"Flannery O'Connor's Fictional Habitus" by Richard Rosengarten

Lumen Christi Institute, Non-Credit Course "Modern Christian Writers," Spring 2013 Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964) composed a number of classic short stories celebrated for their superb local color, their yoking of humor with the grotesque, and their uncompromising depictions of violence — all in direct service, at least to her own understanding, of her vision of the Christian witness. Both these qualities and the witness crystallize in the stories' endings, and we will examine the sense to be found in the last paragraphs of three: "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," "Greenleaf," and "Revelation."