Flannery O'Connor und christliche Schocktherapie

"The universe of the Catholic fiction writer is one that is founded on the theological truths of the Faith, but particularly on three of them which are basic - the Fall, the Redemption, and the Judgment. These are doctrines that the modern secualr world does not believe in. It does not believe in sin, or in the value that suffering can have, or in eternal responsibility, and since we live in a world that since the sixteenth century has been increasingly domnated by secular thought, the Catholic writer often finds himself writing in and for a world that is unprepared and unwilling to see the meaning of life as he sees it.

This means frequently that he may resort to violent literary means to get his vision across to a hostile audience, and the images and actions he creates may seem distorted and exaggerated to the Catholic mind."

(Catholic Novelists and Their Readers. In: Mystery and Manners, p. 185)

Und noch deutlicher:

"When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax a little and use more normal means of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock - to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures."

(The Fiction Writer & His Country. In: Mystery and Manners, p. 34)