Editing Flannery O'Connor (section)

===Characteristics===
Regarding her emphasis of the grotesque, O'Connor said: "[A]nything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case, it is going to be called realistic."{{sfn|O'Connor|1969|p=40}} Her fiction is usually set in the South{{r|Enniss (2007)}} and features morally flawed protagonists who frequently interact with characters with disabilities or are disabled themselves (as O'Connor was by lupus). The issue of race often appears. Most of her works feature disturbing elements, although she did not like to be characterized as cynical. "I am mighty tired of reading reviews that call ''A Good Man'' brutal and sarcastic," she wrote.{{sfn|O'Connor|1979|p=90}} "The stories are hard, but they are hard, because there is nothing harder or less sentimental than Christian realism.  When I see these stories described as horror stories, I am always amused, because the reviewer always has hold of the wrong horror."{{sfn|O'Connor|1979|p=90}}

She felt deeply informed by the sacramental and by the [[Thomist]] notion that the created world is charged with God. For her, God was a given of experience, not a mere intuition of the mind or spirit. When [[Mary McCarthy (author)|Mary McCarthy]] told her that she considered the [[Eucharist]] only a "symbol, and a pretty good one", O'Connor completely disagreed, saying: "Well, if it's a symbol, to hell with it".<ref>{{Cite web |title=Letters. Mary McCarthy, Aquinas, Hitler, et al. |url=https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/letters-mary-mccarthy-aquinas-hitler-et-al |website=Commonweal |date=26 January 2018 |access-date=27 March 2025}}</ref> Yet, she did not write [[apologetic]] fiction of the kind prevalent in the Catholic literature of the time, explaining that a writer's meaning must be evident, in his or her fiction, without [[didacticism]]. She wrote ironic, subtly allegorical fiction about deceptively backward Southern characters, usually [[Christian fundamentalism|fundamentalist Protestants]], who undergo transformations of character that, to her thinking, brought them closer to the Catholic mind. The transformation is often accomplished through pain, violence, and ludicrous behavior in the pursuit of the holy. However grotesque the setting, she tried to portray her characters as open to the touch of [[divine grace]]. This ruled out a sentimental understanding of the stories' violence, as of her own illness. She wrote: "Grace changes us, and the change is painful."{{sfn|O'Connor|1979|p=307}}

She had a deeply sardonic sense of humor, often based on the disparity between her characters' limited perceptions and the extraordinary fate awaiting them. Another frequent source of humor is the attempt of well-meaning liberals to cope with the rural South on their own terms. O'Connor used such characters' inability to come to terms with disability, race, poverty, and fundamentalism, other than in sentimental illusions, to illustrate her view that the [[Secularism|secular world]] was failing in the twentieth century.{{cn|date=March 2025}}

In several stories, O'Connor explored a number of contemporary issues from the perspective of both her fundamentalist and liberal characters. She addressed [[the Holocaust]] in her story "[[The Displaced Person]]", [[racial integration]] in "[[Everything That Rises Must Converge (short story)|Everything That Rises Must Converge]]", and [[intersex]]uality, in "[[A Temple of the Holy Ghost]]". Her fiction often included references to the problem of race in the South. Occasionally, racial issues come to the forefront, as in "[[The Artificial Nigger]]", "Everything that Rises Must Converge", and "[[Judgement Day (short story)|Judgement Day]]" (her last short story, which was a drastically rewritten version of her first published story, "[[The Geranium]]").{{cn|date=March 2025}} 

Despite her secluded life, her writing reveals an uncanny grasp of the nuances of human behavior. O'Connor gave many lectures on faith and literature, traveling quite far despite her frail health. Politically, she maintained a broadly progressive outlook in connection with her faith; she voted for [[John F. Kennedy]] in 1960 and outwardly supported the work of [[Martin Luther King Jr.]] and the civil rights movement.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Spivey |first1=Ted R. |title=Flannery O'Connor: The Woman, the Thinker, the Visionary |date=1997 |publisher=Mercer University Press |page=60}}</ref> Despite this, she made her personal stance on race and integration known throughout her life in several letters to playwright [[Maryat Lee]] (which she wrote under the pseudonym "Mrs Turpin"). In one such letter, she said, "You know, I'm an integrationist, by principle, and a segregationist, by taste.  I don't ''like'' negroes. They all give me a pain, and the more of them I see, the less and less I like them. Particularly the new kind".<ref name="Elie#">{{Cite magazine |last=Elie |first=Paul |date=June 15, 2020 |title=How racist was Flannery O'Connor? |magazine=The New Yorker |url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/06/22/how-racist-was-flannery-oconnor |access-date=September 10, 2023}}</ref> According to O'Connor biographer, [[Brad Gooch]], there are also "letters where she even talks about a friend that she makes in graduate school at the University of Iowa who is black, and she defends this friendship to her own mother, in letters. It's complicated to look at, and I don't think that we can box her in".<ref>{{Cite news |title='Acid humour was a big part': the life and legacy of Flannery O'Connor |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/may/08/flannery-oconnor-movie-maya-ethan-hawke |date=8 May 2024 |last=Smith |first=David |work=[[The Guardian]] |access-date=14 May 2024}}</ref>