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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Jerry-Rigged Salvation, John Sivils
Jerry-Rigged Salvation, John Sivils
English Class Publications
This paper examines the anagogical meaning of certain objects in three of Flannery O'Connor's stories, and then proposes how those meanings nuance narrative themes.
Flannery's "Daunting Grace": O'Connor's Nuanced Portrayals Of Disability, Joanna Horton
Flannery's "Daunting Grace": O'Connor's Nuanced Portrayals Of Disability, Joanna Horton
English Class Publications
Throughout O'Connor's fiction, we see characters who are marked by suffering or disability. It is tempting to analyze those disabled characters purely as symbols. However, if we understand O'Connors conception of suffering as an experience which prepares us for grace, we may discern which characters receive grace through suffering and which refuse to recognize their need.
Truer Than Fiction: Flannery O'Connor's Fictional Fathers, Addison Crow
Truer Than Fiction: Flannery O'Connor's Fictional Fathers, Addison Crow
English Class Publications
Flannery O’Connor grew up with a loving and supportive father, so it is perplexing that she fills her stories with fathers who portray the opposite. O’Connor’s fictional fathers, when they are included in the story, are controlling, harsh, and malicious—the complete opposite of her father, Edward O’Connor. Why would O’Connor create fathers whose image so intensely contrast that of her own supportive, gentle, and loving father? My purpose in this paper is to examine O’Connor’s fictional fathers in her short stories, “The Artificial N” and “The Comforts of Home,” and her novel, The Violent Bear It Away, and attempt …
Nothing But The Blood Of Jesus?: O'Connor's Critique Of Protestantism In Wise Blood, Jessica Saunders
Nothing But The Blood Of Jesus?: O'Connor's Critique Of Protestantism In Wise Blood, Jessica Saunders
English Class Publications
Published in 1949, Flannery O’Connor’s first novel, Wise Blood, satirizes not Christianity itself, but rather man’s twisted practice of the faith that O’Connor held so dear. O’Connor, a devout Roman Catholic living in the Bible Belt, writes to critique the heresy, hypocrisy, and apathy that pervaded the lives of Protestants in the South—a region that O’Connor describes as “hardly Christ-centered” but “most certainly Christ-haunted” (Mystery and Manners 44). O’Connor portrays the characters in Wise Blood as Protestants, non-Christians, or the nihilistic protagonist and hero himself, Hazel Motes, who in his rejection of the gospel, founds the Church of Christ …
The Mote In Hazel's Eye: The Blurred Vision Of Flannery O'Connor's "Wise Blood", Kimberly Wong
The Mote In Hazel's Eye: The Blurred Vision Of Flannery O'Connor's "Wise Blood", Kimberly Wong
English Class Publications
While some authors start writing their novels with a full outline in mind, Flannery O’Connor’s first novel, Wise Blood, began with a short story written for the Writers’ Workshop at Iowa State in December 1946. This short story, titled “The Train,” was inspired when O’Connor was on a train going home for Christmas. She recalls, “‘There was a Tennessee boy on it in uniform who was much taken up worrying the porter about how the berths were made up” (qtd in Gooch 134). Then, O’Connor wrote Wise Blood’s larger story as a part of her masters’ thesis, but upon hearing …
All Men Created Equal: Flannery O'Connor Responds Communism, Nina Hefner
All Men Created Equal: Flannery O'Connor Responds Communism, Nina Hefner
English Class Publications
From her mother’s farm, Andalusia in Milledgeville, Georgia, Flannery O’Connor found her writing inspiration by observing the ways of the South. Naturally, a pervasive motif in her works is racism. For instance, in “Revelation” Ruby Turpin spends a good portion of the short story thanking God that she is neither white trash nor black. In her essay “Aligning the Psychological with the Theological: Doubling and Race in Flannery O’Connor’s Fiction,” Doreen Fowler points out that “[Ruby’s] insistence on setting racial boundaries has been an attempt to distinguish a white, superior identity” (81), equality with African Americans being Ruby Turpin’s ultimate …
Money Buys Happiness: A Psychoanalytic Reading Of O'Connor, Hannah Wright
Money Buys Happiness: A Psychoanalytic Reading Of O'Connor, Hannah Wright
English Class Publications
In the year 1946 when Flannery O’Connor was about twenty-one years old, she and her mother Regina signed a document emancipating Flannery from her mother’s care so that she could attend the creative writing program at the University of Iowa (Release of Guardianship). In this determined show of independence, Flannery chose to move away from her mother and take responsibility for herself. However, this responsibility became too much for O’Connor to handle when she was diagnosed with lupus shortly after her twenty-sixth birthday. She was forced to move back in with her mother in Milledgeville and relinquish a great deal …
Dear Zelda, Nicole Trackman
Dear Zelda, Nicole Trackman
The Great Gatsby Unit
This talk-show activity is best done after students have read through chapter seven in The Great Gatsby. Students will be asked to write a “Dear Zelda” letter- seeking advice for a problem that has come to light in their (the character’s) life. Perhaps Tom would like some marital advice, Wilson may need to learn about the grieving process, Myrtle may ask how she could have communicated with Wilson more productively – and thus avoided her untimely death. It is up to the students to decide what their character needs help with. Students will take the stage and talk out their …