st as rare. It is in the context of this history that O'Connor's writing begins to assume clearer meaning. O'Connor spent her late childhood years in the midst of the Depression, and was undoubtedly affected by the increasing Southern dialect and loneliness she saw in the rural communities she was so familiar with. Her characters and settings are drawn almost completely from her own experience, and she paid careful attention in her writings to talk about the poor man's experiences. One example of this is Tom T. Shiftlet, the drifter in "The Life you Save May Be Your Own," who abandons his sleeping deaf bride at a roadside restaurant and drives off alone with their honeymoon money. O'Connor's fiction is as much about human nature as it is about grace and redemption. While ultimately trying to express divine truth, she also reveals a great deal about humanity's slow participation in the mystery. Her characters wander around blindly unaware of the holy meaning in ordinary events. The world in which her characters move is ambiguous; awareness of God's grace does not come easily to these people. They are so fallen, and their consciousness is so impermeable that only the most violent and soul-wrenching moments of life awaken them from their sluggishness and prepare them for the intervention of God's grace. Ultimately, these moments reveal the love of God for unworthy people. O'Connor writes similar to philosophers and theologians, exploring the same questions and mysteries, but through fiction rather than explanation. Her work, like the stories of the Bible, leads the reader into a strange land marked with puzzling signposts. Here, faith and fiction meet at a crossroads where we are pointed to the road less traveled--our participation in the divine mystery. Although O'Connor was a Southern writer, she was every bit a Catholic writer, too. She could not have understood and dramatized the things that she did about the South without the extensiv...
