Pelos horrores do vale da sombra da morte: monstros e monstruosidades na ficção de Flannery O'Connor

Abstract

This study examines the construction of monstrosity and the uncanny in the work of Flannery O’Connor, focusing on the short stories “A View of the Woods,” “Good Country People,” and “The Life You Save May Be Your Own.” Situated within the context of Southern Gothic, the research explores how the author mobilizes elements of the grotesque and violence in representing the moral, social, and cultural values of the southern United States, a region historically shaped by structural inequalities and the legacy of the postwar period. The choice of O’Connor as the object of study is justified both by the scarcity of scholarship on her work in Brazil and by the relevance of her narratives to the understanding of monstrosity as an aesthetic and ethical category. The central objective of this research is to examine how O’Connor constructs monstrous characters through actions, behaviors, and power relations, thereby revealing the presence of ordinary evil and the contradictions of the human condition, which are articulated through Freud’s concept of the uncanny. The methodology is bibliographic in nature and is based on close textual analysis of the selected short stories, articulated with theoretical contributions by Sigmund Freud, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, and Stephen T. Asma, as well as critical studies on Southern Gothic and the grotesque. The results indicate that monstrosity in O’Connor’s work is not limited to supernatural or physically deformed figures but emerges primarily from practices of violence, the absence of empathy, and the instrumentalization of the other. In the stories analyzed, male characters enact violence against women in situations of vulnerability, exposing the fragility of human relationships and the paradoxical coexistence of religious moral discourse and structures of domination. It is concluded that, by articulating the grotesque, violence, and monstrosity, Flannery O’Connor’s fiction offers a critical cartography of ordinary evil, challenging readers to confront the darker dimensions of human experience. Although grounded in a specific regional context, her literature transcends historical and geographical boundaries by engaging universal ethical and philosophical questions, revealing that monstrosity may manifest itself in the most ordinary actions and in seemingly familiar figures.