By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Why Do the Heathen Rage?’ is an oddity within the Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor (1925-64). The shortest story in the book, it is actually a kind of fragment, and the earliest version of what would have been O’Connor’s third novel (the manuscript of which has been published in full – or as ‘full’ as it ever got before O’Connor’s death – in 2024).