The Complete Stories

Below are summaries of O'Connor's short stories, organized alphabetically by title:

• “The Artificial…”: An old man takes his grandson into the city to teach him a lesson, but the trip takes an unexpected turn. Rating: 4
• “The Barber”: A politically liberal professor comes into conflict with his barber, who holds different views, especially concerning race. Rating: 4.5
• “A Circle in the Fire”: A woman has some young, unexpected, and somewhat uninvited guests in this story that raises questions about the concepts of hospitality and ownership. Rating: 3.25
• “The Comforts of Home”: When a kindly woman brings a young criminal into her home, her son objects and tries to come up with a way to get rid of the girl. Rating: 3.25
• “The Crop”: A writer starts a new project and gets lost in the world of her own creation. Rating: 3
• “The Displaced Person”: A farm owner named Mrs. McIntyre hires a Polish refugee, and this decision soon causes some tensions on the farm. The story deals with issues like racial prejudice and entitlement. Rating: 4.5
• “The Enduring Chill”: A haughty twenty-five-year-old man returns to his country home from New York, expecting to die from an illness. Rating: 4
• “Enoch and the Gorilla”: An extension of the story of Enoch (from “The Peeler” and “The Heart of the Park”), this tale depicts a young man who wants to become someone and who uses unusual means involving a man in a gorilla costume to do so. Rating: 3
• “Everything That Rises Must Converge”: In this story, the reader learns about the vast differences in worldview between a mother and her son as they take a bus trip downtown. It is beautifully unsettling. Rating: 4.5
• “The Geranium”: An old man named Dudley moves to New York City to live with his daughter and immediately regrets it. He misses his life in the South and wants to return. Across the street from his daughter’s apartment, there sits a potted geranium that becomes symbolic for Dudley. Rating: 2.75
• “Good Country People”: The meeting of an atheist philosopher and a Bible salesman results in an unexpected revelation. Rating: 4.5
• “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”: A selfish grandmother tries to convince her other family members (her son, Daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren, none of whom respect the grandmother) to change the destination of their family vacation from Florida to Tennessee, using the recent escape of a murderer called “the Misfit” to deter them from heading toward the place from which he escaped. The story is full of ironic twists and ends with a shocking conclusion. Rating: 4.75
• “Greenleaf”: Mrs. May, a farm-owner with two adult sons who both live at home, employs Mr. Greenleaf. Both Mr. and Mrs. Greenleaf are Christians, but Mrs. May’s sense of morality comes from her success. One day, a bull gets out on Mrs. May’s property, and she asks Mr. Greenleaf to shoot it. The end of this story is both surprising and thought-provoking. Rating: 4.25
• “The Heart of the Park”: This story is a continuation of “The Peeler.” Enoch has been working at a park that has a mysterious object at its center that Enoch feels he must show someone. On the day that the story takes place, the perfect candidate to see this object arrives. Rating: 3.75
• “Judgement Day”: An old man named Tanner has been forced off of his property in Georgia where he lived with a man whom he befriended. Because of this, he moved to New York City to live with his daughter, where he met another, less friendly man who reminded him of his friend back in Georgia. He is now planning to escape New York City and head back to his home. Very reminiscent of “The Geranium” with a more violent twist. Rating: 3
• “The Lame Shall Enter First”: Determined to do a good deed, Sheppard invites a juvenile delinquent to live with him in hopes of rehabilitating the boy. He is not prepared, however, for the events that will unfold as a result of his actions. Rating: 3.5
• “A Late Encounter with the Enemy”: An old war veteran who is determined not to care about the past is forced to face reality. Rating: 3.75
• “The Life You Save May Be Your Own”: A wanderer named Tom T. Shiftlet stops at Mrs. Crater’s farm, where he sees a car that he would like to have. He offers to do work around the farm in exchange for a place to stay, and Mrs. Crater, hoping to rope Mr. Shiftlet into marrying her deaf-mute daughter, agrees to this deal. Rating: 4
• “Parker’s Back”: A tattooed, un-religious man marries a moralistic Christian woman and decides to get a tattoo on his back that his wife won’t be able to hate. Rating: 5
• “The Partridge Festival”: A self-important young man goes to his great-aunts’ hometown to gather information about a man whom he idolizes, and he learns more than he ever intended to. Rating: 4.75
• “The Peeler”: Seemingly a continuation of “The Train,” this story features a man named Hazel who has an unsettling encounter with a blind man handing out tracts and an overly friendly teenager named Enoch. Rating: 3.5
• “A Stroke of Good Fortune”: A proud woman faces a surprising medical issue. Rating: 4
• “The River”: The reader gets to experience the thoughts of an ornery young boy about the events surrounding his trip to see a travelling preacher. Rating: 3.25
• “A Temple of the Holy Ghost”: A precocious young girl is visited by her vain cousins, and they tell her a story about an experience they had that makes her reconsider her theology. Rating: 5
• “The Train”: A traveler mistakes the identity of a porter on his train and remembers his past. Rating: 3
• “The Turkey”: An eleven-year-old boy has as existential crises as he attempts to catch a wild turkey. Rating: 4.25
• “A View of the Woods”: A disagreement between a grandfather and granddaughter over a business decision escalates until it reaches a shocking conclusion. Rating: 4.5
• “Why Do the Heathen Rage?”: After Tilman has a stroke, his wife hopes that their sluggish son will take charge of the household. Rating: 4
• “Wildcat”: An old blind man, smelling a bloodthirsty wildcat approaching, recalls a similar experience from his childhood and experiences a range of emotions related to what he believes to be his impending death. Rating: 3.25
• “You Can’t Be Any Poorer Than Dead”: A fourteen-year-old boy experiences a tumult of emotions following his great uncle’s death, and he takes extreme action. Rating: 3.75

I had a hard time with these. They are mostly dreary, depressing stories in which small-minded, unhappy people abuse other small-minded, unhappy people; injustice is rampant; and no good deed goes unpunished. Most of them, especially the early ones, just made me sad or angry and I wasn't able to figure out what the point was. I think I'm not especially good at appreciating farce or whatever this is.

The Enduring Chill was probably the only one I can claim to have enjoyed, it had some truly funny passages.

From my Wikipedia'ing it seems there's some kind of incredibly dreary Catholic lesson about the grace of God embedded in these stories, which might explain why I found the overall effect pretty grim.

I really liked “Greenleaf” and “You Can't be any Poorer than Dead,” and of course “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is a classic. But overall, Flannery wasn't quite what I expected. I don't have a problem with her prose; it's stark and blunt, almost like Hemingway or Cormac McCarthy. But most of them have no real ending; if I didn't know better, I'd almost assume that some of them were a typing error and cut off the last few pages.

I got a lot out of Faulkner because I took a class focusing on him; I probably would have had a similar experience of Flannery, but it's a little tough reading solo.

Update: got some help in seeing her vision from Bishop Barron (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAK1oybyJBc), and I'm all in.

First time re-read since college.

First time re-read since college.

Is Flannery O'Connor the greatest short story writer of our time ? Perhaps. Anyway, I love her. What a great read this collection is, including her letters. How does she manage to be so dark and so funn ? Love her stories about her peacocks. I wonder what the Mark Twain re-writers will do when they discover O'Connor's use of the N-word ?