This work attemptes to disclose the aspects of Catholicism, Grotesque and Southernism in Flannery O’Connor’s short stories. It proves that the author used the three aspects in order to reveal the core of Southern society through the looking-glass of Catholicism for that purpose that employing grotesque characters and situations, which also provided the tools for a critique. Catholic, grotesque and southern aspects, although sometimes in disguise, are the subject freely canvassed in Flannery O'Connor's fiction because she was in the position to see things in a way that was denied to many others. She was a devout Catholic all her life; she possessed a gift for writing coupled with emotional maturity; and overriding all, she had both vision and humility. She was also born and raised in the American South (Georgia) and lived most of her adult life there. Consequently, as a fiction writer, O'Connor was furnished with the unique opportunity to both observe and record the Protestant South with its Calvinist backdrop, through the lens of her Catholic faith. The stories O'Connor wrote are a valuable testament to a region that she once described as "no longer Christ centred but still Christ haunted". (62, 527) She saw the South as a region where most people were merely grotesque in the way they lived, thought and acted lacking a central authority that unified faith, morals and liturgical practice, but with definite empathy, she saw those same people attempting to wrestle in various and... [to full text]