Flannery O' Connor

A detailed Summary of Flannery O' Connor

At the age of twenty-two, Mary Flannery O' Connor, a famous twentieth century Southern writer, began her career in 1947 making her own distinct path in the ways of her writing. In the short years of O' Connor's life, she has completed 31 short stories and two novels, which have turned many heads for their distinct sense of humor and criticism of the "Old South." With her roots in Georgia, this Roman Catholic uses her own religious background and surroundings for the settings in all of her stories, managing range their content from a "kind of ferocious comedy to a stark and bitter tragedy." While being a "genius for the humorous and the grotesque," O' Connor puts a twist her work to make it like none other. From a few of her pieces, Good Country People, Revelation, and Parker's Back, Flannery O' Connor uses several different types of humor that tackle the "Old South", utilizing Southern dialect, social structures, and settings.

In Good County People, O' Connor uses several different types of humor including blue humor, exaggeration, and situation humor. These examples occur when Manley Pointer, the Bible salesman, seduces Joy-Hulga in the loft of an old country barn, and then leaves her there, running away with her artifici

O' Connors also exercises burlesque, understatement, and caricature as other forms of humor in her 1964 published piece, Revelation. This humor takes place in a doctors waiting room where virtually every representative of the South's class structure is present: the propertied white, the common white, the poor white trash, and the "colored." However, this humorous example occurs specifically when the "superior" white trash woman degrades blacks and dirty hogs. Here O' Connor uses burlesque humor as the white trash exclaims, " Two thangs I ain't going to do: love no niggers or scoot down no hog with no hose." Along with the trashy woman's uneducated tone and bedroom slippers on her feet, O' Connor illustrates caricature when the white trash demonstrates her "high class" manners by disgustingly wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. The main character, Mrs. Turpin, despises the attitude of the white trash woman and comments that "there's a heap of things worse than a nigger, and dirtier than a hog." Mrs. Turpin also concludes that if given the choice to be "colored" or white trash, she would rather be a "nigger- but that don't mean a trashy one." Many Southerners probably hold the same views as the white trash woman since prejudice is has been a major issue in the South, however these comments are no more than an understatement; she is not any better herself than "niggers or dirty hogs." From this use of humor, readers furthermore understand another one of O' Connors themes: that there is great depth beneath the surface of mankind.

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Approximate Word count = 1050
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: People