An Interpretation Of O'Connor And Her Short Stories From The Perspective Of Psychological Defense Mechanism

Flannery O'Connor is an outstanding American novelist in the 20 th century and a controversial southern Catholic writer after World War II as well.She experiences a lot of misfortune in her life,especially her father's death and her own illness which lead to her mental traumas.Beisdes,there are prominent religious motifs,regional characteristics in her creation.What's more,her fiction contains not only the strong sense of redemption and guilt,but also freaks and violence which are used to analyze humanity and disclose the nature of human being,O'Connor herself declares that her writing is a kind of redemption.By careful analysis of the characters in her works,it is not difficult to find that most of the characters are abnormal.O'Connor relentlessly criticizes the diseases in southern society and traditional backward culture through the characters and stories in her works.This thesis intends to employ Freudian theory of Psychological Self Defense Mechanism to analyze the personality of characters,their respective conflicts in the plot development as well as the reason of their abnormal psyche and tries to explore the thematic meaning from a new perspective.The thesis is divided into five chapters.The first chapter is the preface,which focuses on the background,origin,purpose and significance of this thesis.The research of this paper is briefly summarized and the shortcomings of the original study are put forward.The second chapter is literature review,specifically the history and related literature on the history of the study of O'Connor as well as her works at home and abroad and the overall overview and description of the next aftereffects of the study to provide a corresponding academic background platform,but also for the follow-suspense.The third chapter is the theoretical framework and research methods of this paper,which is more detailed through Freud's psychological analysis and psychological defense mechanism as well as human psyche,which makes the research objectives clear.The fourth chapter analyzes and explores the actuality and feasibility of the study of Flannery O'Connor and her works in the framework of psychological defense mechanism theory.Combining the research of the previous chapters with the concrete texts,with the aid of indirect changes,this thesis briefly analyzes the impact of social circumstances on O'Connor's works.Chapter Five is the conclusion,which summarizes the main contents of this thesis,and puts forward the difficulties and shortcomings of this research.Based on close reading of her stories and combining with Freud's psychoanalysis,this thesis is to explore the essence of the innermost mind of the author and those heroes' as well through looking into the relation between the southern culture and her literary expression.By doing this,readers will be able to have better knowledge of her principles of writing and a perfect union in form and content.