What influenced Flannery O'Connor's writing style?

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 four writers of many who may have had an influence on Flannery O'Connor.

Though O'Connor did not write in the same style as Faulkner, whose approach was much more realistic than O'Connor's, they share many characteristics of Southern literature. Both O'Connor and Faulker explored violence in a particularly Gothic way, perhaps channeling the darkness of losing so many Southern lives in the Civil War, all for very little gain.

Eudora Welty is another Southern writer that influenced O'Connor. Both writers embrace ordinary-seeming events that impact rather ordinary people. O'Connor's characters seem to experience much more macabre instances than Welty's, but they often start in similarly regular circumstances.

Modernists like T.S. Eliot and Joseph Conrad may have inspired O'Connor to experiment with style and substance. Both Eliot and Conrad are credited with unique writing styles and a way with language that can sometimes be confusing, unexpected, and deliberately difficult. O'Connor's style is rather straightforward, in contrast, but her subject matter is often jarring, which gives it a Modernist feel.

What influenced Flannery O'Connor's writing style?

According to critics there were three strands to the reality of Flannery O'Connor:  literature, the South, and Catholicism.  And, it is the combination of these three strands which makes O'Connor unique.  O'Connor concerned her writing with the "reality of spirit permeating matter." Her short story, "A Good Man is Hard to Find," the grandmother's spiritual recognition of her similarity to the Misfit as a sinner like him exemplifies this concept. 

There is a depth to O'Connor's writing that comes from her rich experiences in personal and spiritual life.  She had numerous personal and professional relationships, attended Catholic schools as a child, and then went to colleges in her home state of Georgia and later University of Iowa.  Following her graduation from college, she moved to an artists' colony in Saratoga Springs, New York.  After she was diagnosed with lupus, from which her father had died, O'Connor returned to her hometown where she enjoyed raising ducks and peacocks.  The peacock is a prevalent symbol in her narratives, representing beatific vision, the goodness of mercy.

Flannery O'Connor's religious beliefs and her fatal illness also provide some insight into her fiction.  In his essay "The Dark Side of the Cross:  Flannery O'Connor's Short Fiction," Patrick Galloway suggests her contributions as

cathartic bitterness, a belief in grace as something devastating to the receipient, a gelid concept of salvation, and violence as a force for good.

O'Connor's anti-parables drawn from her experiences, faith, and unique sense of humor, "show the way by elucidating the worst of paths," writes Galloway.

What at first seem senseless deaths become powerful representations of the swift justice of God, the self-deluded prideful characters that receive the unbearable revelation of their own shallow selves are being impaled upon the hold icicle of grace, even if they are too stupid or lost to understand the great boon God is providing them.

Her Catholic faith was reconciled to her fiction in her proving "the truth of Faith." O'Connor felt that the average Catholic mind separates nature from grace, thus perceiving the fictional depiction of nature as sentimental or obscene. But, because she believed that sentimentality was an excess, Nature is used in O'Connor's fiction to emphasize the negativity in the lives and mental states of her characters.  Galloway writes,

Nature in O'Connor's stories reflects mankind, in all its base nature, and it is in keeping nature constantly in view that the author avoids the sentimental, and its flipside, the obscene.

Likewise, in an apparent incongruity with her deep religious faith, O'Connor uses the grotesque and violent, but she haa contended that she has used them in the service of a greater vision of spiritual reality.  Compassion to O'Connor was an excusing of human weakness.  So, she showed the way by using "the worst of paths."

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 Hemingway), O’Connor lived a simple and unadventurous life. Her greatest trials were likely the early death of her father to lupus and her own struggles with the same illness, which eventually claimed her life before she was middle-aged. Before she died, she graduated from a women’s college and launched her writing career as a young adult in her early twenties, completing much of her writing while living at her mother’s peaceful farm in Georgia. On the whole, O’Connor was a highly introspective and deeply spiritual person, and her approach to writing was shaped by her worldview.

