Love That Cuts Like the Cold Wind: Friedrich Nietzsche in Flannery O’Connor’s The Violent Bear It Away

This essay argues that Flannery O’Connor possessed a deep intuitive understanding of Nietzsche’s project, and seriously engaged with it in her work, embracing parts of it while rejecting others. It shows how O’Connor genuinely embraces Nietzsche’s evaluation of Christian pity in the modern age while rejecting his assertion that religion generally, and Christianity specifically, grows out of nihilistic psychological impulses.