The author, Flannery O'Connor, kept peacocks at farmhouse home in Georgia.
1. Find an instance of an effective use of language and explain.
OR
2. Are their elements of the grotesque in this story? Like what? What's grotesque about your example?
OR
3. Who ends up seeming the most foolish in this story? Why?
OR
4. Assume for a moment that the author is interested in satirizing (criticizing in an indirect, but judgmental, usually funny way) the grandmother. What is there to criticize?
OR
5. Can you make sense of the character known as "the Misfit"?
OR
6. Notice something no one else has noticed yet.
16 comments:
Hi Everyone,
My answer is pertaining to question 2. I believe there are elements of grotesque situations in this story. For example: "'But nobody's killed,' June Star said with disappointment." This implies that the only way to have a true accident is when someone's life comes to a tragic end. I believe that there must be a heightened sense of urgency to compel the reader to continue on reading. If the story is dry and there is only subtle movement through out, then there is no reason to go on. Being grotescue is one way to keep the story animated. If the men in the car just stopped to help the family and then left,if that was how the story wwas written, on page 376 paragraph 76, the story would become bland. The author knew that even though the imagery of the crash created a sense of wanting more, from the reader, the audiences attention would not be engaged much longer. Flannery O'Conner had to make the men creepy and of course, have guns, to keep the urgerncy afloat within the reader. I also believe the subtlety in the authors way of being grotesque drove home the point of a "good Man" being "Hard to Find". If the misfit would have just helped them and then gone on his way, the achievement of finding a helpful man would not seem that farfetched. I look forward to seeing how my fellow classmates feel about this topic.
I feel like the real fool in the end was the Misfit. He is the one in the end who killed inicent people for the sake of his own problems. He ended up killing the one person who believed in him, the grandmother. The person who the whole time was talking to him and said that she believed he was a good man and came from a good family, but yet he was foolish enough to kill her. THe last line the MIsfit says, "It's no pleasure in life." This infers that he obiously doesn't like killing these inncent people, but he feels like he has to. I feel like the MIsfit just kills people because he knows he is going to get punished for some kind of crime so why not do all the crime you can and just get punished. He obviously knows that he is going to be watched and be punished for whatever reason, so he just continues doing the same thing. It was an interesting book and kept on my toes. I can't wait to hear what other people thought of the book!
While reading "A Good Man is Hard to Find" I notice that the title of this story probably portray the Misfit. I remember reading a qoute from the granmother on page 377. She talks to the Misfit saying that she knows he got some good in him and that he is a good person, but the Misfit dissagree with her. "I know you're a good man, she said despratly." (Pg377) "Nome, I ain't a good man, the Misfit said after a secound as if he had considered her statement carefully, but I ain't the worst in the world neither." (Pg377) THe grandmother seems like she wanted to help him change his bad ways and do good.
I think that language is used to create the scene when the family and the grandmother are in the car and she is remembering this specific dirt road. The road was "hilly and there were sudden washed in it and sharp curves on dangerous embarkments. All at once they would be on a hill, looking down over the blue tops of trees for miles around, then the next minute, they would be in a red depression with the dust-cpated trees looking down on them." This road seems like it is unexpected and you never know what is going to come next, which is very similar to life and how in one minute your life can be changed forever. The grandmother had this thought which made her, "red in the face and her eyes dialated and her feet jumped up." Her abrupt actions caused the car to turn over two times and the children were so frightened. The imagery was created from right before the accident until they got out of the car and because it was so specific, reading was thrilling because just like the dirt road, I did not know what was going to happen next and the only way to create that type of atmosphere for the reader is to set up the scene so specifically and not leave any details out.
Hi guys
So, one thing I noticed that no one else seems to have noticed is when the grandma says. She saw the man's face twisted close to her own as if he were going to cry and murmured. "why you're one of my babies. You're one of my own children." Ashleigh and I were discussion that we think it's a metaphor, but do you think it's possible that he really is one of her children? And another thing I noticed about this story is that it's extremely sad. To see your father/husband die when you are simply looking for help in bad circumstance, like a car crash, and to see your children/mother die. I just found the ending very sad. But, I still want to know how the misfit and the grandmother are related.
