The sixth and final story in Flannery O’Connor’s 1947 master’s thesis collection, “The Train,” is a somewhat gothic tale in which nineteen-year old Hazel (Haze) Wickers suffers social awkwardness and nighttime terror during a train ride for undisclosed reasons to Taulkinham. O’Connor readers will recognize Haze, with his last name changed to Motes, as the protagonist who will reappear in the novel Wise Blood; in this short story appearance, however, Haze—like his later incarnation—proves himself to be on the run from something in his past but now finds himself agitated by his surroundings and other people.

Confronted and inexplicably annoyed by everyone else on the train—including Mrs.

Have you ever had a book idea you wanted to write, but you didn’t know where to begin? You had a basic plot outline somewhere in your head, but things just don’t seem to come together. I’ve had periods like that, but there’s a way to solve the problem.

Flannery O’Connor’s short story “A Temple of the Holy Ghost” (CS 236-48) invites readers to consider carefully what O’Connor referred to elsewhere as our “inburnt knowledge of [our] human limitations [and] sense of mystery” within the modern world (MM 59).

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

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