For anyone who has taken a class in modern literature or creative writing, they will most likely read Flannery O’Connor’s, A good man is hard to find. It is an American classic, written by one of the best storytellers in the world. O’Connor’s dark and often grotesque characters are distinguished by being heartless and morbid, whose actions are often cruel, violent and immoral. However, those of his character, regardless of the path they take, are touched by salvation and Divine Providence.

O’Connor’s stories take place in the South and the reader is taken to a time and place in American history when the civil rights movement was at its peak. Flannery O’Connor’s stories were and continue to be criticized for using derogatory language toward African Americans. Whether O’Connor was a racist herself is still debated in literary and academic circles alike. While race is a focal point in some of his stories, Flannery O’Connor did not take an apparent position on the civil rights movement that was under his feet. He wrote the South as it was, and his character’s emulated racial comments in his dialogue as did his contemporary common folk.

Many people who read O’Connor for the first time do not realize that all his works have their roots in Catholicism. She comes from a school of Catholic writers at the time that includes Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, and Walker Percy. At first glance, most of his works do not mention his Catholic beliefs. In fact, one might question his value system because, frankly, his characters are very un-Christian. However, all their stories are embedded with symbols of Divine Providence and the roots of Catholic thought.

A History of Early Catholicism in Four Paragraphs

In order for us to understand the inner workings of O’Connor’s stories, we must understand the inner workings of the Catholic faith:

In 313 AD, Constantine the Great legalized Christianity, moving the center of the Roman Empire to Byzantium. This would eventually give rise to the Byzantine Empire. With Constantine living in his newly named city of Constantinople, he gifted Rome to the Pope to help him oversee his dominions. This was a final blow to the Roman Empire, creating a ripple effect that would eventually collapse the Empire. Over time, ancient Christianity split into two separate entities: Byzantine Eastern Orthodox Catholicism and Roman Catholicism. This division was caused by two centers of Christian thought separated by two locations on the map.

Bear with me for a second, as this movement in history lays the foundation for Western culture and the beginning of Catholic philosophy, on which O’Connor’s stories were based. Although very similar, Eastern Orthodox Catholicism centered the scriptures on the Holy Trinity: The Father, The Son, The Holy Spirit; while Roman Catholics founded their biblical philosophy on the Incarnation of Christ himself, the idea that God had become human to suffer and die for our sins.

Members of the early Eastern Orthodox had a Greek orientation and, following in the footsteps of Socrates and Plato, they created a philosophy around the Holy Trinity. They questioned faith: if Jesus was both God and man, did he know he was God? In the flesh, was Jesus capable of sinning? As a man, did Jesus know everything or did He have limited knowledge?

The focus of the Incarnation of Christ in the Roman Catholic faith made God human. According to the Roman Catholic faith, Jesus knew everything and, through his crucifixion, saved humanity. Since God had made Himself present in the flesh, God could intervene in human affairs through Divine Providence, the very foundation of Flannery O’Connor’s stories.

The Short Stories of Flannery O’Connor

Of all the forms of fiction, the short story is the most difficult to read and write. The story itself is very condensed. Take O’Connor’s story, The life you save can be yours, where O’Connor’s protagonist, a nomadic man, Mr. Shiftlet, a carpenter whose first notable gesture is to raise his arms towards the sun, “his figure forms a crooked cross,” approaches a house and is greeted by Lucynelle, a toothless washed old woman, and her mute and innocent daughter, also named Lucynelle.

While talking, Mr. Shiftlet notices a rusty, black, broken-down car in the yard. The old woman tells him that it hasn’t worked in fifteen years. Mr. Shiftlet and the old woman talk all afternoon, while the sun sets on the three of them, symbol of things to come. Eventually, Mr. Schiftlet is welcomed into the house, where he fixes up the place in exchange for room and board. Finally, repair the damaged and rusty car.

The old woman convinces Mr. Shiftlet to marry young Lucynelle, his only prized possession. Mr. Shiftlet accepts this arrangement and they go to court to get married. The old woman will give her seventeen dollars, so she can take her innocent Lucynelle to a motel for her honeymoon.

The two married men leave in the afternoon. They continue driving into the evening, where they stop at a restaurant for a bite to eat. Young Lucynelle, tired, falls asleep on the counter. The guy who works the counter says, “It looks like a God angle.” In response, Mr. Shiftlet responds, “hitchhiker” and gives the boy money for food when he wakes up. Mr. Shiftlet leaves, leaving the mute Lucynelle in the middle of nowhere.

O’Connor’s story of Divine Providence takes root when Mr. Shiftlet wanders off into the night toward Mobile, Alabama. Along the way, you see signs that say, “Drive carefully. The life you can save may be yours.” After driving, pick up a hitchhiker, a boy, another symbol that tells Mr. Schiftlet to “go to hell!” The boy jumps out of the car. The story ends when a cloud of turnips passes by and it starts to rain.

The life you can save can be yours it is based on Matthew 5:45 which says: “That you may be children of your Father who is in heaven, who makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and rains on the just and the unjust.

The literary analysis of this satire is astonishing. There is symbol after symbol: there is the heart that Mr. Schiftlet talks about at the beginning of the story in relation to the turnip cloud at the end of the piece, the descriptive color of Lucynelle, which makes her the symbol of the Virgin Mary, and The colors of the newly painted car should be carefully examined. All this symbolism paints another story: a truth of the human condition and free will in relation to the divine order of the world.

Reading O’Connor in a Pseudo-Modern Era

Reading O’Connor at the foot of the 21st century not only takes us into the history of the Deep South, at a time when black men and women were fighting for equal protection under the law, but their stories force us to confront each other. reality. unpleasant truths and flaws of ourselves. This demonstration cannot be more evident than in its history, Everything that arises must converge.

This is a compelling story of the social and racial changes facing the South in the 1950s, and integrates it into a self-transformation, in which the protagonist, a young Julian, faces the sudden death of his mother, symbolizing the African American freedom. His mother’s death emulates the realization of a new era in which the South has arrived.

As a pseudo-modern society, we are at a turning point. In the wake of global communications, we see the world as it is, as O’Connor saw the south. We see poverty, war, revolution, hunger and disease filtered in our news headlines on a daily basis. Most of us wander aimlessly, sipping a frothed coffee drink, plugged into our mobile devices and 3G networks, unknowingly aware that half the underdeveloped world is looking to us to save them. All of O’Connor’s stories boil down to salvation and the possibility that Divine Providence can touch our lives in the way we least expect.