Essay --

O’Connor’s background impacted her writing style of southern cultures in her short stories. Being born and growing up in the south played Born into an Irish Catholic family; Flannery O’Connor grew up alongside her encouraging and supportive father, Ed, and her overprotective, proper mother, Regina. She was the only child and of devoted Roman Catholic parents. O’Connor is a Georgia girl; her younger years were spent in Savannah, Georgia until the family relocated to Milledgeville, Georgia when her father was diagnosed with degenerative lupus. Much of her childhood was spent with her mother having a close look on her, overbearing her welcome. Behind her bold attitude â€Å"was a precocious, gifted and shy loner struggling to assert herself against the expectations of â€Å"proper† Southern womanhood,† (Desmond 151). Unfortunately, her graduate school days at Iowa University were put to a halt when she was diagnosed with lupus at age twent y-five. At this point in her life she moved back to live with her mom on a dairy farm right next to Milledgeville. O’Connor’s time spent growing up in Savannah and with her mom on a dairy farm has allowed her to develop characters, settings and scenes from her native south especially the properness and mannerisms established. Besides the culture effect and another big part of O’Connor’s short stories was her religious background. Although it was not until two years after her father’s death that O’Connor’s creative and inventive talents swiftly came alive as well as her deep profound faith. John F. Desmond was one hundred percent correct when he said, â€Å"writing was for her a spiritual vocation, success or failure to be measured by the fidelity to God and not by human standards,† (Desmond, 152). Not ... ...ut ten feet above and they could see only the tops of trees on the other side of it. Behind the ditch they were sitting in there were more woods, tall and dark and deep.† (O’Connor 359). The tall, dark and deep woods are a parallelism to the lack of faith and moving forward in it. Three shots and the grandmother was silent. The grandmother’s death signifies the rising of Christ. Although she didn’t always live a Christian lifestyle, the third shot it was almost as if she became alive spiritually. O’Connor’s illustrates the scene, â€Å"†¦her face smiling up at the cloudless sky. Without his glasses, The Misfit’s eyes were red-rimmed and pale and defenseless looking† (O’Connor 365). Smiling at the sky and eyes helpless, dead physically her facial expressions resemble that she spiritually came alive and rose like Jesus did, as if she was a believer accepting Him.