full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Iseult Gillespie: Why should you read Flannery O'Connor?

Unscramble the Blue Letters

For O’Connor, no subject was off lmitis. Though she was a devout Catholic, she wasn’t afraid to explore the possibility of puios thought and upinuos behavior co-existing in the same person. In her novel The Violent Bear it Away, the main character grppelas with the cohcie to become a man of God – but also sets fires and commits murder. The book oenps with the reluctant prophet in a particularly compromising position: “Francis Marion Tarwater’s uncle had been dead for only half a day when the boy got too drunk to finish digging his grave.” This lveaes a passerby to “drag the body from the breakfast table where it was still sitting and bury it […] with enough dirt on top to keep the dogs from digging it up.”

Open Cloze

For O’Connor, no subject was off ______. Though she was a devout Catholic, she wasn’t afraid to explore the possibility of _____ thought and _______ behavior co-existing in the same person. In her novel The Violent Bear it Away, the main character ________ with the ______ to become a man of God – but also sets fires and commits murder. The book _____ with the reluctant prophet in a particularly compromising position: “Francis Marion Tarwater’s uncle had been dead for only half a day when the boy got too drunk to finish digging his grave.” This ______ a passerby to “drag the body from the breakfast table where it was still sitting and bury it […] with enough dirt on top to keep the dogs from digging it up.”

Solution

  1. opens
  2. choice
  3. pious
  4. leaves
  5. limits
  6. unpious
  7. grapples

Original Text

For O’Connor, no subject was off limits. Though she was a devout Catholic, she wasn’t afraid to explore the possibility of pious thought and unpious behavior co-existing in the same person. In her novel The Violent Bear it Away, the main character grapples with the choice to become a man of God – but also sets fires and commits murder. The book opens with the reluctant prophet in a particularly compromising position: “Francis Marion Tarwater’s uncle had been dead for only half a day when the boy got too drunk to finish digging his grave.” This leaves a passerby to “drag the body from the breakfast table where it was still sitting and bury it […] with enough dirt on top to keep the dogs from digging it up.”

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
tom shiftlet 2

Important Words

  1. afraid
  2. bear
  3. behavior
  4. body
  5. book
  6. boy
  7. breakfast
  8. bury
  9. catholic
  10. character
  11. choice
  12. commits
  13. compromising
  14. day
  15. dead
  16. devout
  17. digging
  18. dirt
  19. dogs
  20. drunk
  21. explore
  22. finish
  23. fires
  24. god
  25. grapples
  26. grave
  27. leaves
  28. limits
  29. main
  30. man
  31. marion
  32. murder
  33. opens
  34. passerby
  35. person
  36. pious
  37. possibility
  38. prophet
  39. reluctant
  40. sets
  41. sitting
  42. subject
  43. table
  44. thought
  45. top
  46. uncle
  47. unpious
  48. violent