The Greatest Man I Never Knew by Reba McIntire
Country music singer, Reba McIntire, recorded a song called "The Greatest Man I Never Knew." In the song, she speaks of how she never really knew her father. It exemplifies the way I feel about my own father. Everyone has a person who has made a deep impact on his or her life. For me, it was my father Donald Alexander. He was a great man with a wonderful sense of humor. He was the reason I wanted to become an attorney. He said I never lost an argument. I feel tormented that I was unable to know what a great person he really was.
In my home, mother was the disciplinarian. Daddy never said much to me unless I had done something bad, and then most of the time, he would just tell my mother. I could probably count on both hands the number of times he told me that he loved me. I guess he assumed I knew. He was a quiet man who did not like to talk about his feelings. I always took what few things Daddy said to heart because, to me, he was extremely intelligent and knew everything.
As the only girl in the family, the only child my mother and daddy had together, I was in every sense of the word spoiled. Daddy saw to it that I had anything I wanted from baton to piano lessons. I had every Barbie ever made. I even had Barbie's corvette and the dream house. He enjoyed giving me things he thought made me happy. However, I would have rather had more time with him.
Before I started school, he and I would enjoy each other's company as he ate a peanut butter and banana sandwich. He would stop by our house at lunchtime and would sometimes let me go along to deliver the mail. I loved going with him because it made me feel very important and needed. My dad would hand me stacks of letters to put into the mailboxes as we went along the route. I would even skip school some days to go with him.
As I grew older, I saw my dad less frequently. Our luncheons were suspended by my having to go to school and my wanting to spend time with my friends.
The story, “Good Country People,” by Flannery O’Connor, is a third person limited narration which means the reader can only look into the mind of only a few of the characters. Those characters are Mrs. Hopewell and Hulga, or Joy. Schmoop discusses a deeper understanding about the narrator of the story.
The major American playwright, Tennessee Williams, once said “There are no 'good' or 'bad' people. Some are a little better or a little worse, but all are activated more by misunderstanding than malice." He like, Flannery O'Connor, the author of the short story "A Good Man is Hard to Find", was a Southern Gothic writer who used writing to demonstrate the destruction and hypocrisy of the old south principles and standards. Southern gothic, is a style of writing performed by numerous writers of the American South whose stories, taking place in that region are illustrated by disgusting, gruesome, or bizarre happenings. This quote explains the intent of the story written by O'Connor. "A Good Man Is Hard to Find” was written as if to demonstrate that there really are no 'good' or 'bad' people but just ones that are stimulated by confusion more than wickedness making the title of the story very appropriate.
Turning Point by Jimmy Carter provides a look into his first experience with politics as he runs for the Georgia state senate in 1962. He believed it was possible to change the direction his home state was headed, specifically focusing on education. Instead of having a run-of-the-mill experience in democracy, he faced election corruption by those in power and legal challenges up until the moment he was finally sworn in as state senator.
STUDY GUIDE ----- The Anthem Chapter 1 1.a. What is the difference between a and a? The society that is represented in the novel is futuristic in terms of the actual date, yet incredibly underdeveloped to what we experience today. The political structure obviously works, because there doesn't seem to be much discontent among the citizens.
Back in the day when I was very little, I remember that my dad used to take care of me. He would never let me run around the house when glass could break and hurt me. As I kept growing up my father started to give me more freedom but also gave me more responsibilities; like he wanted me to do the chores of the house, not all of them but some. I knew they were not mine to do, but I still help. When I went off to college and I had to do it all by myself, I realized that my father did good on making me do my laundry, chores, etc., when I was young.
When I was a young child, my dad was my idol and hero. He seemed to know everything and had the solution to every problem. Any difficulty I had, anything I didn’t understand, my dad had the answer to everything. It seemed like it was every day that he taught me a new valuable life lesson and always had wise advice to share. My dad used to work all day long in Boston and my brother and I would wait by the door to greet him with a crushing hug as soon as he came home. I used to wait eagerly for my dad to come to my room to read me a bedtime story and then tuck me into bed. My dad could do no wrong. He was right about everything and knew how to deal with anything. However, as I grew older, my convictions changed and the image I had of my dad fragmented.
