Summary Of The Grandmother By Flannery O Connor

To understand O’Connor means to be in conflict with one’s self. Critics have praised her work and even contradicted her statements about her own work. She is known for using grotesque violence and death in her stories. In one of her letters to a friend she claimed she used this technique as a way to attain the reader’s attention. Not because the quality of her writing wasn’t worthy of their attention, but because she wanted to get a message across. She wanted people to realize the grip of corruptness on a society driven each day by secularism and nihilism. As a devout Roman Catholic, she wanted nothing more than for people to see God in their daily lives. But for people indifferent to this reality, for “people who think God is dead,” she, in
She becomes each of the characters in her story. Flannery O’Connor becomes the grandmother, she is the mother, the father, the children and the misfit himself. Great detail is put in describing the way the parents act along with the children. She describes how the children are impatient and talk back to their parents. They need to have it their way. And the mother is caring for her baby. The dad is impatient as well and just needs quiet so he does what the kids want. And the grandmother is very astute and persuasive, very careful with detail down to the way she dresses. But they are all met by a great injustice. It seems as if the climax of the story is when they have an accident and their car turns over, the mom flies out with the baby, and the grandma breaks a shoulder. But that is not it. “The Misfit” encounters them and, shockingly, orders his side kicks to shoot the family. First the dad and the brother, then the mom and the daughter along with the baby, and lastly the grandmother is shot. Injustice is at each extreme of the spectrum. The innocent baby who had a life ahead of him, his life was ended. And the grandmother who had lived an entire life but pleaded the misfit to not to do it, her life is ended as well. The grandmother brings up Jesus and her conversation with the misfit revolves around Jesus. Jesus himself was one of great injustice. He was crucified an innocent with no crime in his hands by the people he tried so fervently to help. And the misfit himself turned into “The Misfit” because he was imprisoned and even buried alive because they suspected he killed his father, whom he argued died of a virus. Even the black boy who has nothing is a victim of social injustice. Injustice seems like the true protagonist in this story, not the family or even the criminal. It affects everyone regardless of who they