O'Connor’s Greenleaf
O'Connor’s story, "Greenleaf," is a dramatic and violent exposition of the workings of grace. The story takes its title from the name of a family who work on the property of a Mrs May. Throughout the story, contrasts are built up between Mrs May's children, who haven't been terribly successful, and Mrs Greenleaf's children, who somehow seem to have succeeded even though Mrs May regards them as very low down on the social scale. Mrs Greenleaf becomes the subject of some satire in the story in terms of her fundamentalist Christianity.
For example, there is an instance in which Mrs May comes across Mrs Greenleaf sprawled on her hands and knees on the side of the road with her head down:
"Mrs Greenleaf!" she shrilled, "what's happened?"
Mrs Greenleaf raised her head. Her face was a patchwork of dirt and tears and her small eyes, the colour of two field peas, were red-rimmed and swollen, but her expression was composed as a bulldog's. She swayed back and forth on her hands and knees and groaned, "Jesus, Jesus." (31)
Mrs May, of course, doesn't like this very much and feels that Mrs Greenleaf is, so to speak, "over the top." As we are told:
She was a good Christian woman with a large respect for religion, though she did not, of course, believe any of it was true. "What is the matter with you?" she asked sharply. (31)
We feel in the story that while O'Connor doesn't approve of Mrs May's lack of any real Christian spirit, she probably doesn't approve of Mrs Greenleaf's excess of spirit either.
The end of the story focuses on a bull which keeps breaking into Mrs May's property. This bull takes on a symbolic function when we find Mrs May pursuing the bull trying to get it off her property:
She looked back and saw that the bull, his head lowered, was racing toward her. She remained perfectly still, not in fright, but in a freezing unbelief. She stared at the violent black streak bounding toward her as if she had no sense of distance, as if she could not decide at once what his intention was, and the bull had buried his head in her lap, like a wild tormented lover, before her expression changed. One of his horns sank until it pierced her heart and the other curved around her side and held her in an unbreakable grip.
O’Connor’s approaches the stereotyping of country people from an unusual viewpoint. Like many of her narratives, her characters are misfits, religiously empty, and disabled. She uses these characters to reveal the truth. The truth is that everyone is searching for something and sometimes people are blinded by pride, ignorance, pain, and false senses of security. O’Connor’s stories deal mainly with characters who have a spiritual emptiness with them. She uses symbolism, character development, and irony to portray life’s struggles and that some humans will use religion, stereotyping, and deformities to get what they want.
Religion is a pervasive theme in most of the literary works of the late Georgia writer Flannery O'Connor. Four of her short stories in particular deal with the relationship between Christianity and society in the Southern Bible Belt: "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," "The River," "Good Country People," and "Revelation." Louis D. Rubin, Jr. believes that the mixture of "the primitive fundamentalism of her region, [and] the Roman Catholicism of her faith . . ." makes her religious fiction both well-refined and entertaining (70-71). O'Connor's stories give a grotesque and often stark vision of the clash between traditional Southern Christian values and the ever-changing social scene of the twentieth century. Three of the main religious ingredients that lend to this effect are the presence of divine meanings, revelations of God, and the struggle between the powers of Satan and God.
Flannery O’Connor believed in the power of religion to give new purpose to life. She saw the fall of the old world, felt the force and presence of God, and her allegorical fictions often portray characters who discover themselves transforming to the Catholic mind. Though her literature does not preach, she uses subtle, thematic undertones and it is apparent that as her characters struggle through violence and pain, divine grace is thrown at them. In her story “Revelation,” the protagonist, Mrs. Turpin, acts sanctimoniously, but ironically the virtue that gives her eminence is what brings about her downfall. Mrs. Turpin’s veneer of so called good behavior fails to fill the void that would bring her to heaven. Grace hits her with force and their illusions, causing a traumatic collapse exposing the emptiness of her philosophy. As Flannery O’Connor said, “In Good Fiction, certain of the details will tend to accumulate meaning from the action of the story itself, and when this happens they become symbolic in the way they work.” (487). The significance is not in the plot or the actual events, but rather the meaning is between the lines.
