“The Enduring Chill” by Flannery O’ Connor is a short story about a man named
Asbury. At the climax of the story you get to learn more about the illness that Asbury has and what is going to happen to him. This story is a very good story and it has you wondering through the whole thing. It also shows the relationship between Asbury and his family who don’t really believe in what he is doing. The plot, characterization, and theme all help you understand the story.
The plot of this story is very good. At first Asbury becomes ill and moves from his home in New York City and moves back to his hometown of Timberboro with his mother and sister. While he is there he has a lot of fights with his mom about seeing a doctor because he looks very ill. Asbury refuses to see a doctor as he says that the doctor in Timberboro can not help him with his illness. After they get to his childhood house he and his sister get at it about how he tired to be a artist and it failed, and she continues to say that she knew that he would never make it as an artist anyway. Even though he told his mother he didn’t want a doctor to come and see him his mother brought a doctor anyway. The doctor couldn’t figure out what was wrong with him just by looking at him, so he took blood so that he could run tests. Asbury was very rude to the doctor and his mother and told them that is he wanted a doctor to look at him he would have stayed in
New York where the doctors were way better then the small town of Timberboro. After the doctor left Asbury told his mother that he was going to die. His mother refused to listen as she thought he was only having a nervous breakdown. Asbury thinking that he was going to die wrote a letter to his mom that she was not supposed to open till he died.
He locked it in the desk in his room and gave the key to his mother but she put the key on the bedside table. After a couple of days the doctor came back and took some more

blood for more tests. Again Asbury said that the doctor couldn’t help him because he was dying. After a couple of more days the doctor came back and told Asbury that he had nothing to worry about he wasn’t going to die he just had a fever that would keep coming back but he would be fine. After that Asbury looked at the bedside table and grabbed the key hopping that his mother didn’t get the letter and read he opened the drawer and the letter was still where he left it at. This story would have been nothing if the main character did not act like he did.
Asbury had a very negative attitude to his childhood life. When he was sick and he chose to move back to his hometown and he got there he was very upset with his decision. He didn’t like small town life; he hated it so much that he refused to even have the doctor look at him because he said that he couldn’t help with the problem. As soon as his sister woke up they started fighting. He wanted to be a writer and an artist and he believed that he could become these. His sister on the other hand never believes in him. Asbury and his sister fight about a lot of things. He doesn’t get along with his mother either. He was writing a book about slaves back in New York and his mother never agreed with it. Asbury and his mother fought about a lot of things to, the way he treated the slaves of giving them cigarettes and about his illness.
The setting of this story had a lot to do with the story. Asbury lived in
New York but he came back to Timberboro. Timberboro was a small town and he lived far out away from everything on a farm with his mother and sister. Asbury came back to his home town because he thought that he was dying. He didn’t want to die in New York he wanted to die in the quite of his hometown.

This short story was a very good book. How Asbury thinks he is going to die and he doesn’t want a small town doctor to help him because he thinks he can’t help and then he finds out that he isn’t dying is a big part because Asbury thinks that his life is so bad and then he realizes that small town life isn’t as bad as he thinks. Even though Asbury had a very negative attitude at the end of the book he lightens up a little bit.