Spiritual Crisis In Flannery O' Connor's Short Fiction

Rising in the 20th century, the Southern literature adds extraodinary splendour to American literature, with its unique style, serious and tragic theme, heavy historic tone and guilty sense. The modern woman writer, Flannery O'Connor who grows up after the World WarⅡ, is identified today as one of the most outstanding American Southern writers. She believes in Catholicism all her life, and has a strong sense of social responsibility. She depicts the life and behaviors of the lower classes in American South. Spiritual crisis is her works' eternal theme. O'Connor is known as an expert of creating the grotesque figures, believing that the deformed figure can help the readers get profound insight into humanity, while the writer's responsibility is to discover and reveal the disgusting absurdities and grotesque phenomena in life.For a long time, critical reviews on O'Connor's works have been controversial in domestic and abroad academia. The focuses usually are her writing intention, theological position and the grotesqueness in her works etc.. This thesis tends to explore the spiritual crisis from the angle of two sexes.This thesis aims to study the spiritual crisis in O'Connor's short fiction. Through the interpretaion of text, the author analyzes embodiments and results of the spiritual crises of O'Connor's male and female characters, and argues that the death and violence is a powerful means for their spiritual redemption and also a giant picture for alerting people of their spiritual crises. The thesis shows that the characters suffer from spiritual crises——the conflict of traditional concept of values and modern identities. The crises are specifically embodied in their grotesque behaviors, decadence of morality, loss of belief and self-numbness etc.. In O'Connor's short fiction, there are two functions for death and violence, on the one hand, it is used as a powerful means to force her characters into soul-searching in a helpless situation, and possibly brings redemption to her characters. On the other hand, it is used to alarm readers that the situation of spiritual civilization becomes grim today with the material civilization developed a lot. This paper consists of five chapters. In chapter one, a critical survey of O'Connor's scholarship both at home and abroad are briefly introduced. Chapter two mainly focuses on analyzing the spiritual crises and its embodiments of the grotesque male characters in "The Artificial Nigger", "The Life You Save May Be Your Own" and "The Lame Shall Enter First". These male characters, with their grotesque life attitude and behaviors, display the living situations of those people who live in the spiritual wasteland. O'Connor's characters are sinking and struggling in the era transform. Their spiritual crises are respectively embodied in the grotesque behavior, loss of morality and loss of belief.Chapter Three mainly analyzes O'Connor's special female characters in "A Good Man Is Hard to Find", "The Good Country People" and "The Displaced Person". They are represented by masculine female images and self-righteous female images. Through detailed textual interpretation, this thesis reveals how the loss of spiritual beliefs ruin the female characters. O'Connor's female characters live in a traditional culture, but have a strong manipulative desire and masculine characteristic. Their common features are self-righteous, narrow, selfish and faithless. O'Connor describes them with a satirical, sympathetic and humorous tone. These women characters with their tragic fate, become victims of the era of spiritual crisis.Chapter four analyzes O'Connor's classic short stories "The River" and "A Good Man Is Hard to Find". The author points out the violence and death not only brings the disaster to those characters who live in their spiritual crises, but also brings them the possiblity of redemption, and meanwhile, the scene of violence and death has became the giant picture for alerting its readers. As a Catholic, O'Connor believes that the violence and death provides mankinds a way of getting spiritual redemption and soul rebirth:the destruction of the flesh helps bring the spiritual rebirth.Based on the above analysis, the conclusion points out that, in O'Connor's short fiction, the spiritual crisis almost lies in every character's mind. They are, without fail, in an unbalanced spiritual state such as their prominent contradictions with ego, the other and the society, so they suffer from the different kind of spiritual crisis. The crises are either embodied in their grotesque behavior, loss of morality and loss of belief, or embodied in their self-righteousness, narrow-mindedness and selfishness etc.. The violence and death both forces the characters in her short fictions to think about themselves and alert readers, which is provoking. The author hopes this study will be helpful for a more comprehensive understanding of O'Connor's works in domestic academia.