Discussion Questions for Flannery O’Connor

“The Life You Save May Be Your Own” --

What are some of the ways that images of God, Satan, and Christ surface during the story?  For example, on page 2209, “Mr. Shiftlet’s smile stretched like a weary snake waking up by a fire.”  Do you feel that O’Connor is working some version of the temptation of Eve by Satan in the form of a snake?  In the interactions between Mrs. Crater and Shiftlet, which is more manipulative, more Satanic?  Is Mrs. Crater as monstrous in her way as Shiftlet proves to be in his?

What are we to make of Lucynell the Younger?  The counter boy says of her that “she looks like an angel of Gawd” (2210).  Do you feel that this is completely ironic or that it hints at the possibility of Lucynell serving as a conduit of grace?  Why?

Are we to feel that Shiftlet completes the story a monstrous hypocrite or someone who is experiencing some genuine remorse about what he’s done?  Does he include himself in the slime he asks God to wash from the Earth?  Why does he pick up the hitchhiker?  What do you make of Shiftlet’s invoking his mother to the boy, his saying that she was “a angel of Gawd”?  What are his motives toward the boy?

“Good Country People" --

Why does O’Connor begin and end the story with Mrs. Freeman?  What qualities does she share with the other two women in the story, Mrs. Hopewell and her daughter, Joy-Hulga?  Why can’t the three women at all see though “Manley Pointer”?  How does the appellation of “Good Country People” relate Mrs. Freeman to “Manley Pointer”?

Do you feel that Mrs. Hopewell’s or her daughter’s sensibility is closer to your own?  Why does O’Connor make Mrs. Hopewell’s angle of vision the dominating one for the first third of the story before it’s lateralled to Joy?  What vices does Mrs. Hopewell embody?

What vices does Joy-Hulga embody?  In particular, in what way is she guilty of idolatry?  How are we to regard her different pronouncements upon nothingness, the way she dresses and speaks?  O’Connor has argued that she often employs violence in her stories because God sometimes needs to use violence to make us accessible to grace.  Could this be happening in the story?

All Stories --

O’Connor once said, “The meaning of life is centered in our Redemption by Christ and what I see in the world I see in relation to that.”

Another critic wrote, “O’Connor’s stories . . . frequently involve family relationships but are not meant to be read as realistic fiction, despite her remarkable ear for dialogue.”

O’Connor said she wrote them as parables.  In what way is this story a “parable” of grace, or of redemption?  In what way does this story show the “potential workings of salvation”?

O’Connor also said, “Often God uses violence to break down a person to be able to receive the grace of God.”  Does this observation about “violence” aptly “sum up” this story?  What, then, are the implications to an interpretation of “Good Country People”?