First, O’Connor was influenced by Southern cultural (and literal) landscapes. Her short stories are regionalist in many regards, including details that accurately capture landscapes, dialects, customs, religion, history, and other elements of local color common to the south. “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” for example, references southern history when it describes a house with a secret panel that a Confederate, plantation-owning family had supposedly hidden in while William Tecumseh Sherman pillaged their house. Cultural landscape is also realistically reflected in O'Connor's stories. For example, she wrote many protagonists who hold bigoted, elitist views of themselves based upon their race, family lineage, class, or education. Southern regionalist writers often include such characters because racism and classism are issues the south has had to fight to overcome. Turpin, in “Revelation,” is a dynamic character in that she realizes her own bigotry in relation to race and class by the end of the story. The grandmother in “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is also dynamic in that she redefines “good” outside of the context of family lineage and race by the end of the story. Hulga, in “Good Country People,” is also forced to realize her assumptions about the goodness of people and religion.

Second, O’Connor’s Catholic upbringing influenced the characters and content of her works. She was raised with the Catholic perspective that all human beings are born with a sinful nature but are in the process of redemption. She was taught to believe in the very real presence of evil in the world and in the power of grace. So, she wrote main characters who were largely flawed. She transcended normal southern regionalism by amplifying the flaws of her main characters by putting them in extreme situations where their flawed “inner landscapes” would be forced to come out. Consider how moments of extreme danger in real life are opportunities for bravery and selflessness, or cowardice and selfishness, to be drawn out. In “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” O’Connor’s spiritual worldviews of redemption and grace are showcased by the grandmother. Conversely, the hypocritical Bible salesman in “Good Country People” exposes the presence of people sold out to evil and how their actions can impact others. In the story, the Bible salesman takes advantage of a disabled girl. This is an amplified characteristic of the type of hypocritical religious person that sells vulnerable people on religion and then takes advantage of them, leaving them more vulnerable than before. Consider, for example, television preachers who have “sold” Holy Spirit healing by asking for the money of desperate people.

While O’Connor’s protagonists often embody reprehensible flaws, such as racism and elitism, they are often able to overcome these flaws because of the shocks they have experienced. For example, Mrs. Turpin, who thinks herself above all black people and the “white trash” class, has a book thrown at her and is choked. While she is processing being attacked earlier that day, she looks out onto the horizon and has a vision of people of all races and classes being pulled up to heaven. She even sees herself, with all her “virtues being burned away.” In this vision, she realizes that in heaven, race, class, and virtue will not matter; everyone will be equal in every regard. The “book” that the girl threw at her earlier is symbolic for the “revelation of sense” that strikes her at the end of the story.

How did Flannery O'Connor's life influence her writing?

Born in 1925 in Savannah, Georgia, Mary Flannery O’Connor, who dropped the Mary from her name when she started to publish her work, was an only child. Her parents, Edward Flannery O’Connor and Regina Cline O’Connor, were both devout Roman Catholics and brought their daughter up in their faith.  When Flannery was a teenager, in 1938, her father developed lupus, and the family moved to Milledgeville, Georgia to be closer to her mother's family. Her father died in of the disease in 1941. After graduating from a local college, Flannery received an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, and was awarded a residency at Yaddo. In 1950, Flannery developed lupus, and moved home to Milledgeville to live with her mother, who cared for her until her death in 1964.

The first element of her life that affected her writing was religion. She remained a Roman Catholic throughout her life, and many of her stories reflect ethical and spiritual concerns influenced by her faith.

Next, her stories are usually set in the deep south, and reflect her deep personal knowledge of rural and small town Georgia life.

Another major element of her life that affects her writing is disease and disability. As someone who saw her father die of lupus when she was a teenager, and then developed the disease herself at the age of 25 and needed crutches to walk after 1955, she often included characters suffering from some disability or illness in her stories, such as Hulga, the protagonist of "Good Country People," who has a prosthetic leg.

What unique characteristics define Flannery O'Connor's writing style?

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 necessarily allude to religion in what O'Connor termed the "Christ-haunted South," her style has been termed a "morbidly Catholic mindset." Nevertheless, her Christian fiction is non-didactic and subtle, albeit bizarre as violence is a conduit of redemption. In his essay "The Dark Side of the Cross:  Flannery O'Connor's Short Fiction," Patrick Galloway observes,

The man in a violent situation reveals those aspects of his character that he will take with him into eternity.

For example, in "A Good Man is Hard to Find," after the Misfit's men have killed her family, the grandmother finds him standing over her threateningly.

