The literary prophet of the American South: Flannery O'Connor

 　　Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964) was one of the most outstanding Southern female writers in the mid-20th century and the greatest American short story writer after World War II. Her writing style is witty, grotesque, full of southern gothic horror, violence, rich in religious themes and imagery, and is known as the "literary prophet of the South". Is it related to Carson? McCullers, William? Faulkner and other famous Southern writers. Although her writing career is only seventeen years, she has only two novels and 31 short stories, but seven of her short stories won the O. Henry Award for Short Stories, "A Collection of Short Stories" won the National Book Award, "O'Connor" Anthology" was selected into the "American Library" and was the first American female writer to be selected into the "American Library" after the "World War II".

　　O'Connor

　　was born on March 25, 1925, in Savannah, Georgia, USA. The day she was born coincided with the Roman Catholic "Annunciation", the day when the angels told the Virgin Mary that she was about to have a child. Her parents are devout Catholics, so they named her Mary after the Virgin? Flannery? Mary Flannery O'Connor. She is the only child in the family and is loved by her parents. His father was a successful businessman and his mother came from a prestigious family. Her superior social status limited the scope of her life, coupled with the strict discipline of her mother, she had few friends and a very lonely childhood. She had two hobbies as a child. One is fond of keeping weird birds, and at the age of five he taught pygmy chickens to walk backwards. Another is to create stories using pictures and simple words, and talk to characters when they are alone. In her later work, she liked to use the bird as a kind of imagery, most prominently in her short story "The Displaced People" where she portrayed the peacock as an image of God. In early 1941, her father died of lupus erythematosus. Therefore, her father was a trauma she did not want to touch, and it was difficult to find the image of her father in her works.

　　O'Connor received her Catholic initiation at Savannah's St. Vincent's School for Girls at age 6, which laid the foundation of her faith. During his high school and college years in Milledgeville, he showed a talent for painting and served as the art editor of the school magazine. In July 1945, she received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Georgia Women's College. After receiving a scholarship to the University of Iowa, entered Paul? The Writer's Workshop organized by Paul Engle learned to write and aspired to be a writer. That same year, she took the initiative to drop "Mary" from her name, not wanting to be mistaken for a Southern washerwoman and be looked down upon by publishers and readers. During her studio studies, she studied James? Joyce, Franz? Kafka, William? Works by famous writers such as Faulkner. In 1946, when she was 21 years old, she published her first short story, Geranium, and started writing her first novel. In 1947 he won the Reinhardt Prize for Fiction. In 1950, he was diagnosed with the familial genetic disease lupus erythematosus. In 1951, he returned to the Andalusian farm in Milledgeville with his mother to recuperate, and continued to write novels while fighting the disease. In 1952, his long debut novel "Wisdom Blood" was published, which attracted widespread attention from the critics. On August 3, 1964, he died of renal failure due to lupus erythematosus at the age of 39. American critics called her early death "the greatest loss to American literature since Fitzgerald's death".

