摘 要

二十世纪初，饱受经济大萧条和第二次世界大战摧残的美国社会在战后出现了一味追求物质财富的社会风气，拜金主义盛行，进而导致人们忽视精神上的需要，信仰缺失、精神空虚成了普遍情况。此时，美国文学史上出现了一位信仰天主教的女性作家弗兰纳里·奥康纳，她成为继威廉·福克纳之后最具影响力的美国南方作家，并被誉为“南方文学先知”。以暴力为手段，奥康纳在其作品中惩罚形形色色的罪人，对当时美国社会的道德重建有着深刻影响。

《好人难寻》是奥康纳最著名的短篇小说之一，讲述了一家六口在旅途中如命运般地被逃犯不合时宜团伙无情杀害的故事。然而，暴力和死亡却恰恰是故事主人公得到精神救赎的唯一途径。

本文分为五个部分：第一部分介绍作者及其写作风格；第二部分从人际间的冷漠、不合时宜者的监禁以及一家六口的死亡等三个方面分析《好人难寻》中的暴力成分；第三部分首先分析祖母的救赎，其次分析不合时宜者的救赎；第四部分结合相关基督教教义，详细分析小说中的暴力与救赎分别作为手段与目的的联系；最后一部分是总结。

关键词：暴力；救赎；基督教

Abstract

In the early 20^th century, when America had recovered from Great Depression and Second World War, the pursuit of material wealth and money worship prevailed over the whole society, resulting in the ignorance of psychological need, widespread loss of faith and emptiness of spirit. Fortunately, a female writer named Flannery O’Connor who believed in Christian came to its aid. O’Connor became the most influential American Southern writer after William Faulkner, and was honored as “Prophet of American Southern Literature”. By punishing all sorts of sinners in her fictions in a violent way, O’Connor had a great impact on the rebuilding of moral ethics of American society.

A Good Man Is Hard to Find is one of O’Connor’s most famous short stories, it tells about a story of a family of six who are all killed mercilessly on their trip by The Misfit group. Nevertheless, violence or even death is the only access for the characters in the story to spiritual redemption.

This thesis will be generally divided into five parts. The first part is an introduction to O’Connor and her writing style. The second part analyzes the existence of violence in A Good Man Is Hard to Find from three aspects: interpersonal indifference, sentence of The Misfit and death of the family. The third part is about redemption: firstly the grandmother’s and subsequently The Misfit’s. The fourth part makes a detailed analysis of the relationship between violence and salvation, respectively as method and purpose, based on relevant Christian doctrines. The last part is the conclusion.

Key Words: violence; redemption; Christianity

Contents

1 Introduction 1

1.1 Introduction to Flannery O’Connor 1

1.2 Literature review 2

2 Violence in A Good Man Is Hard to Find 5

2.1 The interpersonal nonchalance among the public..............................................5

2.2 The mistaken sentence of The Misfit.................................................................6

2.3 The inevitable death of the family.....................................................................6

3 Salvation in A Good Man Is Hard to Find 8

3.1The success of the grandmother’s salvation 8

3.2 The failure of The Misfit’s salvation 9

4 Analysis from The Perspective of Christianity 10

4.1 Christian doctrines of original sin and salvation 10

4.2 Relationship between violence and redemption 10

5 Conclusion 13

References 14

Acknowledgements 15

An Interpretation of Violence and Redemption in Flannery O’Connor’s

Works

Based on A Good Man Is Hard to Find

1 Introduction

The introduction consists of two parts. Firstly, it gives a introduction to Flannery O’Connor, her life story as well as her writing style; besides, it makes a summary of the plot of A Good Man Is Hard to Find. Secondly, there will be a literature review which states the reason for choosing O’Connor’s work as the research object, and demonstrates several opinions on the theme of A Good Man Is Hard to Find.

1.1 Introduction to Flannery O’Connor

Mary Flannery O'Connor, honored as “Prophet of American Southern Literature”, and “Queen of Southern Gothic”, was a remarkable American female writer and essayist who wrote two novels named respectively Wise Blood and The Violent Bear It Away, and thirty-two short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries. As Joseph M. Flora wrote, after she completed her apprenticeship in the Iowa Writers' Workshop, O’Connor continued her study on the great theologians. She stayed at an artists’ community named Yaddo where “she made tight bonds with several Catholic intellectuals”(Joseph, 2014). Regardless of the promising future, at the age of twenty-seven, O’Connor was diagnosed with systemic lupus erythematosus, the disease which had killed her father before. Henceforth, O'Connor lived her remaining years with her mother in Georgia. The pain lupus brought to her was considered by her as a special form of divine grace, which could be proved from her fictions. According to her doctor, she was expected to live for merely five years after the diagnosis, while she lived for twelve years, which could be regarded as a miracle.

One more miracle made by O’Connor during her short lifetime which lasted for only thirty-nine years was her excellent writing proficiency. As one of the most representative Southern writers, she often wrote in a Southern Gothic style that usually called for specific regional settings which tended to be American South, grotesque characters who were morally flawed, and violent situations that pushed the story to a thrilling climax. Just as Thomas Philip states in The Grotesque, to be grotesque means that the world in the imaginary story must be non-fantastical, which is “a presentation of the real world without falsifying it” (Thomas, 1972:18). Likewise, Crystal Spears points out that the grotesque is “emphasized through exaggerated elements of abnormality in an otherwise normal world”(Spears, 2013). In her story, as O’Connor wished, the protagonists were likely to undergo transformations aimed at bringing them closer to the Catholic mind. Nevertheless, the transformations could be accomplished through nothing but violence, or even death. In the pursuit of divine grace, the characters were doomed to suffer. Personally speaking, to a large extent, her view of divine grace came from not only her Catholic belief, but also her suffering from lupus. Although she perceived her suffering as the grace from God, the grace was undoubtedly miserable, just as she wrote: “Grace changes us and the change is painful.”