Flannery O'Connor uses violence to return characters to reality and prepare them to accept their moment of grace. The New Encyclopedia Britannica defines grace as the "spontaneous, unmerited gift of the divine or the divine influence operating in man for his regeneration and sanctification" (401). At any cost, a soul must find salvation. O'Connor states, "In my own stories I have found that violence is strangely capable of returning my characters to reality and preparing them to accept their moment of grace" (qtd.in Bain 407). Dorothy Walt ....