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Violence as the highest common denominator in a moment of Grace. In 1945,
20 year-old Flannery O’Connor arrived at the University ...
Submitted by Mumbo Jumbo on December 3, 2007
Category: English
Words: 906 | Pages: 4
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In 1945, 20 year-old Flannery O’Connor arrived at the University of Iowa and wanted to take part in a very reputable writers’ workshop. However, it was not her speech that granted her access but her manner of writing that could be seen by Paul Engle – a poet and a director of a writing program - as a forerunner of her career as a successful writer: “‘My name is Flannery O’Connor,’ [Mr Engle] read from her hasty note. ‘I’m not a journalist. Can I come to the Writer’s Workshop?’”(Giroux) On that account she was admitted. Yet, for O’Connor, being a Southerner writer and a Catholic at the same time, it seemed that it would be difficult for the Northerner contemporaries to understand her writing. Fortunately, her works were and still are appreciated, especially since they reveal the problems of American society with violence, racial prejudices and religious differences between Catholics and Protestants prevailing in O’Connor’s time. In “A Good Man is Hard to Find” O’Connor draws the attention to violence which is “capable of returning characters to reality and preparing them to accept their moment of grace”. (O’Connor, p.413)
The story takes place in the South of the USA which was not only known in the 50’s under the name of the southern Bible Belt, but was also associated with a fundamentalistic view on Afro-American people. During this period the southern society was changing immensely, partly because in 1954 a legal law for the abolishment of segregation was passed and the Civil Rights Movement, lead by Dr. Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks, had its peak in 1955. However, not only political changes took place but also economical ones. Due to post World War II prosperity America was facing an abrupt growth of the number of cars on American roads. This change in mobility modified the society’s attitude and its culture. The characters depicted in “A Good Man is Hard to find” adjust to the new way of life and as a typical American family, though disintegrated -...
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