Flannery O’Connor Essay

Flannery O’Connor was a devout Catholic on the protestant south. All her life she was a white crow, the rest of her life she was diagnosed by lupus and has spent on the farm in Georgia with her mother. Religion was a huge part of her life besides writing, O’Connor gave lectures on faith and literature about her religion and once she said: â€Å"I feel that if I were not a Catholic I would have no reason to write, no reason to see, no reason ever to feel horrified or even to enjoy anything. † (Niederauer, George H. Flannery O’Connor’s vision of faith, church and modern consciousness† Center for Catholic Studies and Social Thoughts. 27 Sep. 2007.   Lane Center Lecture Series. 19 Oct. 2011) It is obvious if a person interested in something it will reflects on his or hers life. Flannery O’Connor was a catholic and we see how her religious belief reflects on every storyline. Flannery was interested in raising peacocks, and enclose feather of this beautiful birds into every letter. Through the letters which was edited after her death by Ellie Fitzgerald it is shown the way how Flannery searching for a God. Flannery was a Roman Catholics on the south, but her stories are about Protestants who are searching for the Truth. She wants to show a grace in every main character, devotion to the Christ and to force her characters to suffer, go through the pain and violent to reach grace. In Revelation we have met with a main character Mrs. Turpin who is very faithful to the Christ not to a God. Here Flannery O’Connor reminds about herself in this character. Because she believed in Incarnation doctrine which Church taught that God become a human and converts to a Jesus. Mrs.  Turpin always talking with Jesus asking questions, arguing with him about problems that has appeared in her life. The main character in this story not a true believer, she is just talking that she is so good and very religious person, but she is not. She doesn’t have this gift called faith in her heart; probably she lost faith as she loose her appetite. Mrs. Turpin doesn’t realize is how much religion cost and she understands that is better to believe than no to believe. Flannery was worry about the thought that people do not understand how religion is important and how it’s worth. Mrs. Turpin character is the figure of a person that Flannery O’Connor don’t wanted to be. Mrs. Turpin is a self-righteous, very shallow thinking person she doesn’t look into people’s inner world she is judging them by their race and the way they look alike. Mrs. Turpin is egocentric which is not allowed in any of religions how she can convince herself in true believing if she is thinking she is better than every person in this waiting room. Such things as: is it better to be a white trash or a Negro woman will never came to her narrow mind if she would be a true believer. Mrs. Turpin has been wrestling with grace, Flannery O’Connor believed that we all does she puts her characters into the situations which allows them to fight for grace she thought grace change us and to wrestle with grace means that you don’t want to change yourself in order to became a true believer. Here it is a scene in the story when Mrs. Turpin sitting in the waiting room and hears a song she doesn’t catch every word but she caught the spirit of this song, which makes her thoughts sober. She starts to think that she is very helpful women and it doesn’t matter which race or social class she would placed to it is rather to be kind and ugly woman than to be rich and not a good woman. Through the story it is shown the way Mrs. Turpin changing her mind, her thoughts became sober it seems like she is transforms as the story goes. But still Mrs. Turpin thinking she is better than everyone she is towering over everyone and she is a decent believer and she is showing to visitors in the waiting room the way how grateful to a Jesus she is for everything that she has. And exactly at this moment the book stroke her by an ugly girl and Flannery O’Connor uses this moment as a moment of violence to forward her character into a way religious people supposed to be to reach a grace. This ugly girl called Mr. Turpin a wart hog which was very offending to her she is a clean and goes to church regularly and this is what redeems her. This moment is a breaking point in the story that makes Mr. Turpin to think about her inner world and not to lie to her. These words are message from the God she received to reach revelation. She is judging people and she will be judged by a God as others. The last scene in the story reveals this judgment, when Mrs. Turpin imagine heaven scene where she saw whole companies in heaven. She didn’t expect it; she thought she and people from her social class deserve to be in heaven but not a white trash or black people and freaks. This is a new class Mr. Turpin highlight during the story and includes in this class the ugly girl who attacked her. All this social classes that were divided into groups by Mrs. Turpin were tumbled into heaven. White trash, black people in white robes, freaks leaping like frogs and bringing up the end of the procession was a tribe of people to whom Mrs. Turpin concern herself and her husband Claud. Mrs. Turpin was kind of a woman who knows exactly what she thinks who sees a lot and understands nothing; she was a good religious woman who has never tried to look deeper into religion aspects. At the end of the story it is eternal time giving to Mrs. Turpin to think about her mistakes and her attitudes to religion to people and finally find grace and to receive revelation from God. Flannery O’Connor’s characters go through short and harsh lifecycle as a challenge and searching for revelation. She was a white crown in front of thousands of Protestants who wants to show through her short stories the Truth that her characters are searching for during their short life in the stories. Her rare inherited decease lupus misunderstanding from the Protestant society, loneliness the fact that she was never married, her spiritual life all this facts goes through her veins to the pen and expressed as a basement for writing her stories.