Flannery O’Connor Aimed to Jolt Her Readers, While Her Family Hoped She’d Create the Next ‘Gone With the Wind’

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Upon its release in 1939, the film Gone With the Wind was celebrated with a lavish premiere in Atlanta that captivated thousands. Patrons filled downtown streets near Loew’s Grand Theater, transformed to reflect the elegance of a Southern plantation, while watching the arrivals of stars. Confederate veterans in uniform received thunderous applause. For many, including the attendees of the red-carpet event, the movie represented their narrative, drawn from Margaret Mitchell’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of 1936. An ocean away, however, a 14-year-old Flannery O’Connor watched the spectacle unfold with disdain.

O’Connor, who would later become a renowned author, held a deep distaste for the historical romance, despite sharing parallels with Mitchell. Both were shaped by Irish Catholic backgrounds in Georgia, where they were viewed as outsiders within the predominantly Protestant culture. Nonetheless, their literary paths diverged sharply. O’Connor eschewed the nostalgic and sentimental qualities that she believed dominated Mitchell’s writing.

At the age of 20, O’Connor joined the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop, starting to carve out her own path as a serious writer—a goal her family, including her mother, Regina, struggled to comprehend. While Regina envisioned her daughter penning the next Gone With the Wind, O’Connor sought to forge her unique literary identity.

“She was not a Southern belle. She revolted. She just thought this was crazy,” notes Mark Bosco, a literary scholar and co-director of the documentary Flannery. “She didn’t want to write romance. She didn’t want to write nostalgia—but she wanted to play with nostalgia.”

Over a decade after the film’s premiere, O’Connor crafted a short story that satirized the grandiosity of the premiere. “A Late Encounter With the Enemy” features a 104-year-old veteran struggling to recall his Civil War experiences, though he vividly recollects the extravagant event in Atlanta. The tale’s final moments present a haunting scene, as the veteran dies unacknowledged, while his young grandson awaits by a vending machine.

March 25, 2025, would mark O’Connor’s centenary, and the myriad events celebrating her legacy highlight an enduring fascination with her work. Since her passing in 1964, interest has surged, with new scholarly editions of her prayer journal and an unfinished novel emerging, alongside a critically acclaimed documentary and the biographical drama released in 2023. O’Connor’s influence traces through contemporary literature, impacting writers like Cormac McCarthy, Alice Munro, and others; musicians such as Bruce Springsteen; and filmmakers including the Coen brothers and Quentin Tarantino.

Despite her profound impact, O’Connor’s stories have never reached the mass appeal of Gone With the Wind, which remains the highest-grossing film of all time when adjusted for inflation. Mitchell’s novel frequently garners status as one of America’s favorite books, overshadowing O’Connor’s pivotal works.

In contrast to the optimistic conclusion of Mitchell’s epic—“After all, tomorrow is another day”—O’Connor’s narratives often present a bleaker outlook. While some readers have shied away from her work due to its harsh realities, O’Connor viewed this unflinching honesty as essential to the exploration of life’s complexities.

“People are always complaining that the modern novelist has no hope and that the picture he paints of the world is unbearable,” she defended in her essay, “The Nature and Aim of Fiction.” For O’Connor, examining the unvarnished truths of human experience was an act of hope.

Even as a child, O’Connor articulated her literary preferences sharply, critiquing stories she found lacking. In her own copy of Alice in Wonderland, she dismissed it as “awful.” This penchant for the unusual permeated her writing, advocating for an engagement with both reality and mystery.

Sentimental storytelling, she argued, detracted from true insight. In her 1963 essay “The Regional Writer,” she denounced the romanticized South, stating that real Southern identity defies simplistic caricatures of charm and grace found in many narratives. O’Connor’s characters were often cast in stark relief, portraying authentic human flaws and moral ambiguities.

As a Southern writer, O’Connor embraced the label with reservations. She refused to pander to nostalgia, instead choosing to articulate the complexities of her surroundings. Stories like “Everything That Rises Must Converge” and “Revelation” engage with uncomfortable truths about race, class, and morality, often culminating in moments of shocking violence.

The violence in O’Connor’s writing is not gratuitous but serves as a mechanism for awakening characters to truths they cannot otherwise face. “I have found that violence is strangely capable of returning my characters to reality and preparing them to accept their moment of grace,” she expressed in a 1963 speech. This notion permeated her work, where characters often required a shock to catalyze self-awareness and redemption.

O’Connor’s narrative style can be linked to her devout Catholicism, which frames her understanding of humanity’s inherent flaws. Her characters often grapple with sin and struggle toward redemption, emphasizing the necessity of confronting discomfort to attain grace.

In “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” the climactic moment between the grandmother and her killer illustrates this dual theme of violence and grace. The grandmother’s mistaken recognition of a shared humanity leads to her demise, yet it also symbolizes a profound spiritual awakening.

O’Connor’s exploration of artistry and faith is candidly documented in her prayer journal, revealing her desire to reconcile her artistic ambitions with her spiritual journey. Entries explore the tension between the pursuit of being a good writer and the yearning to deepen her relationship with God.

Her struggle with lupus forced O’Connor to confront her mortality, influencing her writing and perspective on life. Though her physical deterioration inconvenienced her, it also ignited a burst of creative vigor, resulting in several of her most significant works during her years on the family farm in Georgia.

During her final years, O’Connor remained connected with the literary world, receiving visits from publishers and friends. Yet, even in her close relationships, the complexity of her literary pursuits elicited confusion and concern among her loved ones, particularly her mother, who longed for her daughter to write stories centered on “nice people.”

Despite these tensions, O’Connor’s body of work continues to resonate, as her characters embody the struggles and contradictions inherent in human nature, pushing readers to engage deeply with the inherent moral questions of existence.

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