O’Connor’s style is often described as Southern regionalism/realism. Her stories are often categorized somewhere between the Southern Gothic and contemporary genres. Her plain style is infused with images of Southern culture and hints of dialect, but her descriptions tend to be matter-of-fact.
The diction O’Connor uses throughout the story could be described as a mixture of both ordinary and distinct. Words like “aloose” and “dontcha” in the first few paragraphs are examples of slang, for instance.
This adds to the realism of the story, but it also makes O’Connor’s rhetoric accessible to a wide range of readers. Considering that common themes across her writing include grace and redemption, it makes sense that O’Connor would employ a realistic style in order to spread her message broadly.
O'Connor uses comic diction and an ordinary style through most of this story. She tells it through the eyes (up until the very end, after her death) of the grandmother, who does not have a sophisticated mind or vocabulary. As we listen to the story, the effect of the style is to lull us into thinking this is a comic tale about a typical Southern family heading out on a 1950s road trip vacation. The events are completely ordinary: family squabbling, stopping for lunch. The effect of this is to make it all the more shocking when the mood changes after the car lands in the ditch on the deserted road, and the Misfit and his gang appear. The sudden switch to horror genre and death disorients us as readers, just as it disorients the family and the grandmother. Like her, we are groping to understand what is going on in "real time," with no time to adjust as the commonplace world turns upside down.
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