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Full-Text Articles in American Studies
Flannery O'Monsters, Shelby Spears
Flannery O'Monsters, Shelby Spears
English Class Publications
The most startling definition of monsterI have encountered belongs to Mandy-Suzanne Wong: “It’s what people say when they can’t think of any way to describe [something] that stands a chance of being accurate” (6). Yet there are many other qualities of monsters, such as duality—a monster is never whole, but discrete pieces that have been lurched together haphazardly; the most iconic example of this is Frankenstein’s monster, assembled out of bits of corpses and animated with a sacrosanct, unmentionable power. No less worthy as examples, however, are the strange characters of Flannery O’Connor’s short stories—contradictory beasts whose struggles seem …