Flannery O'Connor Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Flannery O'Connor - Essay Example Often, O’Connor’s stories came to reflect a non-secular nation at war with itself, although many of her works focused on the fictional tale of one family, who happens to be directly affected by this conflict (with the occasional murder). Even today, as the intertwining aspects of violence and religion continue to appear across America’s newspapers and our awareness of the world, O’Connor’s works tap the underlying issues plaguing many peoples since they were first written. Flannery O’Connor spent the earliest and latest years of her life residing in Georgia. Although she was a devout Roman Catholic, her 1955 short story â€Å"Good Country People† followed the lives of a protestant family and one â€Å"naà ¯ve† Bible salesman. This particular story follows Hulga Hopewell, a PhD in Philosophy, who swore off many of the non-intellectual aspects of the world, including the affection of men. But, when a Bible salesman saunters into town to preach for his own prophet, she decides that despite her limited experience with the opposite sex (since she had never been kissed), she would seduce the boy, believing he was simple and inexperienced when it came to love. When she proceeds to exert her dominance, she begins to succumb to the notion of love and affection (even allowing him to remove her wooden leg, which was dismembered when she was an adolescent). But then she refuses to take the next step in their fiery short relationship, so he s natches her leg and stuffs it into his suitcase, and leaves Hulga behind. However, despite the differences between O’Connor’s personal beliefs and those of her characters, numerous similarities exist between the author and her work. The main character Hulga and O’Connor remain comparable on several levels. They were both intellectuals who also suffered from debilitation, as Helga has a prosthetic leg and O’Connor was stricken with lupus, which