Southern America has been one of the most favored research objects since its defeat in the Civil War which played a significant role in the formation of early American Southern literature. Decades later, in the 1920s and 1930s, a renaissance in Southern literature began with the appearance of writers such as William Faulkner, Katherine Anne Porter, and Caroline Gordon. Because of the distance the Southern Renaissance authors had from the American Civil War and slavery, they were more objective in their writings about the South. Southern literature following the Second World War grew thematically as it embraced the social and cultural changes in the South resulting from the Civil Rights Movement. In addition, more female and African-American writers began to be accepted as part of Southern literature, including African Americans such as Zora Neale Hurston and Sterling Allen Brown, along with women such as Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor.

Among all the Southern writers, here the author choose Flannery O'Connor along with one of her most successful short stories, A Good Man Is Hard to Find, as an approach to the violence theme in American Southern literature. Apart form being an American Southern writer whose works tend to be related to violence and death, Flannery O'Connor shows her talent for linking together violence and redemption. According to McEntyre, Marilyn Chandler, O’Connor’s objective, and her success, is to restore to a largely jaded audience the capacity for shock and with that, the possibility of recognizing evil, our involvement in it, and our need for redemption.

Broadly speaking, A Good Man Is Hard to Find can be condensed into: three generations of a family were killed on their trip because of a car accident, and the killer to a large extent was their savior. Taking the ending that the whole family was killed by the Misfit group as an example, it is not hard to find death caused by violence was the only way for the family to be saved. Before the car accident, there was nothing but indifference among the family members. Moreover, violence in O'Connor's texts functions as a means of stabilizing social hierarchy and positions of dominance in that O'Connor believes that human society could approach an ethical condition only through the redemption of individuals. O’Connor’s redemptive value of destruction is not derived merely from social background, but also from her Catholic religion. Her tolerance and search for violence and evilness come exactly from Christianity. Actually, from the perspective of Christian redemption of evilness, the reader can understand more easily that relentless punishment in O’Connor’s writings is rather an access to salvation. In addition, although diagnosed with systemic lupus erythematosus, O’Connor had never given up her faith for life. Instead, she completed dozens of works while struggling with lupus.

This paper is aimed at studying the relationship between violence and redemption in O’Connor’s fictions in detail. Based on authoritative references, and considering O’Connor’s status being an American Southern writer, her Catholic religion as well as her suffering form lupus, this paper presents that violence in O’Connor’s fictions is a way of salvation of not only individuals but also the whole society, which helps the reader further strengthen the understanding of Flannery O’Connor and her literary works.

2. 研究的基本内容与方案

This paper will focus on the study of the relationship between violence and redemption in Flannery O'Connor’s fictions, taking one of her most famous short stories, A Good Man Is Hard to Find, as an example. Firstly, this essay will give a brief introduction to American Southern society after Second World War, providing the needed background. Secondly, the author will present the idea of salvation from the perspective of Christian, explaining the productive violence in O’Connor’s works. Last but not least, this essay will demonstrate only death can bring the society a new beginning, just as O’Connor said, violence could lead to spiritual rebirth.

Aimed at explaining the productive violence in a more convincing way, the writer will read adequate and creditable documents about characteristics of Southern American literature, Christian’s point of view on redemption, and carefully read books or essays about Flannery O'Connor and A Good Man Is Hard to Find itself. Note taking for quotation will be of great importance during the reading.

[1]Evans, R. C. Flannery O'Connor's Christian Politics[J]. Cithara, 2016, 55: 22-45.

[2]Flora, J. M. Desire, Faith, and Flannery O'Connor[J]. The Mississippi Quarterly, 2014, 67: 327-333.