Wildcat (2022) Timeline Explained – Every Event in Order

The film opens with Flannery imagining a melodramatic movie trailer featuring a crazed, nymphomaniac boarder. This creative framing device establishes the movie's blend of imagination and biography, introducing the fictional stories she will later write while showing how her inner life fuels her creative output. The trailer previews the stories she will draw from, like The Comforts of Home and Everything That Rises Must Converge.

• flannery o'connor
• fantasy trailer
• opening scene
• framing device

Throughout the film, imaginary episodes based on her published stories are intercut with moments from her actual life. This juxtaposition reveals how her inner imagination and lived experiences, including her relationships, illness, and Southern background, directly informed her fiction. The film stages scenes from works like The Life You Save May Be Your Own and Parker's Back, showing her creative process.

• flannery o'connor stories
• biography
• fiction
• short stories

When she travels to New York to secure a publisher for Wise Blood, she is asked to provide an outline of the novel. She refuses, insisting on presenting the work on its own terms rather than conforming to commercial expectations. This reflects her fierce commitment to artistic integrity and her determination to protect her creative vision from outside interference.

• wise blood
• publisher
• outline
• creative integrity

In New York, Flannery discusses her novel with Robert Lowell, who praises her as his most talented student. They share a quiet, mutual romantic attraction. However, Lowell eventually marries Elizabeth Hardwick, and Flannery learns of this at a writers' party. The unrequited romance adds emotional complexity to her life, though she ultimately redirects her energy toward writing after receiving news of his marriage.

Foreshadowing: Their meeting in New York foreshadows the personal tension that develops when Lowell marries someone else.

• robert lowell
• romance
• elizabeth hardwick
• new york

After her lupus diagnosis and during the turmoil of illness and writing, Flannery buys a peacock as a source of comfort. The unusual pet becomes a tangible companion during her medical struggles and emotional strain, providing idiosyncratic warmth and resilience amid her declining health while she continues to write.

• peacock
• pet
• comfort
• illness

Lupus is a chronic autoimmune disease that Flannery learns she has after returning from New York, following fatigue and a painful facial rash. The same disease had already claimed her father's life. She initially refuses medical treatment, eventually accepts it, and must use crutches as her condition worsens. The illness profoundly impacts her daily life and creative work throughout her remaining years.

• lupus
• illness
• diagnosis
• health decline

After the credits roll, the film includes a quotation from Flannery O'Connor expressing gratitude toward the actors of the medical world, pig-derived pituitary extracts, that helped sustain her life. These injections, derived from pig glands, were used as treatment for lupus and helped keep her alive for the fourteen years she lived after her diagnosis.

• pig pituitary
• lupus treatment
• medical
• injection

An Irish priest counsels Flannery on her inner conflicts between faith and doubt, recognizing the tension in her life as a Catholic writer. He suggests she channel her gifts toward acts of charity and toward enriching others through her writing. When she mentions that Joyce's Ulysses is banned in Ireland, he calls the ban needless, reinforcing his broader openness to confronting difficult ideas in art.

• irish priest
• faith
• charity
• ulysses
• james joyce

Regina, Flannery's mother, offers practical support during her daughter's illness while sometimes clashing with the bite of Flannery's uncompromising voice. The film also reveals Regina's racist prejudices, which create tension in their relationship. Despite these conflicts, Regina remains a supportive figure, though their dynamic mirrors the complex family relationships that appear in O'Connor's fiction.

• regina mother
• family
• support
• prejudice

The film ends with an intertitle stating that Flannery O'Connor lived another fourteen years after the period depicted, eventually succumbing to lupus, which she described as the "French wolf." During those years, she continued writing some of her most acclaimed short stories until her death at age 39.

• death
• lifespan
• fourteen years
• lupus