You're one of my own children. She's one of the masters behind Southern gothic literature, a group of works written and set in the American South involving typically morbid, disturbing, or fantastic characters and circumstances. And this unfortunate truth is key to O'Connor's understanding of the human condition in 'A Good Man is Hard to Find. In the backseat, the grandmother's two older grandchildren, John Wesley and June Star, make negative comments about their home state of Georgia, which she quickly corrects. Ah, again, we come back to the cat who, if you remember, is compared to the grandmother, or rather, vice-versa. Bailey throws the cat against a tree, which could be taken as a displaced act of violence against his mother. Analyze a Short Story Analyzing a Short Story is easy with help from Paper Masters' specific guidelines, including an outline that shows you how to analyze a short story.
I think its interesting that she feels she has known the misfit all her life and in the end she calls him her own child. The story, which emphasizes the grandmother's failure to marry a man named Teagarden, who each Saturday afternoon brought her a watermelon, reveals both her and June Star's concern for material well being. Does she remind you of other people you know? Check out the similes and metaphors that make her seem snake-like. While they wait on their orders, the grandmother unsuccessfully tries to get Bailey to dance with her, as June Star performs her tap routine on her own. Literary devices such as foreshadowing, symbolism, and irony are critical in understanding the roots of any story.
Oh, and don't feel too bad, Vanessa, I had a real stickler of an english teacher my senior year, she made us analyze stories like this until we were blue in the face. It is not until after the accident that any part of Bailey's costume is described. After lunch, the family begins driving again and the grandmother realizes they are near an old she once visited. A superficial and selfish woman? I prefer to think that, however unlikely this may seem, the old lady's gesture, like the mustard seed, will grow into a great crow-filled tree in the Misfit's heart, and will be enough of a pain to him there to turn him into the prophet he was meant to become. They all sat down at a board table next to the nickelodeon. O'Connor, though, saw all of her fiction—including this story—as realistic, demandingly unsentimental, but ultimately hopeful.
But later the Misfit says there is no real pleasure in life after he kills the grandmother, so what else can he be meaning other than he belives in the gosple and understands it, but he just isn't capable of accepting it? He passes judgement on people who are well on their way to Hell, thanks to their selfish, materialistic ways. Can such a sudden transformation really happen at all, or should we dismiss it? Bailey was the son she lived with, her only boy. The Misfit With his violent, wanton killing, the Misfit seems an unlikely source to look to for spiritual or moral guidance, but he demonstrates a deep conviction that the other characters lack. She also doesn't really believe that they'll get into an accident or that she'll die; she just wants to think of herself as the kind of person whom other people would instantly recognize as a lady, no matter what. What are some ways in which O'Connor infuses.
It is our goal as professional academic writers to teach our clients the best way to write by providing as close to perfect custom written research papers. What is the significance of the Mis-fit's name? In addition to your interpretation of this passage I would like to add that the Bible quotes that the road to heaven is strait and narrow. He has carefully considered his actions in life and examined his experiences to find lessons within them. He was squatting in the position of a runner about to sprint forward but he didn't move. Bailey's wife also ignores the plea, but the non-vocal disrespect of the parents finds voice through the children. As they drive down a rough dirt road, the grandmother suddenly realizes that the house she is remembering is in Tennessee, not Georgia.
Since she was limited by her illness to short and infrequent trips away from the farm, O'Connor learned to draw upon the resources at hand for the subject matter of her stories. Had he lured the grandmother down this road and the children with the temptation of a beautiful house with hidden rooms. How would you judge that? I'm not quite sure what the significance is here, if there is any, but I thought I'd mention it. Here is a strange little fact: the nickelodeon is, supposedly, a jukebox-like machine that plays songs when you insert a nickel into it. Posted by: To answer your final question, Udoka, apes and monkeys were often used as symbols for Satan's mockery of God in religious literature, especially Christian folklore, and the Devil himself was sometimes portrayed as a monkey as well as other animals, like the ever-popular snake.
In the end, they are sort of stranded, trapped, and surrounded on all sides by the Misfit and his men, just like an island is surrounded by water. Analyzing a Short Story Here is an example, using Flannery O'Connor's A Good Man is Hard to Find, on how to go about analyzing a short story. The grandmother tells them a story from her youth to quiet them, and soon the family pulls over for a bite to eat. It is also her identification of the Misfit which apparently causes him to decide that the family should be killed. As his men are taking her body off with the others, the convict observes that she would've been a good woman 'if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.
The grand- mother took cat naps and woke up every few minutes with her own snoring. Reading Flannery O'Connor's proved to be the perfect opportunity for me to test out some of Thomas C. This act, of course, opens up ever more Q's on the nature of goodness: how can we understand such an act of forgiveness? They have given only lip service to spiritual concepts and have concerned themselves with the gratification of their physical and material desires in this life. The children's mother put a dime in the machine. Several critics have pointed out the influence of regional and local newspaper stories on O'Connor's fiction.
I looked up this thing called a chinaberry tree. The grandmother takes the baby from its mother, and we see the contrast between the thin, leathery face of old age and the smooth bland face of the baby. Having a good upbringing, or good blood? Bailey removed the cat from his neck with both hands and flung it out the window against the side of a pine tree. Only this time they have a run-in with an escaped convict who is in conflict with his predetermined fate. I feel this is an allusion to the fact that they're going to die later on.
Try to answer this question even if it isn't the way you read the story. Bailey seems to take out his anger towards the grandmother on the cat after the car accident, and then, later on, the cat simile becomes important when the Misfit shows up, but more on that in a minute. Having just lost all of her family and threatened with death herself, the old grandmother appears to undergo a sudden and miraculous change of heart: she reaches out lovingly to the very person who has killed those she loves and is about to kill her and tells him that he's her baby. Posted by: Udoka I agree to extent of what you say. After reading the story once, I went back and reread it again, pulling out interesting quotes which seemed to have a deeper meaning to me. Devona Hogan English 1302-49 Profess.