Wayne Booth and other rhetorical critics have developed methods for examining the rhetorical aspects of fiction. In this dissertation, I examine, specifically, the use of rhetorical violence in American fiction. It is my premise that authors use rhetorical violence and the irrationality of violence created mimetically to construct ironic metaphors that comment on the irrationality of the ideology behind the violence, pushing that ideology's maxims to its logical ends. The goal of rhetorical violence, therefore, is to create the conditions for a transfer of culpability so that the act becomes transitive-transferable-loosed from its moorings. Culpability, if indeed it reflects something intrinsically awry with an ideology, becomes the fault of the ideology-€”it becomes the perpetrator of illogic and the condemnatory force associated with the act of violence gets transferred to it. Hence, if the author has created an effective metaphor, when he or she flips the violent scene'€™s "€œvalue," the audience is willing to follow along. The violence remains a great evil, but the culpability for the act is shifted to a representative of the ideology in question-as-victimizer; nonetheless, that transfer can only occur inasmuch as the audience is willing to force-fit the incongruities of the metaphor.I examine this rhetorical phenomenon in the works of three modern American writers: Flannery O'Connor, Toni Morrison, and Chuck Palahniuk. I seek to examine the ideologies questioned in these works, the contradictory beliefs expressed by the authors, and to explicate primary episodes in the works of fiction wherein rhetorical violence functions in a rhetorical fashion to promulgate the author's ideology by emotionally jarring the reader loose from commonly-held ideological assumptions in three specific appeals: first, to negate one socially-held ideology in order to promote a conflicting one (Wise Blood); second, to elicit compassion for victimized characters representing social ills (Beloved); third, to call into question the validity of social institutions and practices (Fight Club).

Wayne Booth and other rhetorical critics have developed methods for examining the rhetorical aspects of fiction. In this dissertation, I examine, specifically, the use of rhetorical violence in American fiction. It is my premise that authors use rhetorical violence and the irrationality of violence created mimetically to construct ironic metaphors that comment on the irrationality of the ideology behind the violence, pushing that ideology's maxims to its logical ends. The goal of rhetorical violence, therefore, is to create the conditions for a transfer of culpability so that the act becomes transitive-transferable-loosed from its moorings. Culpability, if indeed it reflects something intrinsically awry with an ideology, becomes the fault of the ideology-€”it becomes the perpetrator of illogic and the condemnatory force associated with the act of violence gets transferred to it. Hence, if the author has created an effective metaphor, when he or she flips the violent scene'€™s "€œvalue," the audience is willing to follow along. The violence remains a great evil, but the culpability for the act is shifted to a representative of the ideology in question-as-victimizer; nonetheless, that transfer can only occur inasmuch as the audience is willing to force-fit the incongruities of the metaphor.I examine this rhetorical phenomenon in the works of three modern American writers: Flannery O'Connor, Toni Morrison, and Chuck Palahniuk. I seek to examine the ideologies questioned in these works, the contradictory beliefs expressed by the authors, and to explicate primary episodes in the works of fiction wherein rhetorical violence functions in a rhetorical fashion to promulgate the author's ideology by emotionally jarring the reader loose from commonly-held ideological assumptions in three specific appeals: first, to negate one socially-held ideology in order to promote a conflicting one (Wise Blood); second, to elicit compassion for victimized characters representing social ills (Beloved); third, to call into question the validity of social institutions and practices (Fight Club).

Thesis (Th. M.)--Regent College, Vancouver, BC, 2002. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 120-125).

Thesis (M.A.)--Oregon State University, 2010. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 72-75). Also available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (Th. M.)--Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, 2000. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 91-96).

Thesis (Th. M.)--Regent College, Vancouver, BC, 2002. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 120-125).

In her essay, “The Grotesque in Southern Fiction,” Flannery O’Connor notes, “Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one” (44). In the introduction to this collection, I investigate the importance of the grotesque, gothic, and surreal elements that tend to make up the depictions of the South in the works of authors such as Flannery O’Connor and Brad Watson and several horror writers, such as Stephen King, Edgar Allan Poe, and H.P. Lovecraft, exploring how horror can be used to emphasize the stranger elements of Southern fiction. In my own stories, I present both realistic depictions of suffering and sin in the South, as well as the strange and surreal, presenting the South not just as a world for freaks, but as a freakish world in and of itself.

Throughout her fiction, Flannery O' Connor uses character reflections to present mirror analogues. The recurrence of these mirror analogues inspired me to look deeper into her fiction for analogues that might superficially appear to be unrelated and dissimilar. I found that in addition to her more obvious reflections there was another whole set of what I term reflectors that have the same function of pointing up traits or corresponding characteristics between characters by dwelling upon their dissimilarities. For the sake of convenience I have divided the mirror analogues in O'Connor's fiction into two categories: reflectors and reflections.

The majority of critics interested in the religious elements of Flannery O'Connor's fiction argue that her texts illustrate her professed Catholic faith. For many of these scholars, the author's nonfiction figures predominately in their interpretations of her fiction. This thesis highlights the presence of Evangelical theology in O'Connor's short fiction by utilizing an approach that is underrepresented in scholarly examinations of her works: reading O'Connor's texts without considering the author's personal beliefs. Through this approach, the Evangelical dimensions of O'Connor's short stories become apparent. This thesis contends that each of the six short stories discussed exemplifies Evangelical theology as they emphasize the fallen nature of humanity, depict the action of grace as transformative, and suggest that willful cooperation is not necessary to salvation. By demonstrating that O'Connor's short fiction reproduces Evangelical theology, this thesis aims to provide scholars with a basis for reconsidering the relationship of her works to the literary tradition of the largely Protestant South.

This thesis is an investigation into the nature of the characterizations of women and Negroes in the fiction of Flannery O'Connor and the extent to which the attitudes, beliefs, and ideas contained in the background of the author influenced such portrayals. The thesis identifies these influences as her native South and the Roman Catholic Church and concludes that her misogynistic treatment of women and sympathetic handling of Negroes proceeds from values placed on both groups in such influences.