　　The Age of the Fall of the Prophet—The Quest for Faith

　　When O'Connor was in his 20s, he published more than a dozen works including "Blood of Wisdom", "A Good Man Is Hard to Find", "River" and "Everything That Rises Will Converge". Among them, "Blood of Wisdom" is her full-length debut novel published at the age of 27, and the creative process has gone through seven years. The protagonist of the story, Hazel Motes, is a World War II veteran. He came from a pastor's family and was influenced by his grandfather, a missionary. He felt guilty at a very young age. He believed that Jesus died to save him, and he was full of reverence for Jesus. Because of her curiosity when she was young, she peeked at the naked women in the circus and was reprimanded by her mother. The mother emphasized that "Jesus died to atone for your sins", which further aggravated Hazel Motz's sense of guilt. To atone for his sins, he walked in shoes with stones and decided to be a missionary. During World War II, he served in the army and resisted all kinds of temptations with his firm religious beliefs. Due to the trauma of the war, during these four years, he found that his soul did not exist, so Hazel, who was in extreme pain, went to Tokin Seoul, hoping to obtain spiritual guidance. After reaching his destination, he found that no one could redeem himself spiritually. In grief and anger, he decided to give up his faith in Jesus and founded a Protestant Church without Jesus (the Church Without Jesus). Christ), and declared that there was no fall in the world and that there was no need for atonement. Hazel encounters Enoch, a lonely young man who claims to have "wisdom blood". In order to establish a friendship with Hazel, Enoch, driven by an intuitive impulse, stole a mummy from the museum for Hazel and wanted to make him a symbol of Protestantism , is smashed to pieces by an angry Hazel, which completely shatters Enoch's illusions of friendship. When Desperate Enoch saw that the actor playing the gorilla could shake hands with people while playing the gorilla, he violently robbed the actor playing the gorilla in the costume and pretended to be the gorilla himself. In order to get the opportunity to shake hands with humans and communicate with humans, Enoch did not hesitate to retreat from humans to "beasts". It reflects that due to the cruelty of "World War II", the moral concepts and rational beliefs that human beings have carefully constructed for hundreds of years have been destroyed. Modern people have lost their spiritual beliefs, are more immersed in the greed of material life, and alienated the relationship between people. and rapid development of alienation. Although Hazel claims to have founded Protestantism and no longer believes in the salvation of Jesus on the surface, some of his bizarre actions reflect Hazel's deep-seated love for Christianity. Hazel resisted the temptation of the false blind priest's daughter and the gentle trap of the landlady who calculated his retirement allowance, chased down the crooks who used his Protestantism to make money, proved his loyalty to Jesus Christ with his actions, and hoped for Jesus' redemption . In this society where people have been alienated into inhumans, he cannot communicate on a spiritual level with those who are selfish, greedy, indifferent, and dull in soul. In the extreme pain of being without spiritual support, Hazel used lime water to blind himself. His eyes and chest were tied with barbed wire, and he tortured himself to atone for his sins, and finally died miserably. Hazel repented to God in a self-blind way. Although he brought great harm and pain to the body, he gained spiritual pleasure and warned the world that those who cannot see God are blind. Reveals the theme of salvation by being faithful to God.

　　Hazel is a metaphorical Hebrew prophet, and his bizarre behavior highlights the Old Testament narrative of the prophet Isaiah walking naked and barefoot for three years in order to convey God's will. A prophet is a figure who could receive and convey the revelation of God in the ancient Hebrew nation. As the spokesman of God, he played an extremely important role in the religious, political and moral life of the ancient Hebrew society. O'Connor used Hebrew prophetic allegorical warnings and metamorphosis writing techniques to describe the world map of American society, and wrote Hazel's narrative of the behavior of the Hebrew prophets, the protagonist of "Wisdom Blood", and drew on the traditional values ​​of Hebrew prophetic literature to describe the state of the world. Redemption: The Lost Faith and Morality of Post-War Americans.

　　O'Connor lived in the American South known as the "Bible" belt, where Protestant Calvinism had a strong influence. It emphasizes "original sin" and "human evil", and believes that the human soul can only be redeemed by the gift of God. As a Catholic writer, O'Connor's short stories are almost all about sin and redemption. She takes her religious background very seriously, saying: "If I wasn't a Catholic, I wouldn't have a reason to write, no need to look around, no reason to even feel fear, no reason to enjoy." She created Hazel, the deviant and eccentric "monstrous" character, to reveal to the world the evil that they all ignore and ignore God. For her, the ideal path to redemption is violence. As a devout Catholic writer, she is familiar with biblical allusions, and O'Connor, who is deeply influenced by biblical literature, sees violence as an effective means of redemption, and believes that through violence to stimulate his body and touch his soul, can The mentally confused people who made Chaos stunned feel the wisdom of heaven and obtain the ultimate salvation.

　　The era when good people are hard to find - the pursuit of morality

　　O'Connor grew up in the southern United States, most of her works are set in the south, depicting the customs of the southern United States, so she is known as a southern writer. In 1952, she published short stories after returning to the farm to recuperate from illness. Most of the stories took place in the southern countryside. The main characters of many novels were a widowed, old-fashioned old woman living on the farm and her withdrawn children. The characters reveal the reality of O'Connor's and mother's interdependence and dissent.

