Although Flannery O'Connor's fiction reflects her religious point of view, most of her protagonists are secular, either materialists, who value possessions, or rationalists, who value the intellect. During the period 1949 to 1964, when O'Connor was writing, the South was rapidly changing, and those changes are reflected in the shift in emphasis from the materialists in O'Connor's early fiction to the rationalists in the late stories. This study of O'Connor's protagonists follows the chronological order of publication. A close textual analysis of the materialists in Chapter II and of the rationalists in Chapter III supports the conclusion that O'Connor was aware of the growing secularity of the South. Whereas some of her protagonists undergo a religious experience, the majority of her protagonists are thoroughly secular materialists or rationalists.