1

How then shall we live:

Doing what is right in the theological vision of Everything That Rises Must Con-
verge, The Lame Shall Enter First, The Displaced Person, and The Temple of the
Holy Ghost.

David Penner, 301876

INDS 541: The Mysterious Manner of Flannery O’Connor

July 25, 2022

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In this paper, I will argue that Flannery O’Connor’s short stories present a distinct moral
matrix in which the only immediate good action human beings are capable of is that of divine
communion. I will defend this thesis by discussing four of O’Connor’s short stories: A Good Man
is Hard to Find, The Displaced Person, The Temple of The Holy Ghost, and The Lame Shall
Enter First. I will begin by asserting that the moral matrix implicit in these stories is deeply am-
bivalent about the human capacity for proper action. From there, I will discuss what constitutes
right action within this moral matrix. Finally, I will conclude by critiquing the moral vision of these
four stories to the effect that it does not adequately allow for humans’ capacity to act rightly to-
wards one another.
A distinctive aspect of Flannery O’Connor’s work is its ambivalence towards human be-
ings’ ability to do good.1 Like the biblical book of Job, O’Connor’s work deeply problematizes the
notion that stereotypically right action results in human flourishing and stereotypically wrong ac-
tion results in material divine wrath.2 In The Displaced Person, Mr. Guizac’s work ethic and lack
of racial prejudice earn him his death at the hands of his would-be hosts and friends, while in A
Good Man is Hard to Find, brutal murders have no real discernable repercussions.3 Instead of
affirming a simplistic picture of this-worldly divine justice, in O’Connor’s work, evil deeds are
Yahweh’s primary instruments of grace.4 In contrast, supposedly good works are fundamentally
acts of deception. Thus the Grandmother in A Good Man is Hard to Find receives God’s grace
through the brutal murder of her family, for which she is at least tangentially responsible. 5 Simi-
larly, in The Lame Shall Enter First, Sheppard’s hospitality is a destructive self-deception, but it
also drives his son Norton towards the Christian faith.6 The decidedly evil Rufus moves Norton
towards Christ even more directly.7 Regardless of the providential twisting of evil works towards
good ends, the alarming behaviour of O’Connor’s characters often invites the reader to distance
herself or himself from them and judge their actions in the harshest possible terms, as with the
Misfit or Rufus.8 At the same time, her character’s machinations are frequently all-too relatable,
such as Mrs. McIntyre’s scheme to profit from her apparent hospitality, or the Grandmother’s
self-centered manipulation of her family.9 Rather than asking her readers to identify themselves
with her characters to excuse their actions as morally permissible, O’Connor seeks for them to

1 Sue Whatley, "The Thin Blue Line of Theodicy: Flannery O’Connor, Teilhard de Chardin, and Competi-
tions between Good/Good and Evil/Evil," Religions 9, no. 5 (2018): 141.
2 Corey Stewart-Hassman, "Slouching Towards Bethlehem: How the Biblical Book of Job Illuminates the
Work of Flannery O’Connor" (PhD diss. University of the South, 2017), 7-49.
3 Flannery O’Connor, Flannery O’Connor: The Complete Short Stories (Harper Perennial Classics, 2015),
141-8, 245-9, 253, 260-1.
4 Corey Stewart-Hassman, "Slouching Towards Bethlehem: How the Biblical Book of Job Illuminates the
Work of Flannery O’Connor" (PhD diss. University of the South, 2017), 45-9.
5 Flannery O’Connor, Flannery O’Connor: The Complete Short Stories (Harper Perennial Classics, 2015),
132, 137-9, 147-8.
6 Flannery O’Connor, Flannery O’Connor: The Complete Short Stories (Harper Perennial Classics,
2015), 512-514.
7 Flannery O’Connor, Flannery O’Connor: The Complete Short Stories (Harper Perennial Classics, 2015),
512-514.
8 Flannery O’Connor, Flannery O’Connor: The Complete Short Stories (Harper Perennial Classics, 2015),
141-8, 532-535.
9 Flannery O’Connor, Flannery O’Connor: The Complete Short Stories (Harper Perennial Classics, 2015),
137-9, 243.
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be appalled by their freely-chosen disregard for others.10 Thus, instead of promoting moral rela-
tivism, O’Connor’s ambivalence about the human capacity for good illustrates the deep need for
extra-human grace in the face of sin. O’Connor’s strong emphasis on sin borders on affirming
the reformed doctrine of Total Depravity, where human beings are by nature entirely incapable
of right action. Characters such as Mr. Guizac, The Priest, and Norton challenge such an asser-
tion, as do the Grandmother’s final words. With these characters in mind, Mrs. McIntyre’s and
Sheppard’s deeply sinful and deceptive actions are not inescapable but the consequence of
their free choice to live apart from divine grace. Still, O’Connor gives the reader far less access
to plausibly good characters such as The Priest, Mr. Guizac, and Norton. They primarily support
the dramatic action surrounding the more evil central characters. All this meditation on sin and
God’s twisting of it towards his good ends begs the question of what good human beings can at-
tain.
O’Connors works imply that attempting to do good is approaching the problem from the
wrong direction. Instead of striving to do what is right, women and men are to open themselves
up to being changed by the reality of God’s presence, which is constantly breaking into their
lives. Thus The Priest repeatedly recites the tenants of the faith to Mrs. McIntyre, who stub-
bornly refuses to hear him.11 In contrast, despite their age difference, Norton and the Grand-
mother receive God’s grace by being children. For the Grandmother, this grace only comes
when she fully submits to God, recognizing her sin and kinships with the Misfit.12 The Grand-
mother leaves little room for O’Connor to develop a vision of life centered on communion with
God. Though The Priest, Norton, and Mr. Guizac may provide some hints in this direction, The
Child from A Temple of The Holy Ghost supplies a far more developed case study. The Child is
perhaps as close as O’Connor comes to a psychologically developed character that seems in-
tended to be judged chiefly positively by the reader. The Child is still primarily consumed by sin,
a “slothful [..] born liar” who is “deliberately ugly to almost everybody.”13 Yet she genuinely de-
sires to commune with God, being “moved to fervor” at times during her prayers when thinking
“of Christ on the long journey to Calvary.”14 She is also repentant, praying for God to help her
“not to be so mean, [..] not to give her [mother] so much sass, [and] [..] not to talk like I do.”15
The Child has repented many times before however, which implies that her repentance hasn’t
done much to transform her behaviour.16 Thus O’Connor seems somewhat ambivalent about
whether this communion with God will lead to human beings treating one another better. The
Child acts more rightly than most of O’Connor’s characters, not because she is less sinful, but

