Flannery O'connor's Writing: A Guide for the Perplexed (Critical Essay)

MANY READERS HAVE BEEN fascinated with Flannery O'Connor as a person and author, perhaps for some of the same reasons I find her so engaging. I wish to mention briefly four minor but not insignificant features that attract me and then focus on three main reasons for her enduring stature among readers, teachers, and critics. O'Connor had a very sharp eye and ear for the sights and sounds of her native land. And for me, a native of western North Carolina living in exile in the Midwest, it is a joy to encounter the "Southernness" in her fictional world, despite the fact that this world she presents is often not at all lovely. She did not wear rose-colored glasses, and her eye seized upon the depraved, the vulgar, and the grotesque. But there is no doubt that she captured the Southernness of her region. I think of the ubiquitous "Jesus Saves" and "Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish" messages printed on billboards, painted on barns, or scrawled on boulders. I think of the way her characters talk. Their idioms, diction, pronunciation, and grammar reveal O'Connor's masterly use of regional dialect: "It isn't a soul in this green world of God's that you can trust." "Hep that lady up, Hirum." "Lady, there never was a body that give the undertaker a tip"--a few memorable sentences from "A Good Man Is Hard to Find." "Ain't there somewheres we can sit down sometime?" "I just want to know if you love me or don'tcher." "One time I got a woman's glass eye this way. And you needn't to think you'll catch me because Pointer ain't really my name. I use a different name at every house I call at and don't stay nowhere long. And I'll tell you another thing, Hulga, you ain't so smart. I been believing in nothing ever since I was born!"--from Manley Pointer's comments to Hulga Hopewell in "Good Country People."