【正文】 虔誠的基督教徒，她的作品也具有濃厚的宗教主義，因此奧康納也被稱為“天主教小說家”。 日期填寫定稿日期 5月 1 日 。本聲明的法律結(jié)果由本人承擔。她一生雖然短暫，但著有兩部長篇小說和 31 篇短篇小說。s mother. Most of her lupusshortened life was spent in that small town. The only interruption of her Geian existance was a fiveyear period spent partly at lowa, taking a Master of Fine Art degree , partily at Yaddo in New York, a place providing a small group of writers with a home and a place to work for a short time. O?Connor had always wanted to be a writer. After her graduation, she asked to be accepted at a writing program at the State University of Iowa. The head of the school found it difficult to understand her southern speech. Then he was asked to see some examples of her works. He saw immediately that the writing was full of imagination and bright with knowledge. Once she explained to others why she wrote, Because I am good at it. (O?Connor 81) As Elizabeth Bishop puts, I am sure her few books will live on and on in American literatuer. They are narrow, possibly, but they are clear, hard, vivid, and full of bits of description, phrases and an odd insight that contains more real poetry than a dozen of poems. (Giroux 237) O?Connor do not talk about herself in her stories, while silent and distant anger explodes from the quiet surface of her stories. Critics see her anger as the search to save her moral being through her belief in Jesus Christ. Others do not deny her Roman Catholic religious beliefs. Yet they see her presenting things themselves instead of writing things. O?Connor is not a prolific writer because the disease lupus tortures her much. During the short life, she altoghterr writes two novels, Wise Blood (1952) and B. A. Thesis of Shandong University of Finance and Economics 2 The Violent Bear It Away (1960), 31 short stories , most of which are collected in A Good Man Is Hard to Find (1955) and Everthing That Rises Must Converge (1965). Three of her short stories, A Circle in the Fire, Greenleaf, Everything That Rises Must Converge have been nominated for O?Henry Awards separately in1954, 1956 and 1962. O?Connor died in 1964 at the age of 39. Alice Wlker has pity for O?Connor?s early death, “she was an artist who thought she might die yough, and who then knew for certain she she would. Her view of her characters pierces right through to the skull” (Walker 71). The work discussed in this thesis is gothic art of Flannery O?Connor in her short stories. Death, violence, grotesque and religious faith has always been rhe major themes in O?Connor?s fictions, which are distinctive characteristics of gothic novels. As the studies show, American Southern writers are full nurtured from a great gothic tradition in their writings and Southern Renaissance “has bee synonymous with the grotesque” (White 1). Being an important writer in American Southern literature, O?Connor, who roots deeply in her profound local culture, raises much attention from readers and critics for her innovation to traditional gothic writings. To most readers, O?Connor?s fictions are odd, cold and diapassionate, always in stark violent and death. She prefers freak fatalities and awfulness to wake up religious consciousness of people. As a devout Catholic, she fully awares few readrs share her faith in religion. Thus she believes “to the hard of hearing your shout, and for the almostblind you draw large and startling figures” (Fitzgerald 33). This thesis focuses on O?Connor?s unique use of grotesque and how she presents her thoughts threough gothic elements and vehicles. The thesis consists of three chapters. The first chapter briefly introduces gothic traditon in American literature, as well as gothic genre in American Southern literature. Chapter two ananlsizes gothic devices in her works, including gothic characters and settings. Chapter three deals with distincitve features of gothic in her writings, which refers to the motif of violence,death and religous redemption.B. A. Thesis of Shandong University of Finance and Economics 3 Chapter One Gothic Genre in Western Literature Having a touch of gothic genre will help us understand O?Connor in an exact and prensive way.. Flannery O?Connor, who is known as the best writerr in Southern literature only next to William Faulkner, perates the utmost reality of the modern world by applying ubiquitous gothic elements. The main theme of her writing is moralteaching though she never explains it eagerly. “Fiction writing is very seldom a matter of saying things。 but the spirit, lady, is like a automobile, always on the move. . . (O?Connor, The Complete Short Stories, 146). He marries the daughter and drives off with her. However, when they stop to eat, the man abandon her and drives off toward the city. On his way, he stops his journey to give a ride to a wangdering boy,The onearmed man is an orphan whise his mother left him when he was a child, so critics say that when he helps the boy, he is helping himself. B. A. Thesis of Shandong University of Finance and Economics 11 A third category of grotesque characters involed in O?Connor?s short stories are prematured with a sense of grotesqueness. At that tiome in the South, the social atmosphere was so bad that children lacked care and guidence from their parents. In O?Connor?s stories, children are diepicted uninnocence, illtempered, sullen ones and bee an indispensible part of her Gothic fictions. Nelson, a tenyear old child in The Artifical Nigger, tries to surpass his grandfather in everyhting. Each time when his grandfather gets up earlier and prepare for breakfest, Nelson will be unpleasant. But if he could get up earlier than his grandfather, he will be satisfied with him all the morning. Nelson is a recalcitrant boy and finds every chance to show his knowledge or fight back against his grandfather wihout admitting his ignorance. He oft