Educational Media Reviews Online

This film is a succinct biographical sketch of Flannery O’Connor and her work. Black and white photographs of Flannery and the writers to whom she is most often compared, Faulkner, Beckett and Kafka, contrast effectively with brilliant transparent washes over illustrations by Laura Ohman. O’Connor’s life, like her work, was short and intense. She inherited lupus from her father and died of complications from the disease at 39. In that short time she managed to complete two novels and 31 stories. Flannery was the only child of a Catholic family and thus at odds with the spiritual heritage of the largely Protestant south. The conflict between the two religions, as well as a keen sense of the absurd, shaped her work. Readings from The Displaced Person, The River, The Life You Save May Be Your Own”and Revelation might prove useful for literature teachers who wish to illustrate or demonstrate O’Connor’s prose style. This film is short enough to be easily included as a lecture aid in any high school or college English class.