She saw the man's twisted face close to her as if her were going to cry and she murmured, "Why, you're one of my babies; you're one of my own children!"

The grandmother recognizes the sin in all of them as the violence of the situation reveals the facets of her character that will carry her to eternity. Galloway remarks that this approach reflects the philosophy of Martin Heidegger and his concept of Dasein, (being-there) in which a man's experience becomes complete at the moment of death.

Even if the character does not die, he/she finds redemption through violence as in the equally ironically titled "Good Country People" in which Ulga loses her faith in "the Nothing" and is afforded the opportunity for grace and redemption if she will grow spiritually as a result of her humiliation.

• The use of a mysterious, unexpected turn in the narrative

O'Connor's narrative distortions are often of an abrupt, even explosive nature. For instance, in "Revelation," in the waiting-room of a doctor's office, Mary Grace suddenly dives on Mrs. Turpin and tries to strangle the self-righteous woman. However, this bizarre and disturbing act jars Mrs. Turpin into an opportunity for redemption as she does begin to wonder if she might be "a wart hog from hell" after all.

• The consistent use of unresolved endings

In "Good Country People" there is uncertainly as to whether Ulga will redeem herself as a result of her experience; similarly in "The Life You Save May Be Your Own" abandons Lucynell at the lunch counter.

• Distinctive elements of style

As noted by Galloway, O'Connor is not a "lyrical" as Faulkner, nor as "colorful" as other Southern Gothic writers; in fact, some critics find her writing "too bare" and "her experiments with structure not eccentric enough." But, Galloway holds that her "secret weapon" is her simplistic style as it disguises the undercurrent beneath that will "spew forth" at the precise moment, and then be all the more disturbing.

Another distinctive element of O'Connor's style is her penchant for assuming a character's point of view in the narrative while at the same time retaining the omniscient third-person. This technique, Galloway perceives as having the effect as "more of a mirror than an advocate" for the character.  Thus, O'Connor's narratives hold their objectivity and impartiality, but at the same time, they provide insight into what goes through the minds of the characters. For instance, in "The Life You Save May Be Your Own," the actions of Mr. Shiflet are devious and unconscionable, yet he is not as insensitive as a reader would expect because O'Connor's narrative juxtaposes his actions with his inner thoughts of feeling "depressed" after he cruelly abandons Lucynell and "oppressed" when he pickup a boy in overalls who "thumbs a ride." 

O'Connor's use of character names for her Christian themes and for ironic use are also noticeable in her fiction. One very obvious name for the opportunity of redemption is that of Mary Grace in "Revelation," while Joy Hopewell for the embittered young woman with the wooden leg who believes in "the Nothing" is certainly ironic as well as paradoxical. Some names reveal true character, such as "Mr. Shiftlet." Galloway remarks,

The fact that the names are most usually a mockery of the characters adds to the cryptic Christianity that characterizes O'Connor's work.

• The use of the grotesque to develop thematic elements

O'Connor's use of grotesque characters to develop her Christian themes is certainly distinctive.  She explains, "...it is when the freak can be senses as a figure for our essential displacement that he attains some depth in literature." This trope of "displacement" is prevalent in O'Connor's fiction as is usually a theological displacement as exemplified by such characters as the Misfit and Ulga. And, the literally displaced is the Polish immigrant Guizac whose foreignness makes him a freak to the rural types in the story "The Displaced Person." Oddly, enough these grotesques often become Christ-types in O'Connor's fiction as reminders of the mysterious presence of God.

• The symbolism of the peacock

Certainly not subtle is O'Connor's use of the peacock, whose feathers contain "the eye of God." They are symbolic of the Holy Ghost and immortality and the incorruptible soul.

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 religious Catholic, although the trappings of religion were less important to her than her faith. She also suffered from Lupus, an inherited disease that also killed her father. She died when she was only 39 years old.

If you do some research, you can find many interviews in which O'Connor explains how she incorporated her faith in her short stories.

Living with her impending death caused her to contemplate the unfairness of life. This comes out in her stories. Also, she was conflicted over how a loving God could allow evil and suffering in the world. This caused her to write depressing and complex fiction with multi-layered themes and complicated characters.

You can read about her hereon eNotes.