As a lay theologian and a devout Catholic immersed in Protestant Southern Culture, much of O'Connor's work centered on the place of Christian Mystery in both Southern culture and in society at large. O'Connor herself says of her writing that: much of my fiction takes its character from a reasonable use of the unreasonable . . . The assumptions that underlie this use of it ... are those of central Christian mysteries . . . The heroine of this story, the Grandmother, is in the most significant position life offers the Christian. She is facing death. And to all appearances she, like the rest of us, is not too well prepared for it. She would like to see the event postponed. Indefinitely.

O'Connor's portrayal of the grandmother in the story is representative of the superficiality of old-fashioned "godly" Christianity. The Grandmother, as traditional Southern women, takes a hypocritical position in which she is...