Literary Techniques of Flannery O'Connor
Literary Techniques of Flannery O'Connor
In writing many authors have different techniques or styles in which they use in order to reveal their themes. These vehicles are what give fiction its ability to relate to people and life in general. By using setting, irony, and characterization in her short fiction Flannery O’Connor reveals a theme of a both cynical and sinister universe in which death is imminent and impartial. She specializes in using artistic representation of human character or motives to accentuate this morbid theme. In her three short stories “Everything That Rises Must Converge” “Good Country People” and “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” O’Connor reinforces this predominant theme.
In order to display her themes, O’Connor uses setting as one of her main tools. In all of her stories she has particular settings that drastically influence the outcomes of each scenario. In “Good Country People” O’Connor uses a country backdrop in order to accurately depict the attitude derived from an area of this nature. Early in the story, Mrs. Hopewell has a blurred deception of country people, she is unable to filter through her own biases. This is proved when the bible salesman comes to her door, and she welcomes him entirely because he says that he is a country boy. “I’m real simple. I don’t know how to say a thing but to say it. I’m a country boy.” Because of these statements he is able to manipulate his way into Mrs. Hopewell’s family. The setting is crucial in this particular case because if this scene does not occur on countryside the salesman is much less likely to manipulate a family. The setting allows O’Connor to display an “all trusting” country attitude, which in turn results in a death of Mrs. Hopewell’s beliefs. Setting also plays a large role in her other two stories. In “A Good Man is Hard to Find” the setting is crucial because the family would most likely never have been killed if the car accident had occurred in a place similar to a city with lots of people in the area. “The road looked as if no one had traveled on it in months” because of the situation taking place on a back road in a small southern town, the setting enabled the killings to take place. These brutal killings are a distinct...