ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews examples of Flannery O'Connor's early interest in crime fiction, and examines a number of works in which neglect takes the form of a parent's choice of a substitute child. While a parent's selection of a substitute child can lead to a moment of grace, O'Connor can also be blisteringly negative about such behavior. The chapter emphasizes a pattern that lies beneath the "large and startling figures" and the shouting in O'Connor's fiction—a pattern of familial neglect that affects more people than major crimes do. Although love within a family is generally hard to find in O'Connor's works, and failures of a subtle sort within a family can lead a character toward O'Connor's criminal fireworks, particularly interesting is the substitute-child theme. The chapter concludes with an extended argument that O'Connor could convict of criminal neglect even a character almost always treated as a moral exemplar: the priest, Father Flynn, in "The Displaced Person".
