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Sin And Salvation In Flannery O' Connor's Short Stories

Posted on:2011-01-29Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:Y Z XinFull Text:PDF
GTID:2195330332964727Subject:English Language and Literature
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964) is considered one of American greatest fiction writers and one of the strongest apologists for Roman Catholicism in the twentieth century. In her lupus-shortened life, O'Connor publishes two novels:Wise Blood (1952) and The Violent Bear It Away (1960); thirty-one short stories,19 of which are collected in A Good Man Is Hard To Find (1955) and Every thing That Rises Must Converge (1965), which are well received by the readers and bring her reputation. A large amount of correspondence and numerous essays are collected in The Habit of Being and Mystery and Manners.O'Connor is a thorough lady of her religion. In her eyes, everything including her illness, is related to religion and religion is her eternal subject. Through her works, O'Connor tries to free the modern people from sins and return them to God, people who have fallen or are still indulged in sins.This thesis aims to examine Flannery O'Connor's view of sin and salvation in her four short stories, namely,'The Artificial Nigger','A Temple of the Holy Ghost', 'The Displaced Person'and'Revelation'. The whole thesis is divided into four parts: an introduction, two chapters and a conclusion.In Chapter One, O'Connor's life experience, her works and the panorama study of O'Connor are provided.Chapter Two mainly covers the issue of sins. The first part of this chapter deals with original sin. A second part approaches O'Connor's special interests in sins from two perspectives:family background and social background. Being a Catholic and living in the "Bible Belt", O'Connor is deeply influenced by her religion, which has become part of her consciousness, and she firmly believes in original sin which is innate in mankind as the descendants of Adam. As far as her social surroundings are concerned, she lives in a decade of turmoil in which nothing except material wealth dominates the whole world. Religion has lost its supremacy. Sins are prevailing around America, even all over the world. As a sensitive writer, O'Connor is well justified to depict the reality of the modern sinful material world. The last part of Chapter Two deals with the sins in O'Connor's fictional world. Concrete textual analyses of various sins derived from original sin are provided, such as sin of pride, sin of selfishness. O'Connor considers writing as a missionary activity and her intention is to make the readers realize the importance of returning to God.Chapter Three concerns with O'Connor's peculiar ways of salvation in her four short stories. In O'Connor's opinion, violence and death are not only proper means but also means authorized by God, through which she awakens people from the sinful world and bring them back to God. Just as she has found that violence is strangely capable of returning her fictional characters to reality and preparing them to accept their moments of divine grace. Except for violence and death, Incarnation is O'Connor's another way of salvation. Catholics believe that God the Father sent Jesus into the world. The personhood, life, misery, suffering, and death of Jesus, as God incarnate in human flesh, is meant to be the atonement for original sin as well as actual sins.Finally, Chapter Four makes a brief summary and O'Connor as "a literary prophet of the South", her stories serve as the medium between God and mankind to echo the sinful reality and give inert and sinful people a warning.
Keywords/Search Tags:Flannery O'Connor, Original Sin, Salvation
PDF Full Text Request
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