Flannery O 'Connor Summary O' Connor

Atmosphere: Thought the story, O’Conner presents us with several reoccurring themes of irony, realism, and revelation. She creates the atmosphere by beginning how the family interacted with each other and how they got along or how they didn’t. Baily and his wife tend to “ignore” the grandmother, because they feel like she always has something on her mind thus they had no reason to try and reason with her, while the children like to argue with grandmother, resulting further igniting her flame. O’Connor integrates the southern gothic writing style into the story, by making a point to the readers by writing out the moral values of the grandmother in the story. Southern gothic was useful in which presenting a traffic event and O’Connor teaches us that everyone is flawed, in the way that we aren’t perfect, despite one selves own
Right off the bat, she is interested in going to Tennessee for her own personal reasons, while in fact she isn’t really welcomed along the trip to Florida to begin with. She is the cause of the death of the family, due to her internal desire craving to be the center of attention and having always the need to share everything that comes to her mind. Furthermore, she was willing to play with the hopes of the children by lying to them, and manipulating them to help her achieve her own desire of going to revisit the supposed old mansion. She is also characterized as being racist by showing prejudice towards a little black boy, boasting that they do not compare to others, such as the family. In one instance, she mentions that if she could, she would paint the black boy in a picture, signifying since she adorns the past times, the very era time where racism and inequality strongly around. By painting the picture, she wants the time to be as before. She often dwells in the past, and never really connects with reality until the final moments of her