“The Big Trip Up Yonder” by Kurt Vonnegut begins in “New York City” at a three-roomed apartment with Gramps, who is 172 years old, watching a news report. When Lou makes a comment on the report, Gramps rewrites his will again and makes Willy his favorite, which entitles him getting the daybed instead of sleeping in the hall. When Lou is woken from his nap by someone walking over him into the bathroom, he finds his son, Morty, tampering with Gramps’ bottle of Anti-Gerasone. He tries to hide it but breaks the bottle making him look like the guilty one. Gramps later runs away, though they think he is dead, after changing his will to all of them splitting the property equally. This causes a fight to break out and the neighbors to call the cops. They get put into their own prison cells for a year which gives them more room, while Gramps watches it on TV in his apartment after moving his daybed in front of the TV. Gramps’ thoughts were, “Life was good. He could hardly wait to see what was going to happen next.”(8) Gramps is an interesting character because at first he seems to just want them to give him attention. Later, he makes the will so that his family will fight over it and go to jail making it seem like he is a bad guy. The cells they each stay in separately is described as …show more content…
Another question the story raises is why did they make something that de-ages them. This is brought up at the end when it was shown on TV, “In weeks–yes, weeks–you can look, feel, and act as young as your great-great-grandchildren!”(8). It also brings the question on how it would change how they act, like if it was physically, mentally, socially, or emotionally. Another question that the story raises is why does Lou cover for Morty without taking every precaution to not get caught. He has a reason to help, but his technique was sloppy which caused him to drop the bottle and get
Although this story is told in the third person, the reader’s eyes are strictly controlled by the meddling, ever-involved grandmother. She is never given a name; she is just a generic grandmother; she could belong to anyone. O’Connor portrays her as simply annoying, a thorn in her son’s side. As the little girl June Star rudely puts it, “She has to go everywhere we go. She wouldn’t stay at home to be queen for a day” (117-118). As June Star demonstrates, the family treats the grandmother with great reproach. Even as she is driving them all crazy with her constant comments and old-fashioned attitude, the reader is made to feel sorry for her. It is this constant stream of confliction that keeps the story boiling, and eventually overflows into the shocking conclusion. Of course the grandmother meant no harm, but who can help but to blame her? O’Connor puts her readers into a fit of rage as “the horrible thought” comes to the grandmother, “that the house she had remembered so vividly was not in Georgia but in Tennessee” (125).
The way the grandmother connects with the misfit at the end of the story reinforces how similar they are despite being so outwardly different. The title of “Misfit” which he had given himself, was not his exclusively as an even greater misfit lay dead at his feet. It is this ending that lifts the tone of the story from one of narrow-minded bigotry and bleak and gratuitous violence to one of hope and the possibility of redemption, which is undoubtedly the author’s message.
Before the house is burnt, Mort visits that house to meet Amy for the magazine. However, he finds Amy and Ted being romantic on the porch. Rainey then hears a voice inside his head saying “This is not my beautiful house... This is not my beautiful wife anymore”. This shows that Rainey is feeling jealous and he realizes that he has been robbed of what was once his. This jealousy leads to a thought that he should destruct what has been taken away from him, which are the house and Amy. By suspecting Shooter, Rainey does not feel like he is the one who burns the house and therefore not guilty for anything. Other than reducing the tension that id brings and bringing pleasure by giving terrors to Amy, the existence of John Shooter functions to help Rainey deal with his
The grandmother has a crafty mind when it comes to getting her way. She manipulates everyone, mainly her family to get what she wants. She does this because in her time period it is what was req...
With these two divergent personas that define the grandmother, I believe the ultimate success of this story relies greatly upon specific devices that O’Connor incorporates throughout the story; both irony and foreshadowing ultimately lead to a tale that results in an ironic twist of fate and also play heavily on the character development of the grandmother. The first sense of foreshadowing occurs when the grandmother states “[y]es and what would you do if this fellow, The Misfit, Caught you” (1042). A sense of gloom and an unavoidable meeting with the miscreant The Misfit seem all but inevitable. I am certain that O’Connor had true intent behind th...
