Literary Influence and Significance
In her own day, O'Connor was accused of writing about "grotesques," and her novel Wise Blood is a good example how she features these seemingly grotesque characters. These characters populate the story to show that even grotesque individuals can be human in their religious hungers and their cravings for love and recognition. Her image of the south as populated with religious fanatics and the malformed has influenced a great many writers to emphasize Southern eccentrics. From John Kennedy Toole to Harry Crews, novelists have focused on the South as home of curious people who put belief into action. However, O'Connor's characters are as much theological embodiments as descriptions of real people. Wise Blood, in particular, is a novel of philosophical debate.
Read more about this topic: Wise Blood
Famous quotes containing the words literary, influence and/or significance:
“There is something about the literary life that repels me, all this desperate building of castles on cobwebs, the long-drawn acrimonious struggle to make something important which we all know will be gone forever in a few years, the miasma of failure which is to me almost as offensive as the cheap gaudiness of popular success.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“Nature has taken more care than the fondest parent for the education and refinement of her children. Consider the silent influence which flowers exert, no less upon the ditcher in the meadow than the lady in the bower. When I walk in the woods, I am reminded that a wise purveyor has been there before me; my most delicate experience is typified there.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Politics is not an end, but a means. It is not a product, but a process. It is the art of government. Like other values it has its counterfeits. So much emphasis has been placed upon the false that the significance of the true has been obscured and politics has come to convey the meaning of crafty and cunning selfishness, instead of candid and sincere service.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)