Someone recently asked me about which of Flannery O’Connor’s stories might be read as an exclusively secular story, one that shows few signs of O’Connor’s well-deserved reputation as a superb Catholic writer. Although there are several short stories can be characterized as at least somewhat secular, with limited overt religious themes, a good place to start our secular search would be “The Barber,” one of the author’s thesis stories written during her graduate studies at University of Iowa.

In this apprentice story by a young O’Connor, a social commentary and character study set in the American south, an earnest though obtuse liberal named Rayber supports a like-minded local politician in the forthcoming Democratic primary, and Rayber is eager to share his enthusiasm with others. At the local barbershop, Rayber confidently sets about his self-appointed mission to persuade everyone there that the progressive, pro-integration candidate deserves to be elected because change for the area is both important and essential. However, Rayber—pretentious and self-important in his insensitive intellectual approach to the issues at stake—is not at all successful in his arguments among the uneducated, irrational racists in the barbershop. Rayber, because of his intellectual arrogance and shortsightedness, is unevenly matched against the overpowering crude mockery of his numerous opponents. At the story’s end, readers are left to consider the unresolved tensions between a humiliated, defeated Rayber (representing a sensible political ideology) and an inflexible group of local bigots (representing the more conservative deep south).

So, what are readers to make of this early O’Connor story? Not yet certain of her “mission” as a Catholic writer (for lack of a better phrase), O’Connor—like countless other fledgling writers—can be seen attempting interesting experiments with narrative, humor, dialogue, and theme; later in her career as a writer—as students of her work already know—O’Connor will build further on these experiments, and—because she will be more confident and more skilled—she will move away from secularism and become a profoundly prophetic Catholic voice in American literature.