Another factor that clearly brings out the theme is the fact that she claims that orderliness of family roses is her pride. However she may not necessarily be that orderly as depicted in the development of that story. The author of the story Shirley Jackson uses the author and her ambiguous cha...
O'Connor addresses the issue of grace in her short story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” She shows that no matter the person, everyone can achieve and deserves grace. The grandmother, though undeserving because of her selfishness and manipulation, receives grace just before her death. And though the story shows that The Misfit can change, he doesn’t accept God and receive grace in the
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Facebook : Every single day we read the news ,and think that Facebook might be antiprivacy. It is also observed that people often think that social networking sites offer complicated privacy settings. The CEO...
However, he had two strong role models to look to for guidance. His mother, who had a difficult childhood as well, served as a source of inspiration for him. The author particularly admired her drive to overcome the family’s struggle with poverty and his father’s alcoholism. In describing his mother, he writes with a tone of adoration and respect. He also uses this tone in characterizing his teacher, Daniel Corkery. He served as a father figure and role model for the author by being someone the author could look up to, as well as helped kindle and encourage O’Connor’s love of words and art. Because of both of these positive role models for the author, I believe he was inspired to triumph over the adversity he faced and to continue to pursue his passion of words and
With Rhodesians having most of the power, the UK was more inclined to grant it independence but was still hindered because of their unwillingness to give the black
Privacy and security is very important to have, especially if you are going to be on the Internet and sharing your information with others. Facebook lets the user have a choice to arrange your own privacy settings based on who can access your profile, posts, news feed, and messages. Facebook requires a username and profile picture to be accessible to everyone. Earlier, this was open to everyone and now due to updates on privacy settings, you can have the option of who can search you on Facebook.
Mrs. Mallard is described as being young and having "a fair, calm face" symbolizing the beauty and innocence of a child. Brently Mallard had repressed her, and now through this seemingly tragic event she is freed of his rule over her and she is able to go on with her life.
Unknown, "Facebook mulls U-turn on privacy ". BBC. May 19 2010 . Date of access May 22, 2010.
In a world of Facebook and LinkedIn and YouTube and OKCupid and Google and IPhones and Ipads and Kindles and all the other hundreds of sites and devices designed to garner personal information, data-mine your information, to better advertise, sell, inform, and connect you with the people or the places that you want to experience. The wonderful world of the Internet helps connect millions of people with millions of other people in milliseconds all day, every day. All the swapping and sharing of information create a world of transparency, deception, fraud, and identity confusion. Avatars, aliases, and profiles are the ways most people advertise their goods and services and themselves. With this consideration an erosion of privacy has changed our culture in ways that some predicted years ago and some that are new to our era. This paper will explore some primary regarding how technology causes the changes in privacy and what are the effects brought on by these changes.
Gonsalves A. (2013) CSO Online: Facebook legal skirmish highlights user privacy risks. Retrieved by http://www.csoonline.com/article/2133909/privacy/facebook-legal-skirmish-highlights-user-privacy-risks.html
Zimbabwe is situated in the Southern part on Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers. In 1899, the United Kingdom started to observe these lands in terms of Cecil Rhodas’s British South Africa company, since then Zimbabwe was known as ‘Rhodesia’. In 1965, the prime-minister of Zimbabwe, Ian Smith, proclaimed country’s independence from Britain, but this fact was not repudiated. On 1st June 1979, in the result of elections, the United African National Council party won a majority of votes and the leader of this party, Abel Muzorewa, after becoming country’s prime-minister changed the name of ‘Rhodesia’ to Zimbabwe-Rhodesia. On 1 December 1979, delegations from the British and Rhodesian governments and the Patriotic Front signed the Lancaster House Agreement, ending the civil war and proclaiming the independenc...