The Child in Flannery O’Connor’s A Temple of the Holy Ghost Essay

The Child in Flannery OConnors A tabernacle of the Holy cutaneous sensesnone of their appearances were upset on the tike (236). This passage introduces the main character only named the child in Flannery OConnors short study A Temple of the Holy Ghost and indeed she is influenced non only by the cardinal girls that this line refers to, but by e verything she hears and sees. She is very direct and speaks without thinking, for example when she asks her get under ones skin to invite Mr. Cheat, an admirer of Miss Kirbys, the schoolteacher who is lodging with her family. Her directness evict be read as ugliness as she herself calls it. The line None of their ways were lost on the child (236) mentions for the first time the very important characteristic of the child that turns out to be central to the story, that in truth nothing, especially things that are said, are lost on the child, they are some(prenominal) more repeated and reappear throughout the story in divers(prenomina l) contexts. The story shows a girl caught between Catholicism and secular things, as she mixes everything in her very own picture of the world.The first thing that has an sham on the child is when the girls tell how Sister Perpetua told them to stop ungentlemanly boys by saying Stop sir I am the Temple of the Holy Ghost (238). She sees how the phrase influences Miss Kirby and she herself feels as if somebody as given her a present (238). This phrase reappears as a motif later in the story and already in this original context the religious is confronted with the secular. She ever thinks about being a good person, she would even like to cast been a saint, because that included everything you could know (243) but she thinks that she has too many faults such as being a liar, ... ... smell and she finally realizes she is in the strawman of God (247). These effects make her calm down and start to crave and confess her sins although mechanically Hep me not to be so meanHep me not to give her so much sass. Hep me not to talk like I do. When the priest finally raises the monstrance with the master of ceremonies shining ivory-colored in the center of it she is in turn reminded of the freak at the attractive and what he said and the religious world and the world of the fair are mixed together in her mind. The last image of the story is the child seeing the setting sun from the car on their way back home from the convent and she imagines it to be a Host that is drenched in blood. One last time the interrelation of church and fair obtain visible as she imagines this scene right after Alonzo mentions that the fair has been eject down on request of preachers.