The physical anomalies, the violence, and the bizarre actions which are so prevalent in Flannery O’Connor' s fiction have disturbed many of her readers. But the specific reactions to these grotesque elements cover a range of interpretation that is surprisingly diverse. Two classes of interpretations which are at opposite poles in their content, but similar, I feel, in their distance from the real meaning of Miss O’Connor’s use of the grotesque are 1) those that deny the presence of grotesquerie in her fiction, and 2) those that see her work as a repository for the gratuitous grotesque.