Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury tells the story of the Compson family inthe  post WWI South. Faulkner seems to fall ambivalently in terms of the break-down of social institutions, in that although the Compsons are punished in the fall of the position of the Southern family, Faulkner still critiques their defunct value system.

All of the Compsons are punished for living in the past, and still following the defunct institution of the aristocratic family. Still, Faulkner doesn’t seem to offer many options for their move into the modern era—Quentin even attends Harvard where he would have learned to think in a modern way—thereby showing some sympathy for those made obsolete in a modern era. At the same time, however, Faulkner critiques the Compson’s pre-modern value system, saying that it was this, not the value system’s ineffectiveness in modern times, that ruined them. Dilsey doubly complicates Faulkner’s views on undercutting institutions. Because of her religion and religious awakening, Dilsey gains a positive new perspective and a new direction in life.

Like Faulkner’s characters who are punished for being outdated, Flannery O’Connor’s characters in “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” the grandmother, as much as she purports to be a Christian, is more style over substance. In her case, religion acts not as a moral compass, but instead as a superficial lifestyle. It’s only in the moments after she’s been shot, a horrific moment that makes her remember God that makes her disillusionment in using religion only as lifestyle turn to a state of grace. Similarly in “The River,” Harry’s parents are punished for their immoral lifestyle by the death of their son, while Bevel is rewarded and saved from sin in his naturally realized religion. If Bevel hadn’t drowned in the river following God, Mr. Paradise with his worldly candy and soda, would have, along with Harry’s parents, lured Bevel down a sinful path. Instead, Bevel’s youthly belief in God didn’t have a chance to be disillusioned or distorted with worldly things. The parents, disillusioned towards Christianity illustrated in their treatment of Bevel’s Bible, use drinking and partying as a replacement religion. Read this way, Bevel’s religious fervor was only misinformation, but his parents’ realization of the wrongness of their lifestyle would still be realized.

O’Connor’s position is clear, that religious institutions and peoples’ subsequent disillusionment is detrimental to them. Both the grandmother and Bevel’s parents are living lives of sin. It is only through punishment that the grandmother can see the wrongness of her ways and that Bevel’s parents can see the extent of their negligence.