0:00:06.407,0:00:10.697
A garrulous grandmother and a roaming [br]bandit face off on a dirt road.

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A Bible salesman lures a one-legged [br]philosopher into a barn.

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A traveling handyman teaches a deaf woman [br]her first word on an old plantation.

0:00:20.281,0:00:22.473
From her farm in rural Georgia,

0:00:22.473,0:00:24.673
surrounded by a flock of pet birds,

0:00:24.673,0:00:27.533
Flannery O’Connor scribbled tales [br]of outcasts,

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intruders and misfits staged in [br]the world she knew best:

0:00:31.803,0:00:33.642
the American South.

0:00:33.642,0:00:35.262
She published two novels,

0:00:35.262,0:00:37.982
but is perhaps best known [br]for her short stories,

0:00:37.982,0:00:42.562
which explored small-town life [br]with stinging language, offbeat humor,

0:00:42.562,0:00:45.548
and delightfully unsavory scenarios.

0:00:45.548,0:00:48.458
In her spare time O’Connor drew cartoons,

0:00:48.458,0:00:51.168
and her writing is also [br]brimming with caricature.

0:00:51.168,0:00:56.828
In her stories, a mother has a face [br]“as broad and innocent as a cabbage,”

0:00:56.828,0:01:00.337
a man has as much drive as a “floor mop,”

0:01:00.337,0:01:04.447
and one woman’s body [br]is shaped like “a funeral urn.”

0:01:04.447,0:01:07.007
The names of her characters [br]are equally sly.

0:01:07.007,0:01:10.137
Take the story “The Life You [br]Save May be Your Own,”

0:01:10.137,0:01:13.427
where the one-handed drifter Tom Shiftlet [br]wanders into the lives

0:01:13.427,0:01:15.767
of an old woman named Lucynell Crater

0:01:15.767,0:01:17.647
and her deaf and mute daughter.

0:01:17.647,0:01:19.707
Though Mrs. Crater is self-assured,

0:01:19.707,0:01:22.327
her isolated home is falling apart.

0:01:22.327,0:01:25.227
At first, we may be suspicious [br]of Shiftlet’s motives

0:01:25.227,0:01:27.257
when he offers to help around the house,

0:01:27.257,0:01:29.697
but O’Connor soon reveals [br]the old woman to be

0:01:29.697,0:01:32.567
just as scheming as her unexpected guest–

0:01:32.567,0:01:35.797
and rattles the reader’s presumptions [br]about who has the upper hand.

0:01:36.087,0:01:38.847
For O’Connor, no subject was off limits.

0:01:38.847,0:01:40.497
Though she was a devout Catholic,

0:01:40.497,0:01:42.807
she wasn’t afraid to explore [br]the possibility

0:01:42.807,0:01:45.137
of pious thought and unpious behavior

0:01:45.137,0:01:47.157
co-existing in the same person.

0:01:47.157,0:01:49.597
In her novel The Violent Bear it Away,

0:01:49.597,0:01:53.117
the main character grapples with the [br]choice to become a man of God –

0:01:53.117,0:01:55.797
but also sets fires and commits murder.

0:01:55.797,0:02:00.267
The book opens with the reluctant prophet[br]in a particularly compromising position:

0:02:00.267,0:02:04.327
“Francis Marion Tarwater’s uncle had been [br]dead for only half a day

0:02:04.327,0:02:07.588
when the boy got too drunk [br]to finish digging his grave.”

0:02:07.588,0:02:11.308
This leaves a passerby to “drag the body [br]from the breakfast table

0:02:11.308,0:02:13.308
where it was still sitting and bury it […]

0:02:13.308,0:02:17.158
with enough dirt on top to keep [br]the dogs from digging it up.”

0:02:17.158,0:02:19.178
Though her own politics are still debated,

0:02:19.178,0:02:23.238
O’Connor’s fiction could also be attuned[br]to the racism of the South.

0:02:23.238,0:02:25.788
In “Everything that Rises Must Converge,”

0:02:25.788,0:02:28.738
she depicts a son raging [br]at his mother’s bigotry.

0:02:28.738,0:02:31.548
But the story reveals that [br]he has his own blind spots

0:02:31.548,0:02:33.918
and suggests that simply recognizing evil

0:02:33.918,0:02:36.637
doesn’t exempt his character [br]from scrutiny.

0:02:36.637,0:02:40.057
Even as O’Connor probes the most [br]unsavory aspects of humanity,

0:02:40.057,0:02:42.917
she leaves the door to redemption [br]open a crack.

0:02:42.917,0:02:45.117
In “A Good Man is Hard to Find,”

0:02:45.117,0:02:49.117
she redeems an insufferable grandmother [br]for forgiving a hardened criminal,

0:02:49.117,0:02:51.707
even as he closes in on her family.

0:02:51.707,0:02:54.987
Though we might balk at the price the [br]woman pays for this redemption,

0:02:54.987,0:02:57.127
we’re forced to confront the nuance[br]in moments

0:02:57.127,0:02:59.807
we might otherwise consider [br]purely violent or evil.

0:03:00.631,0:03:02.691
O’Connor’s mastery of the grotesque

0:03:02.691,0:03:06.581
and her explorations of the insularity and[br]superstition of the South

0:03:06.581,0:03:09.641
led her to be classified as [br]a Southern Gothic writer.

0:03:09.641,0:03:11.976
But her work pushed beyond [br]the purely ridiculous

0:03:11.976,0:03:14.956
and frightening characteristics [br]associated with the genre

0:03:14.956,0:03:18.546
to reveal the variety and nuance [br]of human character.

0:03:18.546,0:03:20.926
She knew some of this variety [br]was uncomfortable,

0:03:20.926,0:03:23.316
and that her stories could be [br]an acquired taste –

0:03:23.316,0:03:25.766
but she took pleasure [br]in challenging her readers.

0:03:26.516,0:03:29.356
O’Connor died of lupus at the age of 39,

0:03:29.356,0:03:33.786
after the disease had mostly confined her [br]to her farm in Georgia for twelve years.

0:03:33.786,0:03:34.906
During those years,

0:03:34.906,0:03:37.766
she penned much of her most [br]imaginative work.

0:03:37.766,0:03:40.706
Her ability to flit between [br]revulsion and revelation

0:03:40.706,0:03:44.916
continues to draw readers to her endlessly[br]surprising fictional worlds.

0:03:44.916,0:03:47.180
As her character Tom Shiftlet notes,

0:03:47.180,0:03:49.580
the body is “like a house:

0:03:49.580,0:03:50.890
it don’t go anywhere,

0:03:50.890,0:03:53.780
but the spirit, lady, [br]is like an automobile:

0:03:53.780,0:03:55.800
always on the move.”