Some people enjoy reading short stories, and some people–for a variety of reasons–avoid them. What about you? Why?

Making the Abject Body Count(s):

An Autobiographical Reading of

Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood

– Part Thirteen: The Abjection of Death Seeks to Destroy Us All (Continued) –

(Note: Previously posted installments of this series have included bibliographies in the form of endnotes for the text’s parenthetical citations; however, hence forth, the bibliographies will be omitted (to save space and time) but are nevertheless available to any reader who requests the complete bibliography for this series.)

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Within Flannery O’Connor’s fiction, her fascination with death seems to metastasize exponentially from the infrequently mentioned cells isolated in her personal experience.

Jennifer H.

Making the Abject Body Count(s):

An Autobiographical Reading of

Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood

– Part Twelve: The Abjection of Death Seeks to Destroy Us All (Continued) –

(Note: Previously posted installments of this series have included bibliographies in the form of endnotes for the text’s parenthetical citations; however, hence forth, the bibliographies will be omitted (to save space and time) but are nevertheless available to any reader who requests the complete bibliography for this series.)

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Now, a brief look at the relationship that exists between parent and child as a central concern in O’Connor’s works.

Wise Blood, like many of O’Connor’s short stories (with “The Enduring Chill” being notable among them for this discussion), creates what Sue Walker views as an ironic version of Kristeva’s view of the abject and the mother-child dyad; with O’Connor we encounter the death-bearing mother whose excessive control leads to death; discussing O’Connor in “The Being of Illness: The Language of Being Ill,” Walker notes that for Kristeva, “abjection shows up as a struggle on the part of the child to separate from the mother.

Making the Abject Body Count(s):

An Autobiographical Reading of

Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood

– Part Eleven: The Abjection of Death Seeks to Destroy Us All –

(Note: Previously posted installments of this series have included bibliographies in the form of endnotes for the text’s parenthetical citations; however, hence forth, the bibliographies will be omitted (to save space and time) but are nevertheless available to any reader who requests the complete bibliography for this series.)

Epigraphs

He thought about the chifforobe in his half-sleep and decided his mother would rest easier in her grave, knowing it was guarded.

Making the Abject Body Count(s):

An Autobiographical Reading of

Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood

– Part Ten: Configuring the Abject (Continued) –

(Note: Previously posted installments of this series have included bibliographies in the form of endnotes for the text’s parenthetical citations; however, hence forth, the bibliographies will be omitted (to save space and time) but are nevertheless available to any reader who requests the complete bibliography for this series.)

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This study before you does not pretend to be an analysis of narrative strategies.