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Mother Characters In Flannery O 'Connor's Greenleaf'

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In Flannery O 'Connor collected works there are distinct parallels to the characters she created and her personal life. These parallels become apparent after reading her collected letters, in which she discussed her home life. In these letters O 'Connor wrote to her friends and family she often talks about her mother with whom she lived with since she had a chronic illness that kept her from living on her own. The mother characters she had wrote were often single and owned a farm, much like her own mother, Regina, who had a dairy farm in Georgia where they had lived long after her father had died of lupus when she was a teenager. The maternal characters she created were single and worked on a farm, Unlike her mother the characters portrayed …show more content…

This quote shows her mother’s temper with having animals on the farm that are not hers and that Regina is willing to go as far as almost hitting them in order to get them to leave. This kind of temper correlates to the character of Mrs. May from the short story Greenleaf, the story takes place yet again on a farm very similar to the one Regina owns. Mrs. May finds one morning a bull on her land and is insisting to her farm hand, Mr. Greenleaf, that he needs to get rid of it before is makes its way to her female cows. Mrs. May finds out in the story that the bull belongs to Mr. Greenleaf’s sons that live down the road. She tells Greenleaf that his boys need to remove their bull from her land or she will have to take care of it herself. She had told Mr.Greenleaf to get a gun and follow her she then took him to the bull and told him to go and shoot him. When he was let out of the car the bull had wandered off into the woods and Mr. Greenleaf sondered after him reluctantly. He and the bull disappeared in the woods for a fair amount of time before Mrs. May blew the horn alerting the bull which the appeared from out of the woods.”He was crossing the pasture toward her at a slow gallop, a gay almost rocking gait as if he were overjoyed to find her again---------She looked back and saw that the bull, his head lowered was racing towards

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