Flannery O'Connor: Great Author

Early Life

Flannery O’Connor was born March 25, 1925 in Savanna Georgia. She was an only child, who lost her father from lupus when she was fifteen. Despite this and suffering during the Great Depression, she managed to finish high school and go to Georgia State College for Women. She was a social science major with a few corses in English. She made cartoons and poems for the school literary magazine. At the school, she made many relationships and connections that would last throughout her career.

Career

However short, O’Connor’s stories made during her career are still considered great works. She published two novels, Wise Blood and The Violent Bear it Away, as well as two collections of short stories, A Good Man is Hard to Find and Everything that Rises Must Converge. Other works were published after her death by friends. O’Connor won three O. Henry awards for short fiction, received prestigious grants and fellowships from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the Kenyon Review, and the Ford Foundation, and was awarded honorary doctoral degrees by Smith and St. Mary's colleges. In death her honors have continued with a National Book Award (for her collected stories) and a National Book Critics Circle award (for her collected letters).

Illness and Death

Flannery’s father died from the same sickness that she eventually fell ill to, lupus. While Flannery O’Connor was finishing her first novel, the first symptoms appeared. In 1951, she was diagnosed with lupus. On August 3rd 1964, O’Connor died in a hospital after falling into a coma.

Writing Style

Flannery O’Connor was a southern gothic writer whose roman catholic background greatly influenced her style. Her works illiterate her fascination with the grotesque. Very often in her stories, an ironic, unexpected, and disturbing event takes place totally taking the reader off guard. Amateur literary critics sometimes take this as unnecessary and write off O’Connor as a disturbing writer. This is not the case. Though her works may be a little unsettling, the themes greatly challenge the mind. Her works are almost always message oriented, but she does not make this too obvious. Critics of her work often describe her style as "stark." Indeed, O’Connor did use a stark, almost mundane style and a consistent structure that can be boring. But this only helps to amplify the unexpected event. The change from a consistent, uneventful story to a dramatic turn of events (often disturbing) multiplies the power of her story over the reader’s emotions and senses. These are the tools that she used in her works, that brought her so much respect.