Luceat!

In the spirit of last month’s theme [God for some reason did not intend for me to have internet for most of last month], I would love to introduce you to a Catholic, American authoress of the 21^st century who has intrigued me in the last few years—Flannery O’Connor.

She is often associated with words like gothic, southern, regional, and grotesque; however, those adjectives fail to describe her masterful presentation of symbolic images and stories that communicate the drama of salvation and redemption within human life. Her stories are just plain weird and twisted to the average reader upon first perusal. However, she carefully draws a line in her imagery by refusing to describe the gory details of her murders, suicides, or other gruesome aspects of her plot line. Rather, she poignantly allows the reader to understand evil as evil and goodness as goodness through the raw actions of her characters. Her goal in writing stories rife with shocking twists and seemingly sad endings, was to make clear to the hardened modern reader the real evil of a fallen world by showing actions in a moral context.

For example, most modern media and books just present the isolated, physical event, “woman killed by highway robber,” and perhaps show a gory picture or give a full description of the bodily damage. Flannery, on the other hand, writes “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and paints a babbling, judgmental old lady pulled over by a hardened criminal. To no avail, the lady makes a desperate last appeal to his human nature and to God. In the end, Flannery leaves the reader with the knowledge that, “She would of been a good woman… if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.” While many books use a physically violent action or image as the climax of the plot, Flannery places the emphasis on the operation of grace in a fallen world, the true climax of human life.

Flannery’s work is not “fun” or “light,” but it is true and the signs of hope she reveals amidst the wreckage of human sin provide wonderful material for thought and personal reflection. Check it out and let me know what you think! [“A Good Man is Hard to Find” is a great starting point when reading her work because it is more transparent than some of her other famous ones like “The River.”]