| Mary Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964), is regarded as one of the foremost American short story writer, novelist and essayist . She is an anomaly among post- World WarⅡauthors—a Roman Catholic from the Bible -belt South whose stated purpose was to reveal the mystery of God's grace in everyday life. As a Catholic writer, her Christian ethics finds a good expression in her works. Instead of analyzing the concrete unethical anecdotes of the protagonists , such as baby-suicide, sexuality, murder and unjustness, this thesis focuses on the basic problems in Christian ethics that reflected in O'Connor' fictions—love and the telos of life. O'Connor observes that because of the trauma from World WarⅡ, the Southern society, was influenced deeply by the nihilism, and, in which the moral principles were declined completely. Aiming to reestablish the moral order in the modern society, O'Connor's fictions encourage people to care their spiritual life and find their salvation through the revelation of God, and that is a best way for humans to avoid the seductions of evil. Like a bright lamp, her work shows people how to love and how to live a meaningful life.Besides the introduction and the conclusion, this thesis consists of four chapters. Introduction is a brief survey of O'Connor's life and literature career, including many reviews on her grotesque color, her theology, her symbolism, her comic and her political connotations.Chapter one is the ethical background of Flannery O'Connor. Part one analyzes the definition of Christian ethics including the origination, the source, the main principles, and the moral function of Christian ethics. Part two focuses on exploring O'Connor's ethics by tracing back to Aristotle and Aquinas, including Aristotle's endemonia theory and Aquinas' vision on good and evil. through the comparative analysis, Aristotle and Aquinas's influences on Flannery O'Connor is clearly presented.Chapter two emphasizes on the nature of love. As the most prominent purport, false love is found almost everywhere in O'Connor's fictions. Part one explores the narcissistic love of Mr. Head who is the protagonist in The Artificial Nigger . He attempts to keep the young generation with him and claims that he loves his grandson and tries to protect him but, in nature he is not so brave as he thoughts himself, he admires nobody except himself. Part two discusses the failure of Shepperd's false love to Johnson , a Juvenile criminal. Johnson declares he devotes his life in helping others and makes every effort to save Johnson out of degeneration , however, his love is not faithful, because he is aiming to cultivate Johnson into a great man and then he could be proud of the high IQ boy. He wants to forget his dead wife through the salvation of Johnson, so his love is not unselfish. Part three is about Mrs. May's false love to her neighbors. Mrs. May is a good pretender. She pretends to love her neighbor, however, what she hopes is to control them to work for her, and in her deep heart, she wishes the Greenleafs will be degenerated step by step.Chapter three is about moral choices of the characters, the relationship of reason and faith, mind and body, the spiritual and animal nature of human beings and the obstacles on their way to understand the truth of life, exposing their limitations such as their pride, egoism and self- assertion.Chapter four discusses the telos of life. Through the analysis of the protagonists who want to pursue the telos of life in philosophy, art, noble status and fortune, it is easy to find what O'Connor convinces is that the telos of life or the happiness lies in the contemplative thinking of God.Conclusion is a summary of the main theme of the thesis. O'Connor believes in the Divine plan of God, so she regards people as created creatures higher than other animals and conceives that human beings could approach God and become similar with God and the eventually become perfect and be accepted by the almighty God. So the supernatural transformation of Jesus Christ on human beings' conversions are possible and if the individuals could be redeemed the whole world shall run in an ethical and healthily just like "the City of God". |
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