Flannery O Connor Grotesque Character Analysis

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Flannery O’Connor is most recognized for her southern gothic style of literature. Since she is a devout Catholic, O’Connor’s writings are also highly saturated with the presence of her personal faith. She placed special emphasis on her characters when writing, and in almost all of her short stories, O’Connor writes of characters with a mental, physical, or spiritual disability. This style of characterization can be referred to as grotesque characterization. Flannery O’Connor uses grotesque attributes in her characters to represent their salvation or lack thereof.
In Nightmares and Visions: Flannery O'Connor and the Catholic Grotesque, Gilbert H. Muller states, “The typical grotesque character in Miss O’Connor’s fiction is an individual who projects certain extreme mental states…” (Muller 22). In “The Life you Save May be your Own,” O’Connor uses the “extreme mental state” of a mentally handicapped girl to show the purity and innocence associated with salvation. Christians are called to a childlike faith, and that is what O’Connor is enforcing with Lucynelle’s mental …show more content…

The grandmother from “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is considered spiritually grotesque because of her shaky faith and her self-righteousness. O’Connor uses the grandmother’s shaky faith ultimately to show the grand transition at her time of redemption. In Flannery O’Connor: A Proper Scaring, Jill P. Baumgaertner states, “Usually the most self-righteous and moral of O’Connor’s characters turn out to be the blindest, needing God most desperately, and often capable of recognizing Him only in the oddest, most distorted forms” (Baumgaertner 24). This is most definitely the case with the grandmother; she thinks she is a godly woman, but in reality, she is manipulative and full of hypocrisy. Prior to her time of physical death, the spiritually dead grandmother sees true grace for the first time, thus being

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