Which phrase asserts that modern audiences require startling images because they are spiritually blind/deaf?

• A. O'Connor on shock
• B. incarnation
• C. violent grace
• D. edenic south

Answer: (A)

The idea being tested is that modern readers, spiritually blind and deaf, need startling, shocking imagery to wake them up to grace. Flannery O’Connor argued that a desensitized audience won’t respond to gentle moralizing, so she uses grotesque or violent scenes to jar readers into noticing moral truth. Saying “O’Connor on shock” names this stance directly: she treats shock as a deliberate technique to pierce numbness and reveal grace at work in difficult circumstances.

The other phrases don’t capture that exact stance. Incarnation is a theological term about God becoming human, not about reader reception. Violent grace points to how grace often arrives through violence in her stories, which is related but is more about how grace operates than why readers need shocking imagery. Edenic south refers to a romanticized, paradisiacal view of the South and isn’t the claim about shocking imagery or reader awakening.