A Search for Redemption and Mystical Union: An Analysis of O’Connor’s “Greenleaf” and “The Lame Shall Enter First”

Abstract

Flannery O’Connor is one of the modern spiritual writers and is identified with labels like Catholic writer, Hillbilly Thomist, Southern novelist, grotesque stylist etc. She deserves another equally convincing label–O’Connor the Mystic–her claim to be considered a mystic being based on the many instances of the description of mystic experience and the operation of grace in her motifs. Flannery O’Connor highlights her religious outlook of God in a nontraditional manner and allows others to obtain grace through her literature. Though faith underpins all of her work, she does not use it in a didactic manner as a medium to preach. Her short stories can be viewed as a search for redemption in Christ. These stories are quests which involve the hero’s recognition of his vocation and end in his eventual ordination. There is an initial rebellion against belief, a crisis in faith, and a resolution in a ‘moment of grace’ in her stories. For O’Connor, the very act of writing was itself a redemptive process. Though O’Connor’s works follow the features of Eastern as well as Western mysticism, the present study concentrates on the Christian mystical elements in O’Connor’s “Greenleaf” and “The Lame Shall Enter First” as O’Connor was a Catholic writer.