The people he thought were his family, were not, and the people he thought he knew, he no longer recognised. The man Tex grew up thinking was his father had always favoured his older brother - who turned out to only be his half-brother - Mason, and never paid all that much attention to him. Mason knew of this, but refused to tell Tex, worried it would make him feel abandoned and unloved. ‘Pop’ never told Tex that he was not his father, and his Mother never did either, which was a big surprise to Tex, as he had always remembered his Mother as a kind and honest woman who loved her husband, not one who would cheat on him. When Tex heard of this, he ran from the building and made a hasty decision to follow Lem, which nearly cost him his
The grandma dies along the way. Ma Joad keeps it from everyone though until the end of the journey. Once they make it to the camp the police try to arrest Floyd. When that
Jeannette Walls states in an interview “My mother could not take care of herself, how could I possibly expect her to take care of me?” (Diversity Conversation) She never takes responsibility or has the initiative to go out and make a better life for her and her children. Rose Mary uses guilt and verbal abuse to keep the children “in line,” so to speak. Rex even resorts to physical abuse after Rose Mary snitches on Jeannette. “‘How dare you?’ she shouted. ‘You’re in trouble now — big trouble. I’m telling your dad. Just you wait until he comes home’” (219). As neglected as they are, they somehow survive the crazy conditions they are forced to live with — lack of food, water, a stable shelter, lack of personal hygiene, and even lack of parental supervision. Lori, Jeannette, Brian and Maureen resort to the worst possible ways to keep themselves alive. For example, the three older children find a stick of margarine in the refrigerator and split the stick between each other because they are so hungry. When Rose Mary finds out ,she becomes very angry — stating that the margarine was for her. Another time, the kids want to eat ham, but find it infested with maggots, Rose Mary tells them to just cut off the parts with maggots and eat the rest. That it will be “fine.” “A big green Dumpster stood in the parking lot. When no one was looking, Brian and I pushed open the lid, climbed up, and dived inside to search for bottles. I was afraid it might be full of yucky garbage. Instead, we found an astonishing treasure: cardboard boxes filled with loose chocolates. Some of them were whitish and dried-out-looking, and some were covered with a mysterious green mold, but most of them were fine. We pigged out on chocolates,” (110). This just shows how desperate they were for food. At the same time, their mother is hiding food from them, eating it on the sly. “‘I can’t help it,’ she sobbed. ‘I’m a sugar
From the beginning we can see the grandmother as a manipulative character. This manipulative nature in the end leads the family to its demise. It is obvious throughout the story that she has been this way all her life. She describes the Negro child as a “pickaninny” and relates the story of the watermelon that “a nigger boy ate […] when he saw the initials, E. A. T.!” The reader
The grandmother’s personality is that of the typical human character. We all know someone like her. Some of us, more than likely, are her. The key is to break down those nuances of her and see our own selves within. We see her behavior exposed within the first sentence of the story, “The grandmother didn’t want to go to Florida. She wanted to visit some of her connections in east Tennessee and she was seizing at every chance to change Bailey’s mind.” (O’Connor, 186) Immediately we are given evidence of a stubborn, will-bending woman. Her personality grows uglier as the story continues, she compares her daughter-in-law’s face to a cabbage, later she sneaks her cat in the car, lies about details of a house to have her way, and soon after even hides the fact that she has the family driving in the...
Bandy also quoted in the essay, “In our first view of the Grandmother, we witness a chilling demonstration of her selfishness.” It is very obvious the Grandmother is concerned with her gaining and nobody else’s and it appears she finds nothing to wrong with the idea. When the family encounters the Misfit and the Grandmother recognizes him as the Misfit, she quickly asked him, “you wouldn’t shoot a lady, would you?” She shows no concern about the rest of the family and continues to plead with the Misfit for her life only. The Grandmother exaggerated a lot, for example she told the Misfit, “we turned over twice,” when they actually turned over once. Perhaps, this was another way of deception to gain her empathy from anyone she could.
The entire family is involved with lies to Big Daddy and Big Momma, as are the doctors. They tell them that Big Daddy does not have cancer, but only a spastic colon. Brick lies to himself about his feelings for Skipper until Big Daddy forces him to face it. He then understands that he is upset about the way his clean friendship has been misinterpreted. Gooper and Mae pretend to be loving and doting children, when in fact all they want is money and land. Big Mama lies to herself, think all the cruel things Big Daddy says are just jokes. She also lies to herself by thinking that a child from Maggie and Brick would turn Brick into a non-drinking, family man qualified to take over the family place. Big Daddy is even wrapped up in the mendacity. He admits to Brick that he is tired of letting all the lies. He has lied for years about his feelings for his wife, his son Gooper and his daughter-in-law Mae, he says he loves them, when in fact he can't stand any of them. Maggie, who seems to tell close to the truth the entire play, breaks down and lies about her pregnancy.
The four main characters, Graham Hess, Uncle Merrill, Morgan, and Bo, have very few scenes where they are not together. The filmmaker wanted to illustrate how the relationship between Graham and Morgan has been torn apart by the death of Colleen, who was Graham’s wife. Furthermore, Morgan blames Graham for
His parents divorced early in his life. When his mom remarried, it didn’t last long. George came home to find all of his step-fathers stuff gone. Rameck’s mother was involved in the drinking and smoking pot scene.... ...
As different as all three of these narrators are, and the vastly different way they interact with the other members of the Compson family, we see many of the same themes. We are able to see how Family honor, guilt, and time greatly affect each character in their own way