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Literature in English, North America

Ouachita Baptist University

2017

Articles 1 - 9 of 9

Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

Jerry-Rigged Salvation, John Sivils May 2017

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.

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Flannery's "Daunting Grace": O'Connor's Nuanced Portrayals Of Disability, Joanna Horton May 2017

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.

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Truer Than Fiction: Flannery O'Connor's Fictional Fathers, Addison Crow May 2017

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 …

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"Unsex Me Here": A Queer Reading Of Faith In O'Connor, Shelby Spears May 2017

"Unsex Me Here": A Queer Reading Of Faith In O'Connor, Shelby Spears

English Class Publications

In this essay, the author examines the O'Connor stories "The Life You Save may be Your Own," "The Comports of Home," and "A Temple of the Holy Ghost" from a queer perspective using psycho-biographical evidence.

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Nothing But The Blood Of Jesus?: O'Connor's Critique Of Protestantism In Wise Blood, Jessica Saunders May 2017

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 …

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Get Woke: The Themes And Receptions Of The Works Of Kate Chopin, Haydn Jeffers May 2017

Get Woke: The Themes And Receptions Of The Works Of Kate Chopin, Haydn Jeffers

English Class Publications

Kate Chopin was a prolific writer in the late nineteenth century, popular for her copious number of short stories focusing on the circumstances and lives of married women, that is, the relationship between women and the institution of marriage itself. She published these short stories primarily in magazines such as Vogue, Atlantic Monthly, and Century (Clark), and they were well received by the public, especially women, during that time. Her most popular stories were compiled into two collections: Bayou Folk, published in 1894, and A Night in Acadie, published in 1897. Both collections were highly praised …

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The Mote In Hazel's Eye: The Blurred Vision Of Flannery O'Connor's "Wise Blood", Kimberly Wong May 2017

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 …

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All Men Created Equal: Flannery O'Connor Responds Communism, Nina Hefner May 2017

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 …

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Money Buys Happiness: A Psychoanalytic Reading Of O'Connor, Hannah Wright May 2017

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 …

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