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Flannery O'Connor: The Woman, the Thinker, the Visionary

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Spivey describes meeting Flannery O'Connor in 1958 and offers impressions and details of their correspondence. Notes the belief she shared with T.S. Eliot and William Butler Yeats, that "a new dark age was about to descend upon mankind," and supports this view with Sally Fitzgerald's comment that, O'Connor "was, at times, a kind of modern sibyl." Remarks on her "profound emotional and visionary quality" and her "pessimism" rooted in "a Southern stoicism" adopted by pre-Civil War Southern gentry.

Explores, Flannery O'Connor's "intellectual life in the context of her life in the South." Identifies the three intellectual viewpoints O'Connor adhered to: "that of Southern Agrarianism, of a strictly orthodox Thomism, and of an apocalyptic Catholicism." Compares O'Connor to Walker Percy and finds her "both a profounder thinker and artist."

Notes O'Connor's attraction to "religious existentialists," such as Martin Buber and Gabriel Marcel and her use of the "rebellious individual" character in Wise Blood and The Violent Bear It Away.

Discusses her status as "a woman of letters" and comments on her portrayal as "a kind of recluse." States that James Joyce meant more to O'Connor "than any other writer," and that she turned to his and Hemingway's work "for inspiration."

Ties her work to Joyce's in "her first chief theme: the individual who cannot free himself from Jesus," and in her "profound concern with art in all its manifestations." Includes a lengthy explication and discussion of Wise Blood showing links with Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Argues that even though O'Connor "was a gifted critic, thinker, artist and even woman of letters, she was primarily a literary visionary not unlike Joyce or even Dostoevsky."

Reads "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" and "The Displaced Person" as O'Connor's "profoundest visions of the destruction of paralyzed worlds."

Offers, as well, explications of "The River," "Good Country People," and "The Artificial Nigger." Praises her deep visionary insight in her novel, The Violent Bear It Away, especially in "her characterization of old Tarwater in terms of his suffering, his prophetic insights and actions, his alienation in an unbelieving world, and his fraternal association with several blacks ... who make up a cadre of believing Christians."

Considers O'Connor's "vision of the growth of a new communal association of humanity," based upon influences of Teilhard de Chardin and Thomas Merton. Discusses how this theme is evidenced in "Revelation" and "The Enduring Chill." Contends that de Chardin served as "only" an inspiration for her, "not a revered master like Saint Thomas Aquinas."

Notes similarities between the works of O'Connor and Thomas Merton, and illustrates how she labored through her work to show "how, through suffering and evil, human beings learn to realize the essential human core in themselves and others."

Concludes with discussion of several stories from O'Connor's second collection, including: "The Lame Shall Enter First," "The Enduring Chill," "Greenleaf," "The Comforts of Home," "A View of the Woods," "Parker's Back," and "Judgement Day."

R. Neil Scott / Middle Tennessee State University