![COMIC NOVEL
Even though O'Connor's vision was essentially religious, she chose
to present it from a primarily comic or grotesque perspective. In a note
to the second edition of Wise Blood, her first novel, O'Connor wrote,
"It is a comic novel about a Christian malgré lui [in spite of himself],
and as such, very serious, for all comic novels that are any good must
be about matters of life and death." Several friends have verified
O'Connor's problem with public readings of her stories.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/oconnorsppt-111108050200-phpapp02/85/O-connor-s-ppt-9-320.jpg)
O'connor's ppt
- 1. HER RELIGION IN STORIES Flannery O’Connor
- 2. FAMOUS WORKS Wise Blood (1952)- first novel The Violent Bear it Away (1960)- her second, and final novel. A Good Man is Hard to Find, and other stories (1955)- book of short stories Complete Short Stories of Flannery O’Connor (1971)- book of short stories released after her death.
- 3. HER RELIGION Flannery was a devout Catholic, and her religion greatly influenced her outlook on life and her work.
- 4. BELIEFS With the exception of a number of the early stories, O'Connor consistently produced fiction having an implicit, if not a totally explicit, religious world view as an integral element of each work.
- 5. WRITINGS In numerous articles and letters to her friends, O'Connor stressed the need for the Catholic writer to make fiction "according to its nature . . . by grounding it in concrete observable reality" because when the Catholic writer "closes his own eyes and tries to see with the eyes of the Church, the result is another addition to that large body of pious trash for which we have so long been famous." As she noted in one article, "When people have told me that because I am a Catholic, I cannot be an artist, I have had to reply, ruefully, that because I am a Catholic, I cannot afford to be less than an artist
- 6. COMMENTS "They didn't want to hear what I said and when they heard it they didn't want to believe it and so they changed it. I also told them that the average Catholic reader was a Militant Moron but they didn't quote that naturally."
- 7. CHRISTIAN CONCERNS O'Connor was, throughout her writing career, convinced that the majority of her audience did not share her basic viewpoint and was, if not openly hostile to it, at best indifferent. In order to reach such an audience, O'Connor felt that she had to make the basic distortions of a world separated from the original, divine plan "appear as distortions to an audience which is used to seeing them as natural." This she accomplished by resorting to the grotesque in her fiction.
- 8. DOCTRINE Without becoming totally bogged down in the Catholic doctrine of grace (a good Catholic dictionary will list at least ten to fifteen entries dealing with the subject), one should be aware of what O'Connor means when she uses the term in connection with her stories. Loosely defined, Illuminating Grace (the type of grace most frequently used by O'Connor in her stories) may be described as a gift, freely given by God, which is designed to enlighten the minds of people and help them toward eternal life.
- 9. COMIC NOVEL Even though O'Connor's vision was essentially religious, she chose to present it from a primarily comic or grotesque perspective. In a note to the second edition of Wise Blood, her first novel, O'Connor wrote, "It is a comic novel about a Christian malgré lui [in spite of himself], and as such, very serious, for all comic novels that are any good must be about matters of life and death." Several friends have verified O'Connor's problem with public readings of her stories.
- 10. SIN For individuals incapable of seeing humanity as a group of struggling manikins operating against a backdrop of eternal purpose, many of O'Connor's stories appear to be filled with meaningless violence. Even those characters who are granted a moment of grace or experience an epiphanal vision do so only at the cost of having their self-images, if not themselves, destroyed. In a very real sense, all of O'Connor's characters have inherited the Original Sin of Adam, and all are equally guilty.