오코너 작품에 나타난 은총의 그로테스크성

The Grotesque of Grace Manifested in Flannery O'Connor's Fiction

O'Connor' s aesthetics of the grotesque is theologically traced back to Malebranche's occasionalism, which is primarily concerned with how to interpret Divine Grace. The characters in her novels behave as if they were well versed in the narrative of Divinity. On encountering new episodes or phenomena, they are confident and ready to interpret them based on their subjective reasoning and insight into the plot structure presumably hidden in them. Emplotment by mortals are always misleading, which led Malebranche to conceptualize and coin the occasionalism lest humans should make an ego-centered coloring of natural events. Likewise, O'Connor gives a warning to those characters who misinterpret God's Grace; the first group consist of people who are complacent in their faith which turns out to be secular and self righteous (The Grandmother, Mrs. McKintyre, Mrs Turpin) and the second group mostly baptized in modern science and materialism (Hulga, Shepard). O'Connor views both of them as spiritually crippled and blind toward the God's General Principles. In order to shatter their habitual and self-centered faith, she throws them into a catastrophe, which later turns out to be a blessing in disguise. The grotesque is produced by warped and exaggerated images strewn in the scene of calamities. Malebranche and O'Connor seem to be agreed on that the grotesque is in reality the natural manifestation of God's General Will in lieu of God's Particular Will or caprice in doling out Grace.