Blog Assignment #4: Southern Grotesque

Assignment:  O'Connor's work is often described as Southern"grotesque." I'd like you to write a brief response (let's say 250 words, minimum--that's about the equivalent to a double-spaced, 1-page, typed document) in which you discuss the ways O' Connor's characters and plot in "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" can be considered grotesque.


Step One:  Read my brief "lecture" about some of the characteristics of the genre:

• It's a subgenre of gothic literature (think Edgar Allen Poe) focusing on character, social, and moral shortcomings in the American South. 

• It often comments on society's negatives and weaknesses in order to point out truths of America's Southern culture and its unpleasant aspects: racial bigotry, crushing poverty, violence, moral corruption, other signs of humans' capacity for evil, etc.

• Plots rely on disturbing, supernatural, or ironic events but are realistic.

• The settings is often decayed and or rural. It can also be described as unusual or broken.

• The stories include flawed grotesque characters.A grotesque character may posesses an exaggerated personality trait or characteristic for the purpose of eliciting both empathy and disgust in the reader ("Grotesque"). In her fiction, Flannery O'Connor employed two types of grotesques: "physical grotesques" or "secular grotesques." Physical grotesques possess a deformed body in order to indicate some kind of spiritual deformity. Secular grotesques, on the other hand, are those who have for one reason or another rejected God's will and seek to destroy the soul in an attempt to save the body.

Step Two: Read what the author herself says about about Southern Grotesque here: http://www.en.utexas.edu/amlit/amlitprivate/scans/grotesque.html

Step Three:  Re-read "A Good Man Is Hard to Find." Re-read  it with the goal of picking out specific textual evidence that can help you "prove" that the story is, indeed, a good example of the Southern Gothic or Southern Grotesque genre. Remember that your opinions or claims are only as strong as the evidence you provide for those claims.

Finally, you might want to hear the short story as read by the author herself. You can find the reading on YouTube HERE: