Eric Fesmire-Outside Reading #5 Flannery O'Connor

I am writing my last paper on the work of Flannery O'Connor. To do this I am talking about what she calls the writer's "country" which includes not only the environment around her, the world, her immediate culture, but also the internal spiritual factors that she was aware of through her religious beliefs. For her, the beauty of religious themes like grace are found in simple acts. She doesn't expound on these acts or over state their significance. She presents them as part of the flow of the prose and if you aren't carefully reading many of her stories, you could miss the moment.

In my research on her writing style, I found that she liked to describe her writing as literal. This explains why she doesn't go on and on about the moments of grace in every story, because sometime moments of grace are simple and can be overlooked.

Beauty then does not have to be extravagant. It doesn't have to always be drawn out heavy prose or in your face. There can be beauty in simplicity and often is.