Mystery In Flannery O'Connor
Patrick Galloway’s take on Flannery O’Connor’s use of mystery:
“The Catholic mindset accepts mystery as a fact of life, that there are certain things we are simply not meant to know, certain workings of the cosmic machine that only God understands. O’Connor utilizes this as a plot option, this mysterious, unexpected turn. She is not satisfied with the limitations of purely realistic prose, being rather of the opinion that her kind of fiction ‘will always be pushing its own limits outward toward the limits of mystery.’”
This sounds right to me—and it takes a little pressure off of me as I reader her Complete Stories. Writing about O’Connor is a little intimidating because so much has been written about her, and I have never read her before. I am reading her without a clue as to how I am ‘supposed’ to read her, if there is such a thing.
At first, I found her style a little jarring. I found myself unprepared to handle her sudden plot twists and unresolved endings. As I continue to read, I appreciate the mystery at the heart of her stories. She respects the limits of fiction and does not ‘tell’ her readers how to read her stories.
In a weird way, when reading O’Connor’s stories, I feel like my ability to read is under examination, judged in the same way that God will judge her characters. My struggle to follow her narratives reflect the struggle of her characters to know the will of God. At the heart of her narratives is a mystery that I am shut out of, just because.
More and more, I am finding this mystery one of the most compelling things about her stories.