The character of the misfit is certainly hard to make sense of. He kills people for no reason at all and he can't remember crimes that he has committed. He is such a lost man who has become reliant on killing others and committing crimes to make himself feel better. He is almost the anti-Christ, or the opposite of good and kindness. This is shown when he says "Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead. And he shouldn't have don't it. He thrown everything off balance. If He did what He said, then it's nothing for you to do but throw away everything and follow him..." The misfit is saying it is unfair to raise people from the dead because it messes up the cycle of life and his motto seems to be "No pleasure but meanness." Most people do not normally feel this way and obviously something has happened to the misfit in his life to cause him such hatred towards others. The misfit is symbolic of the need to keep doing evil once one evil had been committed. If you are going to commit one crime and be punished for it you might as well continue being evil because the damage is done. This scares me because the misfit is so negative and full of despair. He kills the grandmother who in the end thinks she is his mother.
As far as Shenese was saying with relating the Misfit to the title, A Good Man Is Hard to Find, I agree.
I think that none of the men in the story are portrayed as being "good". It starts off with Bailey, and he seems to just not care about much. After the crash he is definitely shaken. Red Sammy was not a particularly caring man. The men in the story lead you up to the Misfit, who appears to be the complete opposite of good. Therefore confirming the title, that a good man really is hard to find. The Misfit seemed more stuck than anything else. He wound up in jail through crimes he can't remember and to me, he seems to just be killing people because he doesn't know what else to do with himself. Even when the grandmother tries to show some faith in him, he is so unfamiliar to the concept he immediatly disagrees with her. I think more than anything he has lost a sense of himself.
My response is pertaining to Question #4. I think the author is criticizing the grandmother for her positive beliefs. When she encounters the Misfit, she instantly recognizes him and she put her whole family in danger. Then the Misfit’s underlings killed everyone except the grandma and the grandma was alone to face the Misfit. She interrogates the Misfit, hoping to convince him not to kill her. “If you would pray, Jesus would help you,” she demands him incessantly. Since he killed several people before her, it should be blatant that there is no chance that the Misfit will listen to her now. He is a misunderstood person who is avenging his own ordeal, and no one can stop him. I wonder if the author is symbolizing the grandma as any poor victim in murder and teasing the victims like the grandma for being idealistic. I feel there is a negative sense from this author because he seems to pity the some victims in real-life murders because they always get killed.
I think that the foolish one in the story is the grandmother. While trying to make things better, such as telling the children the story about the secret panel, she ended up making them worse. The whole time she was trying to get along with everyone and change the family's behavior, but if she had just kept her mouth shut, no one would have been killed. It's really ironic how the main thing that preoccupied the grandmother, was in the end, the thing that got her killed. It's almost as if she brought the bad luck upon herself.
Good evening English 11 :)
Just to add a few of my thoughts to what Mason was saying... I also found it strange that there was that one perculiar line suggesting a possible relationship between the grandma and the Misfit. I feel like if the author really wanted us to know that they were related, he would have made more of a point to make it obvious. I did find two other pieces of evidence that point towards the possibility that they are actually related, though, and the more I look at them the more I am convinced of the possibility.
The first is on page 375. "The grandmother has the peculiar feeling that the bespectacled man was someone she knew. His face was as familiar to her as if she has known him all her life but she could not recall who he was." Altough she could, in fact, just have recognized him from the newspaper, it seems that she knows his face on a deeper level than that. I don't think that she would have gotten such a feeling if she had merely seen his distorted, black and white face in a newspaper. Also, the text reads, "The Misfit sprang back as though a snake had bitten him," on page 380 after the grandma says that he is her child. Perhaps because it was a true statement, he was surprised and almost upset by the fact that he recognized her and he felt the need to kill her. Maybe he realized that once she figured out who he really was, it would cause too much trouble and hassel to let her stay alive.
