{"id":5145,"date":"2014-06-05T15:32:09","date_gmt":"2014-06-05T15:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/?p=5145"},"modified":"2014-06-07T19:45:08","modified_gmt":"2014-06-07T19:45:08","slug":"mean-grace-via-flannery-oconnor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/2014\/06\/mean-grace-via-flannery-oconnor.html","title":{"rendered":"“Mean Grace?” Via Flannery O’Connor"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week I’m making my way through Flannery O’Connor’s book of short stories Everything That Rises Must Converge.\u00a0 (<\/em>The book’s title comes from the first story that appears in this series of O’Connor’s stories.)<\/p>\n

Three stories in, I’m struck by a common crescendo that describes O’Connor’s stories: her characters seem in some ways hopelessly and depressingly damned to their own self-constructed prisons of prejudice, self-righteousness and self-absorption\u2014 until the very end of the story, when in one final, startling, apocalyptic moment, some life-changing revelation hits them just as they meet their death.<\/p>\n

“I desire the things which will destroy me in the end,” another author, Sylvia Plath, wrote, and maybe the same could be said of O’Connor’s characters, too.\u00a0 They seem only really to begin seeing life in living colors\u2014the kind of rich, vivid hues that will set them free\u2014upon tasting death.\u00a0 But then it’s too late, at least for this life, for such discoveries to matter.\u00a0 Someone once called this common form of plot resolution in O’Connor’s stories “mean grace,” and I’m inclined to agree the reference is apropos<\/em>.<\/p>\n

But it remains hard to say in these stories whether the characters’ discoveries, however painful or lethal they may be, actually constitute grace\u2014and maybe this ambiguity is intentional.\u00a0 Maybe O’Connor leaves the reader to discern for herself whether there is in fact grace to be found in the final dissolution of these seemingly hopeless but all-too-real characters.<\/p>\n

What do you think? Have you read O’Connor’s stories? Do you have a favorite and why? And would you agree with the assessment that her story lines often end with “mean grace”?
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week I’m making my way through Flannery O’Connor’s book of short stories Everything That Rises Must Converge.\u00a0 (The book’s title comes from the first story that appears in this series of O’Connor’s stories.) Three stories in, I’m struck by a common crescendo that describes O’Connor’s stories: her characters seem in some ways hopelessly and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":461,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68,5,962],"tags":[2160,2159,2161,2158,1940,1910],"class_list":["post-5145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-grace","category-women","category-writing","tag-american-short-stories","tag-catholic-writers","tag-everything-that-rises-must-converge","tag-flannery-oconnor","tag-grace-sticks","tag-what-is-grace"],"yoast_head":"\n"Mean Grace?" Via Flannery O'Connor - Fellowship of Saints and Sinners<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/2014\/06\/mean-grace-via-flannery-oconnor.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\""Mean Grace?" Via Flannery O'Connor - Fellowship of Saints and Sinners\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This week I’m making my way through Flannery O’Connor’s book of short stories Everything That Rises Must Converge.\u00a0 (The book’s title comes from the first story that appears in this series of O’Connor’s stories.) Three stories in, I’m struck by a common crescendo that describes O’Connor’s stories: her characters seem in some ways hopelessly and…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/2014\/06\/mean-grace-via-flannery-oconnor.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Fellowship of Saints and Sinners\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/kristina.robbdover\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-06-05T15:32:09+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2014-06-07T19:45:08+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Kristina Robb-Dover\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@saintplussinner\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@saintplussinner\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"\"Mean Grace?\" Via Flannery O'Connor - Fellowship of Saints and Sinners","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/2014\/06\/mean-grace-via-flannery-oconnor.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"\"Mean Grace?\" Via Flannery O'Connor - Fellowship of Saints and Sinners","og_description":"This week I’m making my way through Flannery O’Connor’s book of short stories Everything That Rises Must Converge.\u00a0 (The book’s title comes from the first story that appears in this series of O’Connor’s stories.) Three stories in, I’m struck by a common crescendo that describes O’Connor’s stories: her characters seem in some ways hopelessly and…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/2014\/06\/mean-grace-via-flannery-oconnor.html","og_site_name":"Fellowship of Saints and Sinners","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/kristina.robbdover","article_published_time":"2014-06-05T15:32:09+00:00","article_modified_time":"2014-06-07T19:45:08+00:00","author":"Kristina Robb-Dover","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@saintplussinner","twitter_site":"@saintplussinner","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/2014\/06\/mean-grace-via-flannery-oconnor.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/2014\/06\/mean-grace-via-flannery-oconnor.html","name":"\"Mean Grace?\" Via Flannery O'Connor - Fellowship of Saints and Sinners","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/#website"},"datePublished":"2014-06-05T15:32:09+00:00","dateModified":"2014-06-07T19:45:08+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/#\/schema\/person\/4c3cdf7104b785db2790c0ea54388e75"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/2014\/06\/mean-grace-via-flannery-oconnor.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/2014\/06\/mean-grace-via-flannery-oconnor.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/2014\/06\/mean-grace-via-flannery-oconnor.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"“Mean Grace?” Via Flannery O’Connor"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/","name":"Fellowship of Saints and Sinners","description":"Beliefnet Voices...thoughts at the intersection between life and God for anyone converted, unconverted or under conversion","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/#\/schema\/person\/4c3cdf7104b785db2790c0ea54388e75","name":"Kristina Robb-Dover","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/dcf\/dcfc687b5670420584dc52026042422ax96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/dcf\/dcfc687b5670420584dc52026042422ax96.jpg","caption":"Kristina Robb-Dover"},"description":"Thoughts at the intersection of life and God from one saint and sinner for anyone \"converted,\" \"unconverted,\" or \"under conversion.\"","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/author\/krobbdover"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/461"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5145"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5147,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5145\/revisions\/5147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}