Arts and Humanities Commons^™

A Study Of Reflectors And Reflections In Four Stories By Flannery O'Connor, William Leo Maffini

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

Throughout her fiction, Flannery O' Connor uses character reflections to present mirror analogues. The recurrence of these mirror analogues inspired me to look deeper into her fiction for analogues that might superficially appear to be unrelated and dissimilar. I found that in addition to her more obvious reflections there was another whole set of what I term reflectors that have the same function of pointing up traits or corresponding characteristics between characters by dwelling upon their dissimilarities. For the sake of convenience I have divided the mirror analogues in O'Connor's fiction into two categories: reflectors and reflections.