On the other hand, she could just be refering to "a child of God," because she had just gone on her religious spiel. That was the other connection I thought was possible. It was just so odd that we only got that one random line and are left a bit clueless. I guess that the author wanted to keep us guessing. :)
One interesting part of the text where I thought language was used effectively was in paragraph 70 on page 375. The author is describing the scene of the accident and the sense of urgency the grandmother feels as she sees a car coming near. The fact that the car is going ever so slow and seems to be watching them gives the reader a strong visual and an air of suspicion. I also noted the grandmother's reaction of waving frantically and the family's obvious helplessness as foreshadowing. They were stranded and in need of assistance in a desolate area. The grandmother was optimistic at first, thinking things couldn't get worse, and this trust in the strangers puts them all at the Misfit's mercy. I feel like this paragraph is a turning point in the story where the reader begins to rethink what will happen next and is not sure where the author is going. The events leading up to the family's fate seem to be random occurrences and only the grandmother's nostalgia is noticed as an important detail. The author's combination of the family being in the wrong place at the wrong time linking with the grandmother's incorrect recollections and the sudden understanding of her memories of the Misfit ties the story together. By the end, the plot is finally recognized and the title comes into play when the grandmother is telling the man to find the good in himself and pray to Jesus, which I interpreted as begging for forgiveness and mercy. When a man who kills for joy because meanness is all that can bring him happiness since there's nothing good to look forward to, it is hard to find the good within himself to do the right thing.
Hakuna Matata!
Hey everyone,
In response to a fused question inspired by prompt 5 and 6 I believe I've found something that no one else has particularly focused on.
The reality of life as presented by "the Misfit" is extremely interesting. The hellish life that has been thrown upon him easily gives realistic claim to his idea that it in no way matters if you genuinely do something wrong, because you will be ultimately punished for something incorrectly and because everyone will be incorrectly punished, everyone will also be ultimately let free for something they deserved to be punished for and therefore it doesn't matter if you try to stay safe from punishment because it is actually impossible to do so.
This idea is extremely interesting because while it is an extremely scary way to view life, at the same time it is very likely that people genuinely view the world through similar lenses and therefore such incidents are also feasibly possible in our real world.
Pertaining to question 3.
I feel it is the reader who is left feeling the most foolish. I think that I felt the most foolish, I feel that I established, subconsciously, the feeling that I was on someone's side. That I was rooting for the characters, and when they all were exterminated I was the one left. The only one that knows- and I am alone with this thought, that makes me feel foolish. Now I am telling you, which in a way makes me not alone; yet I feel that when in the world of the story I was alone at the end, with nothing but memories. And to be honest I just feel very foolish talking about this aswell.
hey,
much like what Sarah said, the grandmother seems to be the real fool in this story. Like most true fools she has nothing but good intentions. She tries to do the right thing and effect people in the right way. However, without knowing her actions cause her death she continues to behave like a fool. She is rather immature at such an old age.
Hello,
Pertaining to question three, I have to agree a lot with Sarah in that the grandmother ends up being the foolish one, I think. We can pretty much assume that if she had not said anything about the house she wanted to see to get the children started and Bailey angry, they would perhaps not have turned down the road and gotten in the accident. If the grandmother had just left the cat at home, perhaps the cat would not have jumped on Bailey's back, causing the car accident. In the end, it was, in a way, the fault of the grandmother for the whole predicament, and we as readers do not know what would have happened if she had not brought the cat or not mentioned the road.
Answer to #3
The grandmother happens to be the foolish one in the story obviously because she has made extreme mistake by bringing the cat to the whole trip. Maybe the cat symbolizes how the grandmother is attached and intermixed with the animal cat. It ususally represents cliche of oldness instead of new.
Because the grandmother went with the whole family which automatically attatches the cat, the accident occured not surprisingly.
Post a Comment