10 Robert Fitzgerald and Sally Fitzgerald, Mystery and manners: Occasional prose (Farrar, Straus &
Giroux, 1969), 43.
11 Flannery O’Connor, Flannery O’Connor: The Complete Short Stories (Harper Perennial Classics,
2015), 250, 262.
12 Flannery O’Connor, Flannery O’Connor: The Complete Short Stories (Harper Perennial Classics,
2015), 147.
13 Flannery O’Connor, Flannery O’Connor: The Complete Short Stories (Harper Perennial Classics,
2015), 271.
14 Flannery O’Connor, Flannery O’Connor: The Complete Short Stories (Harper Perennial Classics,
2015), 271.
15 Flannery O’Connor, Flannery O’Connor: The Complete Short Stories (Harper Perennial Classics,
2015), 275.
16 Flannery O’Connor, Flannery O’Connor: The Complete Short Stories (Harper Perennial Classics,
2015), 275.
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because she knows it and is willing to present her sin before God. As with her depictions of evil
actions, O’Connor’s depictions of characters that may be acting well strongly resist moralizing,
seeing the question of right and wrong as a secondary issue at best.
Though this may be refreshing to those steeped in an over-confident protestant milieu
that can confuse human morality with God, the implicit moral matrix of these stories seems to do
little justice to the Bible’s idea that human beings can and should do right by one another. The
ethical matrix of these stories may echo the book of Job, but it leaves little room for the confi-
dence in human action implied by the more canonical prevalent Old Testament law or the book
of James. The first and greatest commandment may be to love the Lord your God, but the sec-
ond is like it, love your neighbour as yourself.17 O’Connor’s work implies that the last prescrip-
tion may not indeed follow from the former. O’Connor is not writing a work of systematic theol-
ogy, however. Thus, it is not surprising that she admits that her work is strongly rhetorical and
culturally contextual in its portrayal of reality. She aims to make the distortions of modern life ap-
pear as such “to an audience which is used to seeing them as natural,” moving away from the
balance of Dante to wake up the tired reader who lives “in an age which doubts both fact and
value.”18 At the same time, O’Connor contends that “the basis of art is truth, both in matter and
in mode” and she spills much ink over the importance of the real and concrete within fiction.19
Thus O’Connor achieves the former goal of shocking her audience into spiritual reality, but at
the cost of fulfilling the latter goal of telling the whole truth regarding humans’ ability to do good.
Rightly ordered, human morality flows from loving God and existing in an ongoing dy-
namic relationship with him. Doing right by others is far from the purpose of the Christian life,
but it is still an essential aspect of it. Unfortunately, A Good Man is Hard to Find, The Displaced
Person, The Temple of The Holy Ghost, and The Lame Shall Enter First lack confidence in the
ability of human beings to do what is right. These stories rightly assert that the primary purpose
of life is divine communion. However, they fail to recognize the Biblical picture of human moral-
ity that is supposed to result from this communion, albeit in a not yet fully realized form.

Bibliography

17 Matthew 22:37-40
18 Robert Fitzgerald and Sally Fitzgerald, Mystery and manners: Occasional prose (Farrar, Straus &
Giroux, 1969), 33,48-49.
19 Robert Fitzgerald and Sally Fitzgerald, Mystery and manners: Occasional prose (Farrar, Straus &
Giroux, 1969), 65-86.
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Fitzgerald, Robert, and Sally Fitzgerald. Mystery and manners: Occasional prose. Farrar, Straus
& Giroux, 1969.

O’Connor, Flannery. Flannery O’Connor: The Complete Short Stories. Harper Perennial Clas-
sics, 2015.

Stewart-Hassman, Corey. "Slouching Towards Bethlehem: How the Biblical Book of Job Illumi-
nates the Work of Flannery O’Connor." PhD diss. University of the South, 2017.

Whatley, Sue. "The Thin Blue Line of Theodicy: Flannery O’Connor, Teilhard de Chardin, and
Competitions between Good/Good and Evil/Evil." Religions 9, no. 5 (2018): 140.