O'Connor earlier short stories' use of spatiality, Louise Westling observes there is a "strong sense of place despite the absence of a geopolitical region", and characters are...
Flannery O'Connor
Compare and contrast "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" and "Good Country People" by Flannery O'Connor.
One thing that "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" and "Good Country People" have in common is the theme of innocence versus corruption. Both share this notion of "good country people," a kind of myth...
Flannery O'Connor
I need help comparing the grandmother from "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" and Julian's mother from "Everything...
Although Julian's mother is racist—believing that African Americans ought to succeed, but only on "their side of the fence"—she is not vicious. She is condescending and wrong, certainly, but she...
Flannery O'Connor
What are Flannery O'Connor's characters looking for? Issues of religion, social status, racial prejudice and...
A great deal of O'Connor's characterization has, obviously, to do with her own approach to life and her search for meaning through the relatively difficult portions of her life. They are described...
Flannery O'Connor
What was Flannery O'Connor's critical perspective towards the sanctimonious church people (christian)? I know that...
In her "Christ-haunted" South, Flannery O'Connor encountered many faith-based Christians who, in their horror of sin, shielded themselves with sanctimony from their own faults. One character who...
Flannery O'Connor
How does Flannery O'connor express her religious point of view through her stories with the conflict of living as...
Flannery O'Connor once wrote that she lived in the "Christ-haunted South." That is, O'Connor found herself in an area of evangelicals and their horror of sin which is part of the "landscape," while...
Flannery O'Connor
How do Mrs. Turpin and Claude from Flannery O'Connor's "Revelation" compare and contrast with the Grandmother and The...
Similarities and differences exist between many characters in Flannery O’Connor’s stories, including between Claude and Mrs. Turpin in “Revelation” and the grandmother and The Misfit in “A Good Man...
Flannery O'Connor
What is the symbolism for the sun and the clouds in the sky?
O'Connor uses nature as a buffer between what appears to be and what really is. As a Christian believer, O'Connor sees beyond nature (the sun, clouds, and sky) to see the supernatural (God,...
Flannery O'Connor
Favorite Stories? I can't believe this group has no posts. Flannery O'Connor is one of my favorite writers! She's...
My personal favorite story is "Everything that Rises Must Converge". Prejudice meets contempt and one person's narrowness is trumped by the next person's bias. The task of escaping bigotry and...
Flannery O'Connor
What topic sentence can I write to start a research paper on Flannery O’Connor?
I returned this question to you and am glad you clarified it. Since you are writing on Flannery O'Connor rather than a specific work she wrote, one way to begin would be to investigate what...
Flannery O'Connor
Does this sentence about Flannery O'Connor have any grammatical errors? Does the sentence below have any grammar...
The first part of the sentence it seems to have words missing; the first clause, "The factor of violence always presents in Flannery O'Connor's stories," clearly is missing its predicate. Perhaps,...
Flannery O'Connor
Explore Flannert O'Connor's use of violence to awaken her characters to self-revelation My university teacher gave me...
Reading O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find" is a start for your understanding of how violence leads to salvation. You may also wish to read some criticisms of this story and others as well as...
Flannery O'Connor
What religious message is O'Connor trying to portray in her writings? What are some of her stories in which religion...
Flannery O'Connor has been called many things religious: a Christian humanist, a sacramental writer, a fundamentalist, a Yahwist, a mean Christian, and my favorite, a "Roman Catholic not like a...
Flannery O'Connor
What characteristics make Flannery O'Connor a southern writer?
The identification of “southern writer” may be applied to any author who lives in, sets their works in, or writes about characters who hail from the US South. It is often applied to those authors...
Flannery O'Connor
In Flannery O'Connor's childhood, what was her perspective towards church and religion?
Flannery O’Connor was a deeply devout Roman Catholic and wrote from an obviously Christian (and particularly Catholic) perspective when she became an adult author. Yet she seems to have been a...
Flannery O'Connor
What Thing/things Caused Flannery O'Connor to write the things she wrote? How her life influenced or affect her writings
Flannery O'Connor was truly a genius and an extremely gifted writer. I think that there are two major things in her life that influenced her writing; her religion and her disease. She was a very...
Flannery O'Connor
In Flannery O'Connor's "Revelation," why do only three of the characters have names?
Technically, four characters are named in the story: Mrs. Turpin, Claude, Mary Grace, and Miss Finley. However, Miss Finley is a character with a momentary appearance of no consequence whatsoever,...
Flannery O'Connor
State 3 possible subtopics for an essay on why O'Connor uses violence in her stories (man hard to find, greenleaf,...
Perhaps O’Connor’s own words can help you come up with a subtitle. In her letters, O’Connor wrote: “I am mighty tired of reading reviews that call “A Good Man” brutal and sarcastic. The stories...
Flannery O'Connor
What is a shared theme of the stories "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" and "Everything That Rises Must Converge" by...
Both of these stories by Flannery O'Connor are social critiques set in a changing American South, and both feature an elderly female protagonist who is in some way struggling with social change. In...
Flannery O'Connor
What is Flannery O'Connor's assessment of the South?
O'Connor depicts the South in her stories as backwards place populated by unsophisticated people who are behind the times. Many of her characters are what are called grotesques, because O'Connor...
Flannery O'Connor
How did Flannery O’Connor uses the horror in her stories to give her audience a sense of grace?
Two goals O'Connor had in her stories are as follows: first, God's grace is bigger than whatever horror faces us; and second, God can profoundly touch the lives of very flawed people. In other...