What Counts: Social Drama and Connectedness in Flannery O’Connor’s “The River” and “Revelation”

This essay explores Flannery O’Connor’s “The River” and “Revelation” from an interdisciplinary perspective. Concepts from the social sciences such as social dramas, ritual performance, and symbolic actions illuminate main moments of conflict and reconciliation between characters and their social milieu and aid understanding of the reading experience offered in O’Connor’s stories.