　　A Good Man is Hard to Find, O'Connor's allegorical novel about violent redemption, published at the age of 28, and is one of her most famous short stories. The story focuses on a family in Georgia planning a trip, and the grandmother does not want to go to Florida, but wants to visit old acquaintances in East Tennessee. So the grandmother tried every means to persuade her son Bailey to change his mind. She used the excuse that the children had already been to Florida and should be moved to another place, and then she used the excuse that the jailbreaker wanted in the newspaper was fleeing to Florida, and warned her son about the danger of travel plans. But no one heeded her suggestion. The next day, when she set off, the old lady was the first to get into the car. In order to do what she wanted, she lied that there was a secret room in a manor near her hometown, which aroused the curiosity of the children and clamored for treasure hunting. Bailey had no choice but to change the road. Unexpectedly, the car turned over the roadbed on the way, and happened to meet the murder fugitive called "Out of Time" wanted in the newspaper. The rhetoric to influence him, but unexpectedly angered the murderer, and all six members of the family were killed. The old grandma is a person who has abandoned God. The so-called "good person" in the modern civilized society represented by her ignores her hypocrisy, stubbornness, selfishness, ignorance and ignorance, but acts as a god in front of the "inappropriate" person who has been abandoned by God. , leading to a tragic outcome. O'Connor believes that "sin is the misuse of the good, and pretence is the great sin of Catholicism". "A Good Man is Hard to Find" shows O'Connor's insight and worry about the spiritual deficiency of modern people and the chronic diseases of personality and morality. O'Connor uses violence to wake up the world and call for the reconstruction of modern people's spiritual beliefs and good social moral standards.

　　The Good Countryman (1955) is considered O'Connor's autobiographical novel. While recuperating on his mother's farm, O'Connor met Eric? Eric Langkjaer, who used to hold a folder and called it his "Bible". O'Connor dubbed him a "Bible Salesman." The two fell in love with each other for a while, but eventually broke up when Rankogar went to study in Europe. O'Connor wrote the short story in just four days. The character in the work, Mrs. Hopewell, lives with her thirty-two-year-old daughter, Huerjia. Hu Erjia, a Ph.D., suffers from heart disease, and is told she will not live to be forty-five years old. Hu Erjia is equipped with wooden prosthetic legs, has an extreme personality, is arrogant and rude to people, sits in a chair all day to read, and hates good men in the eyes of the world because she can smell their stupidity. A young man who claimed to be a countryman came to his door to sell the Bible, saying that he had a heart problem, that his life span was limited, and that he would dedicate his life to Christian work. Hu Erjia saw that this man had the same illness as her, and sympathy emerged spontaneously, so she secretly observed him, talked with him, and sympathized with each other. The candid country man made her feel confident and secure, and she agreed to date him. Hu Erjia, knowledgeable and intellectually superior, deceived herself into thinking she had seduced the man. Unexpectedly, this "good country man" turned out to be a fake Christian who had believed nothing since she was born, and deceived her with her artificial legs and glasses, which made her spiritual support and physical support collapse at the same time, her self-esteem, self-confidence, Self-awareness was severely hit and had to face the harsh reality alone. In the spiritually barren real world, the breadth and depth of philosophy is difficult to remove her inner inferiority complex and endless loneliness. Without the knowledge barrier of "glasses", she saw a blurry blue figure in the wheat field, the incarnation of "Jesus".

　　Influenced by the Southern Gothic writing style, O'Connor's stories are somber, with grotesque characters and eccentric plots. Some critics think that she has brought a morbid feeling about society and the extreme pain of life into literature. O'Connor has consistently denied comments that her grotesques are linked to her own illness. For her, the pain before death is just a natural progression, and those who are not sick have lost a favor of God. She declares: “I have written novels that, to me, have no deformed characters at all, but they are immediately labelled weird by non-Southern readers. I have a hard time believing that what is observed in one area might be in another. There is no counterpart at all. Anything that comes from the South is seen as grotesque by northern readers, and what is truly grotesque is regarded as reality.” From O’Connor’s work, it is strongly felt that her grotesque is only because people are insensitive to reality and cannot See the essence of things under the surface. Therefore, she said, "For the deaf, you have to shout; for the near-blind, you have to draw the characters big and amazing". The "monstrous people" she created are physically and mentally handicapped, such as the half-armed homeless man who abandoned his mentally handicapped bride on a wedding trip, the arrogant and rude female doctor with a wooden prosthetic leg, and the ex-military who burned his eyes with lime water to make atonement for himself. Soldiers, etc., force people to face the dark reality and seek spiritual liberation. She believed that society at the time needed a literature that could heal the wounds of the times, understand the inner connection between her and her readers, and as storytellers and storytellers, there is something inside of us that needs redemption, needs at least a chance to recover from decline It is this willingness that today's readers are looking for. It would be unfair for some American critics to call her work a Gothic novel dedicated to exaggerating horror. She is a Catholic realist writer, and her work is realist.

　　The modern American poetess Elizabeth Bishop commented on O'Connor's works: "I am convinced that her few works will live forever in American literature."