The main recurring theme in Flannery O'Connor's stories is the use of violence towards the characters to give them an enlightening moment in which they finally realize their true self in relation to the rest of society and openly accept information about how they should act or think. This theme of violence can be clearly seen in three works by Flannery O'Connor: A Good Man is Hard to Find, Good Country People, and Everything That Rises Must Converge. In A Good Man is Hard to Find, the grandmother and the misfit both experience a life-changing event that leads them to have a clear understanding of who they are truly meant to be. After the Misfit kills the rest of the family, the grandmother is left alone with the Misfit in the ditch. Once she sees the Misfit wearing her now dead son's shirt, it occurs to her that the Misfit is no worse than her (Whitt 47). She is reminded of her son because of the shirt, but this thought inspires even deeper understanding and thought beyond confusion as to why he is wearing that shirt (Whitt 47-48). He goes so far as to tell the Misfit “Because you are one of my children. You are one of my children!" (Whit 47). He realizes that his beliefs and thoughts about the old Southern social class structure that everyone must be good or must be beneath an individual do not make sense or apply when faced with a serious event in life such as death (Whitt 47) The Misfit is surprised by what his grandmother told him and quickly shoots her three times without thinking, as if by instinct, “as if a snake had bitten him” (Whitt 48) The truth that the grandmother says is too much for the Misfit to the point that he violently tries to reject it. Even if the grandmother is dead... middle of paper... the life of all individuals: a life where the past and future can be faced head on and wrongs can be righted while continuing to embrace the life yet to come (Moore In conclusion, Flannery O'Connor used violence in her stories to give her characters an event that changes their entire point of view, beliefs and actions in life and shows them the reality of it. . These acts of violence can be seen in A Good Man is Hard to Find, Good Country People, and Everything that Rises Must Converge. Works Cited Whitt, Margaret. Understanding Flannery O'Connor. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1995. 47-48, 78. Print.Moore, Julie. O'Connor's "All that arises must converge" and the concept of grace. Yahoo! Voices. Yahoo! Inc., 2009. Web. March 4 2012. .