Flannery Essays

Imagine that the sun high in a clear, blue sky in the middle of July. The air has a slight breeze to it and the birds are softly chirping in the background. Your mood at the moment is calm, almost peaceful. All of a sudden, you get a text that …

To the uninitiated, the significance of Flannery O’Connor’s Parker’s Back can seem at once cold and dispassionate, as well as almost absurdly stark and violent. Her short stories routinely end in horrendous, freak fatalities or, at the very least, a character’s emotional devastation. Flannery O’Connor is a Christian writer, and …