SOURCE: Coulthard, A. R. “From Sermon to Parable: Four Conversion Stories by Flannery O'Connor.” American Literature 55, no. 1 (March 1983): 55-71.

In the following essay, Coulthard considers sin and redemption in four of O'Connor's short stories: “A Temple of the Holy Ghost,” “The Artificial Nigger,” “Revelation,” and “Parker's Back.”

In a 1958 letter, Flannery O'Connor discussed the major theme of her writing: “It seems to me that all good stories are about conversion, about a character's changing. … The action of grace changes a character. … All my stories are about the action of grace on a character.”¹ Like many of O'Connor's statements about her writing, this one is useful if it is properly qualified. Most of O'Connor's stories, of course, are about sin and redemption, but not all of them actually depict “the action of grace on a character.”

In seven stories, for instance, O'Connor clears the way for a character's redemption...