Themes In Flannery O Connor's Short Stories

Flannery O’Connor is a brilliant writer who constructs stories that most readers can easily relate to. O’Connor is known mostly for the religious views used throughout her short stories, but she routinely uses an abundance of other themes to convey messages and lessons to readers. Although her short stories consist of diverse characters who have opposing views on certain issues her stories are comparable. In comparing both “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” and “Everything That Rises Must Converge” it is evident that other themes such as: societal classification, local color, race issues, and family conflicts are extremely important in conveying a message by O’Connor because she uses each of these themes within these two stories. In addition, societal classification is a theme that appears throughout both “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” and “Everything That Rises Must Converge,” but this theme is obvious in its own distinct way in each story. For example, in the story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” it is evident early on that the grandmother considers herself to be in a higher classification due to the clothing she chooses to wear on the road trip. According to O’Connor, the grandmother dressed in this particular way because “In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady”(544). The clothing can be a
Although in “A Good Man Is Had to Find” the son Bailey never really challenges his mother in her beliefs regarding the societal classification and race issues, Julian which is the son in “Everything That Rises Must Converge” does challenge his mother on these issues. Above all the conflicts that the families have with one another is the leading factor to why the two stories are so