Flannery O’Conner’s writing is filled with meaning and symbolism. Her writings are hidden in plain sight beneath a unified narrative style that breathes not a word of outline, faith, or personal belief. Her writing is basically mysterious because it contains knowledge that is hidden to all but those who have been instructed as to how and where to look for it. She is a Christian writer and her work is message-oriented. She is far too brilliant of an artist to tip her hand at but like all good writers, ridiculous didacticism is disgusting to her. She succeeds what few Christina writers have ever achieved – a type of writing that stands up on both literary and religious grounds and succeeds in doing justice to both. Mary Flannery O’Connor was born in Savannah, Georgia on March 25, 1925. She was born to Catholic parents Edward F. and Regina C. O’ Connor. She attended St. Vincent’s Grammar School and Sacred Heart Parochial School. Her father got a position as an appraiser for the Federal Housing Administration in 1938. The family moved to North East Atlanta and then to Milledgeville. Three years later in Milledgeville, Ed died from complications arising from the chronic autoimmune disease lupus. Flannery attended Georgia State College for Women and State University of Iowa where she received her MFA in 1947. In 1951, after complaining of a heaviness in her typing arms, she was diagnosed with the same lupus that had killed her father. Despite the disease she went on to write two novels and thirty-two stories which won awards and praise. She went on speaking tours when her health permitted. She spent most of her time on the family farm with her mother. Flannery O’Connor dies from lupus on August 3, 1964 at the age of thirty-nine. Some of her writings seem cold and unemotional, as well as almost meaninglessly blunt and furious. The majority of her short stories usually end in horrible, freak fatalities or even emotional devastation for the characters. She remained a sincere Catholic throughout and coupled with the constant awareness of her own impending death. All of this clarified through an fictional sensibility and gives us valuable insight into just what went into those thirty-two short stories and the two novels. She had emotional bitterness, a belief in grace as something shocking to the receiver, a cold concept of salvation and a violence as a force for good. She is considered one of America’s greatest fiction writers and one of the strongest supporter for Roman Catholicism in the 20th century.
Galloway, Patrick. "Flannery O'Connor." Books and Blog by Patrick Galloway. 1996. Web. 18
"Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964)." New Georgia Encyclopedia. 3 Mar. 2009. Web. 18 Apr.
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