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    A Study Guide for Flannery O'Connor's "A Circle in the Fire"
    A Study Guide for Flannery O'Connor's "A Circle in the Fire"
    A Study Guide for Flannery O'Connor's "A Circle in the Fire"
    Ebook34 pages23 minutes

    A Study Guide for Flannery O'Connor's "A Circle in the Fire"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Flannery O'Connor's "A Circle in the Fire," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateJul 15, 2016
    ISBN9781535816526
    A Study Guide for Flannery O'Connor's "A Circle in the Fire"

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      Book preview

      A Study Guide for Flannery O'Connor's "A Circle in the Fire" - Gale

      1

      A Circle in the Fire

      Flannery O'Connor

      1954

      Introduction

      Flannery O'Connor's short story A Circle in the Fire was originally published in 1954 in Kenyon Review. At the time of its publication, O'Connor was on the verge of being recognized as one of America's greatest short-story writers, her first story having been published in 1946. In 1955 A Circle in the Fire appeared in three volumes, which together assured O'Connor's place in the literary canon: A Good Man Is Hard to Find (O'Connor's first published collection); Prize Stories 1955: The O. Henry Awards; and The Best American Short Stories of 1955. The story later appeared in the posthumous collection The Complete Stories, which was published in 1971.

      Though A Circle in the Fire is not among O'Connor's best-known stories, it is characterized by the same grotesque characters, religious undercurrents, and dark humor found in her famed works A Good Man Is Hard to Find, The Life You Save May Be Your Own, and Everything That Rises Must Converge. A Circle in the Fire is set on a farm—probably in Georgia, since the visitors live in Atlanta—and seems to be set at the time of its writing.

      Author Biography

      Flannery O'Connor was born Mary Flannery O'Connor on March 25, 1925, in Savannah, Georgia. O'Connor preferred to use her middle name rather than her first name. Her father, Edward F. O'Connor, was in the real estate business. Her mother, Regina L. (Cline) O'Connor, came from a prominent Georgia family; Regina's father was a longtime mayor of the small town of Milledgeville, Georgia. The O'Connors were devout Catholics in a region that was at the time overwhelmingly Southern Baptist.

      When O'Connor was twelve, her father became ill with lupus, a debilitating blood disease, and the family moved to Milledgeville. O'Connor's father died when she was only fifteen. She graduated from the local public high school and then earned a degree

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