Flannery O`Connor is one of the America`s greatest writers who was honored and at some point feared by other people. Being a very strong believer of Roman Catholic, she stood strong and protected that spiritual family in whatever it came. She was a devout believer whose writing skills helped in presenting what was majorly known as soul`s struggle in which she termed as the “The stinking shadow of Jesus.” This powerful writer who has shaken the world in her power of writing was born in March 25th 1925, her mother is Regina Cline and the father is Edward O`Connor. She lived as a one child until she lost her father to a universal lupus erythematosus, the same illness that would eventually take her off in her 39th year after birthday.
O`Connor started as a passionate reader of articles and was also an artist in her early stages before she could explore the world of writing. She served as an editor of the Corinthian in a college magazine and also as a cartoonist for quite a long time. She emerged as one of the most outstanding people whose cartoons could appear in very many magazines. Above all, she contributed a lot of creative writings, poems and at times compositions which mainly brought out her ability of powerful writing even in the whole world.
Further, O`Connor`s teacher`s proposal was a compilation of brief stories that were titled as The Geranium which was her first story to be published. However, most of the stories in this compilation were not her original work but they belonged to trainee who was looking for her own terrain. Upon this very first writing, her spiritual connection could be detected although slightly but her writing seemed so mature. One of her stories “The Turkey” came out so vivid to show her concern for the southern dialect and brings out the irony as literary device in what she emerged famous about.
Immediately after her study in the year 1947, O`Connor became a winner of the Rinehart-Iowa Fiction Award just in the first novel she produced. This was upon her submission of some part of the “Wise Blood” and was taken in at one of the artists’` retreat which occurred in Saratoga Springs in New York. That is when she continued with her work of trying to finish the book, here she became friends with Robert Lowell who was also a poet. After some time, she moved Robert Fitzgerald`s apartment where she found stanch Catholics who helped get the stability of seclusion from other religions and stick to this one religion. They could also ensure spiritual union compulsory to her creativity, logical and religious life.
O`Connor`s life in the new developed home was however disrupted by an incurable lupus disease which was autoimmune but later got treated by use of steroid drugs. This was her first time to survive the threat of her life which made her to even go back to Milledgeville and stay there fully where the family had a farm. Amidst having some complications due to the effects of the drugs she used while she was sick, O`Connor could manage to read and write after work making regular visits to lecture and different study trips which could easily help her to effectively write her stories. She could not also forget her previous home that helped her grow spiritually, hence wrote the letters inform of poems or letters to specific people she could remember like Fitzgerald.
More over, being a Christian and an orthodox Catholic, she was so neutral and could at any time write about Protestants involving every practice and beliefs that are involved not trivializing any belief. She could always present them as seriously as them that belonged to the religion saw themselves which helped her to do away any sort of ignorance or malice. However, her two major mistakes came out when she was at first very hostile to the protestants and every belief they practiced. Another mistake came out as an open racist who could hide the attitude inform of writing for her own reasons.
O`Connor as a wide range racist went ahead and wrote to humorous recitations about how the Negros misbehaved in her mother`s farm. With lots of disrespect, instead of saying that they helped her mother she referred to them as helpless and that her mother was struggling to keep them out of trouble. Through these kinds of writing, it is the evidence that she was a racist and could say anything to make sure that she undermined the other races that lived around the place. Although she treed as much to be realistic, she could always touch negative part of the Negros displaying how helpless and problematic they were. She was a true realist who actually used every power of writing to filter the world and told out what most writers have left out hence her uniqueness was seen and most people liked.
The Wise Blood and The Violent Bear it Away novels could not have been so catchy as it is without the conflicts that she kept in them of determinism against the free will which was actually opposed by the Catholics. With all these portrayals, she could bring everything to come out through the characters who could be speaking to the readers. This is one of the ways she used to create gaps with the Protestants but could not show them directly majorly displaying them as people who were very desperate trying to win other people`s souls. The approach she gave actually helped very many writers to know how the Catholics view different matters at different levels even when it comes to writing and weighing out of issues.
Early in the 1964, she was sick again over the lupus that reemerged from her past health history and she had to pass through surgery for a fibroid tumor. Her condition got worse for some months after being in a coma for very many days. The illness was beyond the doctors and she had to pass away in the same disease her father died of, she was buried just next to her father`s grave in Memory Hill Cemetery just in the Milledgeville. After her death different people gave out what they could see of her and her writings, amongst them was the Atlanta Journal which observed that her spirituality made her capable to speak with the kind of power she used which was not in the order of American literature.
Surprisingly, even after her death her writings published by various writers could still win awards. In 1972, some different collections of writing were made for the book Award, and in honor of her life, one of the living writers was given the prize. The judges commented that O’Connor`s work deserved the awarding and hence it was to honor her achievements that she made while still alive. At different occasions her work was edited by different people and friends like Sally Fitzgerald who worked on The Habit of Being which was a letter and was published to rave reviews. These letters actually revealed a lot about her life in Milledgeville, how she wrote and even about her being a strong Catholic. Just for the first time reading many people could see more about the shocking stories I the warm and humorous personality including the Education background of the writer. O’Connor is one of the writers that very many people will never forget and mostly about her religion and attitude towards Protestants.
References
Jon Lance Bacon, Flannery O'Connor and Cold War Culture (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993
Robert Brinkmeyer, The Art and Vision of Flannery O'Connor (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989
Jean W. Cash, Flannery O'Connor: A Life (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2002
John Desmond, Risen Sons: Flannery O'Connor's Vision of History (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987
The Flannery O'Connor Bulletin, vols. 1-26/27(1972-2000), and The Flannery O'Connor Review, vols. 1- (2001- ), Georgia College and State University
Melvin J. Friedman and Beverly Lyon Clark, eds., Critical Essays on Flannery O'Connor Boston: Hall, 1985
Richard Giannone, Flannery O'Connor: Hermit Novelist (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000).
Brad Gooch, Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2009
Sarah Gordon, Flannery O'Connor: The Obedient Imagination (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2000
Louise Westling, Sacred Groves and Ravaged Gardens: The Fiction of Eudora Welty, Carson McCullers, and Flannery O'Connor (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1985).
