Flannery O Connor s Morality And Ethics - 1489 Words

Flannery O’Connor was an American woman writer who wrote only two novels and 32 short stories and, yet she represented a significant voice in American literature. Flannery O Connor was once asked to name the primary influences on her life, and she replied, Probably ... being a Catholic, and a Southerner, and a writer. These three influences are prominent in O Connor’s writings as she shows her faith and Southern identity. She typically wrote in a Southern Gothic style and relied on local settings and grotesque characters for her stories provoking her readers to examine questions of morality and ethics. In her short stories, â€Å"A Good Man is Hard to Find† and â€Å"Good Country People†, Flannery O’Connor uses characters and their conflicts to reveal a deeper understanding of morality and ethics in these two significant works of literature. In â€Å"A Good Man is Hard to Find†, the grandmother, or a â€Å"lady† as she calls herself, looks fondly back on days past when people were more nice and a good man was more easy to find. O’Connor puts great effort into giving the readers an insight into the characters by describing their attitudes and clothes. The grandmother takes pride in the way she presents herself. For example, â€Å"her collars and cuffs were organdy trimmed with lace and at her neckline she had pinned a purple spray of cloth violets containing a sachet. In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady†(118) illustrating how muchShow MoreRelatedThe Lame Shall Enter First 32248 Words   |  9 Pages the sharpest eye for the grotesque, for the perverse, and for the unacceptable†¦. To the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures. —Flannery O’Connor, â€Å"The Ficti on Writer and His Country†1 Long before the likes of Raymond Carver, George Saunders and Lydia Davis, Flannery O’Connor was writing biting, grotesque gothic tales, scattered with strong religious and moral overtones. Her symbolic stories contrasted characters in existential extremes in simmering