A Late Encounter with the Enemy by Flannery OConnor

An analysis of this short story that delves into questions of truth and illusion and how people prefer to live by illusion when the truth is too prosaic. This paper examines this short story and delves into questions of history, the meaning of history, the meaning of time, the way human beings shape their lives from whatever material they can find or assume, the way society at large reacts to certain events and the void that often exists at the center of a family. The story revolves around a grandfather and his granddaughter who both need some glorious past to justify their existence. The paper describes the two characters as well as the other characters that appear in the book. The paper analyzes the themes found in the story. Flannery OConnor develops her story using a comic tone and building on a series of ironies around the distinction between reality and illusion in terms of the glories of the Old South and those in the present who need some glorious past to justify their existence.The story involves two major characters and several peripheral characters, but only the two major characters are developed in any significant degree.