In the short story, 'A Good Man is Hard to Find', the main character is the grandmother. Flannery O'Connor, the author, lets the reader find out who the grandmother is by her conversations and reactions to the other characters in the story. The grandmother is the most important character in the story because she has a main role in the stories principal action. This little old lady is the protagonist in this piece. We learn more about her from her direct conversation with the son, Bailey, her grandchildren, June Star and John Wesley, and the Misfit killer. Through these conversations, we know that she is a lady raised from a traditional background. In the story, her attitude changes more than once to accommodate the surroundings that she is in. With the data provided, we can tell that the grandmother goes from not wanting to go to Florida, to anxious to go, and in the end, I felt as if she went off the deep end. All of the sudden, the only thing she really concentrates on is Jesus and her not being killed.
Even though, a person likes to think they are in control, life will show them they are in less control than thought they were. In Flannery O’Connor’s “Good Country People,” the character Hulga is a person that wants to maintain control in every aspect of her life good or bad. To Hulga it seems she is in constant control of her surroundings and her life. However, she does not have control that she thinks has.
He was older than my dad. They both looked at us and greeted us with a smile and a soft
The novel, Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other (2011) written by Sherry Turkle, presents many controversial views, and demonstrating numerous examples of how technology is replacing complex pieces and relationships in our life. The book is slightly divided into two parts with the first focused on social robots and their relationships with people. The second half is much different, focusing on the online world and it’s presence in society. Overall, Turkle makes many personally agreeable and disagreeable points in the book that bring it together as a whole.
In her well-known short story, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” Flannery O’Connor skillfully describes the difficulty of finding a morally upright human being, whether it is a man or a woman. No one is perfect, everyone has inadequacies and shortcomings, and she presents this cleverly in her story. She is able to support this view of mankind through her characters. They are self-centered, egotistical human beings who can be judged by their words and actions. This is especially true of the protagonist (the grandmother) and the antagonist (the Misfit). The grandmother tries to portray herself as a virtuous woman, but in the end O’Connor shows that her actions are always self-serving and that morally, she is not that different from the Misfit.
He was used to having the men work and the women stay at home cooking, cleaning, and raising the kids. He was strict in the terms of school dances, going out with friends, and boyfriends. It was difficult for me to understand why I was always denied when wanting to go out. It made me dislike my father growing up until I understood that he just wanted to protect me. As time went on I noticed that he wanted to break from that mold and assist us be successful and independent women. My parents have always supported us in whatever we wanted to do. We are lucky enough to have parents that invested so much time and money in our interests.
The holocaust attested that morality is adaptable in severe conditions. Traditional morality stopped to be contained by the barbed wires of the concentration camps. Inside the camps, prisoners were not dealt like humans and thus adapted animal-like behavior needed to survive. The “ordinary moral world” (86) Primo Levi refers in his autobiographical novel Se questo è un uomo (If This Is a Man or Survival in Auschwitz), stops to exist; the meanings and applications of words such as “good,” “evil,” “just,” and “unjust” begin to merge and the differences between these opposites turn vague. Continued existence in Auschwitz demanded abolition of one’s self-respect and human dignity. Vulnerability to unending dehumanization certainly directs one to be dehumanized, thrusting one to resort on mental, physical, and social adaptation to be able to preserve one’s life and personality. It is in this adaptation that the line distinguishing right and wrong starts to deform.
My dad was a really hard working person. He always did what was best for me and my older sister. I can remember him always working and when he came home, it was as if I was meeting a celebrity. He was a celebrity in our house anyways. And that was what made it so hard for me to let him go. It’s been 10 years. It seems like it happened days ago based on how much I miss him.
I never talked to him on a deeper level like I would would with with my mother. My father was always there for me if I ever needed anything. However, he never made any effort to speak to me about sensitive situations. If something that was a touchy subject, he would act awkward and try to avoid the conversation. My dad is a great man, who loves, cares, and would do anything for me. He just does not know how to communicate and speak about things that create a bond between us, the way my mother does.