Religious Crisis In Flannery O'Connor's Short Fiction

Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964) occupies one of the most prominent positions in the history of postwar American literature. In fact, she is identified today as one of the best short fiction writers who addressed people's religious beliefs in her stories. As a devout Catholic author and a southerner, Flannery O'Connor had a strong sense of duty and most of her works are set in the southern small towns and areas of the Bible belt. Religious crisis is the recurring motif in her stories. Flannery O'Connor aims to awaken the lost people who live in a sinful world in her stories to recognize their own identity and then lead them to find a better religious way to save their lost spirit and value. In America, religion has dominated the life of people from the cradle to the grave for hundreds of years and is engraved deeply on people's hearts, influencing their life, faiths, values and even social development. But in recent history, God has seemed to disappear from the scope of human activities, for God's will interferes with man's speculations in science and technology as well as in other aspects of life. So in O'Connor's fierce vision, the Children of God– all of us, are sleeping in the secularized world and suffering spiritual torture. Here O'Connor aims to draw the blind people to reality and rebuild their lost religious belief.But for a long time, O'Connor's short fiction has encountered most acrimonious criticism especially for its religious motif, because there are so many violent, grotesque and abnormal descriptions in her short fiction that some critics think she used those distorted elements to balance her physical pains. Most scholars understood her works from a Christian perspective. Few of them focus their study on the real aim of her religious writing in a comprehensive and complete way, and none analyzes the religious characteristics of O'Connor's short fiction in two sexes.This dissertation aims to study the religious crisis in Flannery O'Connor's short fiction and search for a best way of rescuing people's lost spirit through contextual analysis. The author attempts to examine this motif in three parts, which explores the motifs of violence and death, grotesque male characters and religious female victims from the two sexes'perspective.The dissertation consists of five parts, of which the central thesis is rendered in three chapters between the introduction and conclusion. The introduction provides a critical survey of Flannery O'Connor's scholarship both at home and abroad on the basis of which the religious crisis is put forward. Since O'Connor's works began being published, there have been numerous books, articles, and reviews handling these religious elements, and most reviews were either slanderous or erroneous in their criticism as a result of misinterpretation. This dissertation strives to provide a new viewpoint for rereading and readjusting people's misunderstanding of O'Connor's short fiction through the motif of religious crisis,so this study is both providing an efficient way for understanding O'Connor's religious teaching purpose and helping people search for a better way of saving the spiritual loss.Chapter One focuses on the typical contextual analysis illustrating the major motifs of violence and death in Flannery O'Connor's short fiction as a transformational way to relieve religious crisis from certain damnation by experiencing grace and salvation. In this chapter, four typical short stories are selected for further illustration, explaining the motifs of violence and death. They are"A Good Man Is Hard to Find","The River","Everything That Rises Must Converge","Parker's Back". The first three short stories end with death. For O'Connor, death is more than the disappearance of a physical body. It is a sort of spiritual liberation, a necessary path for a soul to be saved. Death is not the terminal destiny for human life but the turning point from sin to divinity."Parker's Back"is a description of violent elements. Here the description of violence is not intended for sensational purposes. In fact, O'Connor tries to rebuild religious values among people and shock them to such an extent with extreme description of violence to awaken people's religious consciousness. Under the shadow of violence and death, people suffer considerably but the sufferings are worthwhile, for they offer an opportunity to exalt man's spirituality.Chapter Two concentrates mainly on exposing the grotesque male characters troubled in the spiritual wasteland in her short fiction. Four short stories are selected for comprehensive and detailed discussion:"The Life You Saved May be Your Own","The Artificial Nigger","The Lame Shall Enter First"and"The Enduring Hill". In O'Connor's short fiction, these male characters are the intruders of the normal world. The common characters are sullen, rude, selfish, violent, insubordinate, ill-tempered, obdurate and grim who are meeting with religious crisis. They are examples, vehicles whose grotesque attitudes and actions personify their spiritual alienation. For another purpose, grotesque provides a more comprehensive picture of the South of her age, especially in the turmoil. The South of her time is like a blind child who has to make choices as to what to abandon and what to inherit in establishing a new identity. So O'Connor describes a lot of grotesque male characters who are wandering in the transitional period, representing the typical grotesque figures who are suffering the loss of the traditional value and the appearance of the new science and technology. As this study illustrates, O'Connor's presenting ordinary male characters in a distorted and grotesque manner points out the necessity for the protagonists to realize their deeper spiritual needs.Chapter Three provides an in-depth analysis of the female religious victims, represented by"The Displaced Person","Revelation","Good Country People"and"Greenleaf". These female figures are representative of masculine mothers and self-opinionated daughters. After a general sketch of this specific mother-daughter pattern, this dissertation engages in a detailed reading of the four stories to illustrate this abnormal social phenomenon which indicates their position as religious victims. The mother is a hard-working middle-aged woman who supports and cares for her large, physically unmarried children by running a small farm. She is living in the old and traditional culture while having a masculine power. For them, religion, which works as a kind of decoration of their virtue, is invalid and is only meaningless platitudes. As a result, like the unbelievers, they're suffering from original sin, which is shown through their apathy, pride, and hypocrisy. The daughter is always a self-righteousness educator, who is not only physically unappealing but also sourly dependent. They are usually unhappy without any religion. These daughters are really socially crippled. Both mother and daughter's final destiny are either death or spiritual deformity, which indicate their position as the victims of religious influence.Based on the above analysis, the conclusion declares that the religious crisis has become the mainstream cultural problem of the world. Flannery O'Connor's short stories give a faithful representation of the current problems of man's alienation and degeneration and evoke further thinking about these problems in a religious way. O'Connor tries her best to provide an appropriate and effective way to redeem people through her religious writing. Namely only violence and death can make them feel the need for salvation. Only after receiving God's grace, her grotesque male figures and female religious victims could recognize themselves and find a better way for rescuing their lost spirit. This author hopes that this study will be conductive to a comprehensive understanding of Flannery O'Connor's religious crisis in current China.