Christian Realism, Nominalism and Fundamentalism Exposed by Flannery O’connor in her Novel “The Violent Bear it Away”

Abstract

Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964) was born in Savannah, Georgia into a devoutly Catholic Family. When She was fifteen, her father died of lupus-the same disease that was later to take her life. After sheand her mother moved to Milledgeville, Georgia, she attended Georgia State College for Women, where she majored in sociology. She went on to graduate school at theUniversity of Iowa, earning her Master’s degree there, then spent time in a writers’ colony in Saratoga Springs, New York. She be friended and was encouraged by many writers of the day, including Robert Lowell. After five years of intensive labor and multiple evisions, she published her first novel, Wise Blood, in 1952. The novel received great critical acclaim, though many readers found it grotesque and distasteful. In 1951 she was diagnosed with lupus, at which time she moved back to Milledgeville so her mother could care for her. Knowing that her time was probably short, she gave herself to writing and produced one more novel, The Violent Bear It Away(1960)