Flannery O'Connor uses violence to return characters to reality and prepare them to accept their moment of grace. The New Encyclopedia Britannica defines grace as the 'spontaneous, unmerited gift of the divine or the divine influence operating in man for his regeneration and sanctification' (401). At any cost, a soul must find salvation. O'Connor states, 'In my own stories I have found that violence is strangely capable of returning my characters to reality and preparing them …showed first 75 words of 1658 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1658 total…Norton Introduction to Literature. 5th ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1995. 'Grace.' The New Encylopedia Britannica: Micropaedia. 1990. McFarland, Dorothy, Tuck. Flannery O'Connor. New York: Fredrick Ungar, 1976. O'Connor, Flannery. A Good Man is Hard to Find. San diego: Harcourt, 1976. O'Connor, Flannery. Habit of Being. Ed: Sally Fitzgerald. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1979. 'O'Connor.' Masterpieces of American Literature. Ed. Frank N. Magil. New Jersey: Saturn, 1993. Walters, Dorothy. Flannery O'Connor. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1993.