amlit338

amlit338: "Flannery and Faulkner"

After reading both short stories, I looked up Flannery O'Connor on the internet to read her biography and found that some liken her to William Faulkner. The only other book I ever read of Faulkner's was As I Lay Dying so I didn't see the similarities because the writing styles are very different. She is though described as relying heavily on regional settings and grotesque characters.

I realized that the way that the Misfit talks in A Good Man is Hard to Find reminds me of the way pretty much everyone talked in Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, with very southern dialect that sometimes requires a second read-through to understand.

The bio also states that "her writing reveals an almost uncanny grasp of the nuances of human behavior". Like Faulkner, she doesn't try and make the situation pretty, but instead real. In the Faulkner book I read, a family’s mother dies and the book is about how the family members cope while transporting her corpse to a cemetery. The ironic thing is that most of them have other agendas and don’t even say so much as a sentence about their mother. I think that saying she knows human behavior is a very accurate description when comparing her to Faulkner.

One thing that stuck with me after reading A Good Man is Hard to Find was when she described the mother as "begun to make heaving noises as if she couldn't get her breath." (19) when she new her husband and son had been shot dead. I must admit that I initially thought the name Flannery was a man’s name so after reading this story and then finding out it was a woman was a shock to me. I like stories that shock though, otherwise I find them kind of forgettable after they have come and gone.