Flannery O8217Conner and Grotesque Characters
Flannery O’Conner and Grotesque Characters
One of the most interesting characteristics of Flannery O’Conners writing is her penchant for creating characters with physical or mental disabilities. Though critics sometimes unkindly labeled her a maker of grotesques, this talent for creating flawed characters served her well. In fact, though termed grotesque, O’Conners use of vivid visual imagery when describing people and their shortcomings is the technique that makes her work most realistic. O’Conner herself once remarked that “anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the Northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it will be called realistic.”
In O’Conners “The Life You Save May Be Your Own” the villain is a one armed hobo named Tom T. Shiftlet. Using his gift of gab and the promise of “fixing the place up.” He manages to take up on the remote farm of an old woman named Lucynell Crater and her mentally retarded and completely deaf daughter “Lucynell Crater”. The old woman quickly decides that despite his handicap she would like to make Tom her son in law. His goal soon became, fix up the old car he was sleeping in and hightail it out of there with the car and some of the old womans money in his pocket. On the pretense that he would need it for a honeymoon trip, he convinces the old woman to fix the car and give him some cash. The story ends with him marrying the retarded daughter, leaving with her on a honeymoon trip, then abandoning her in a rundown diner on the side of the road.
“Good Country People” is a story about Joy Hopewell, a very well educated young woman living in the rural south. Joy lost a leg in a hunting accident when she was ten and since then had been forced to wear a wooden replacement. She also had a weak heart and it was this affliction that forced her to remain amongst these “good country people” whom she considered to be intellectual inferiors. Though she had great confidence in her intelligence she had very little self-esteem. Joys’ handicap made her feel ugly, so ugly that much to her mothers’ dismay, she had her name legally changed to the ugliest one she could think of, Hulga. One day a traveling bible salesman named Manley Pointer made a sales call and ended up having dinner with the family.
In "Good Country People," Flannery O'Connor skillfully presents a story from a third-person point of view, in which the protagonist, Joy-Hulga, believes that she is not one of those good country people. Joy is an intelligent and educated but emotionally troubled young woman, struggling to live in a farm environment deep in the countryside of the southeast United States, where she feels that she does not belong. Considering herself intellectually superior to the story's other characters, she experiences an epiphany that may lead her to reconsider her assumptions. Her experience marks a personal transition for her and constitutes the story's theme--the passage from naïveté to knowledge.
Are humans natural born sinners? Are we content with our self-indulging human nature? Flannery O’Connor shows us through her stories that the worst quality in a human is selfishness. Through grotesque characters, O’Connor demonstrates the common theme of selfish human nature to display the ability it has to ruin/drive people crazy and that people only look to religion when they are desperate.
These two essays are about two dissimilar disabilities. Nancy Mairs and David Sedaris act as examples of how an author’s writing can change the tone and meaning of a narrative. Mairs message was educational and encouraging as she explained her life with MS and how society sees her. Sedaris use of experience and memories portrays his life with obsessive-compulsive disorder; what he calls “tics”. These two writers take similar topics and pitch them in ways so the reader can see the illustration behind them.
“I am a Cripple,” when people typically hear these words they tend to feel bad for that person, but that is exactly what Mair does not want. She prefers that people treat her the same as they would if she did not have the disease. Throughout the essay, Mair discuses her disease openly. She uses an optimistic tone, so that the reader will not recoil with sadness when they hear her discuss the disease and how it affects her life. In Nancy Mair’s essay “On Being A Cripple,” Mair uses her personal stories, diction, and syntactical structures to create an optimistic tone throughout the essay, so that the audience can better connect story.
When looking into works of literature, some stories seem to be similar to others. They can have a similar setting, point of view, theme, or sense of language and style. However, all of these points could be very different as well and could cover different theme or style. Flannery O’Conner’s “Good Country People” and Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” have some contrasting elements, such as their points of view and use of symbolism, but their similarities in the underlying theme, language, and the setting of these stories reveal how these two stories are impacted by education on both the individual and their family.
O’Connor, Flannery. "Good Country People.” The Story and Its Writer. Charters, Ann. Compact 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/ST. Martin's, 2011. 662-676. Print.
As a child I was not in to many sports or involved in school activities. Going through high school I figured out that being involved in a sport or a school club would make my high school experience better. The first and only sport I chose to do was track. Track changed my whole high school experience and life. I learned to never give up, and it kept me out of trouble throughout my four years of high school.
“Good Country People” is a short story written by Flannery O’Connor in the mid 50’s. The story takes place on farm in Georgia that Mrs. Hopewell owns. Flannery O’Connor uses the characters names and personalities to symbolize that they aren’t really who they think they are. The protagonist Joy-Hulga has a heart condition which and a peg leg. Her heat condition and disability reflects that she is a broken and weak person on the inside. Mrs. Hopewell is Joy-Hulga’s mother, she is very hopeful that her daughter would be something in life but Joy has other visions for herself. Mrs. Freeman works on the farm and her name symbolizes that she is more of a free spirit she tends to live in reality and she is able to see exactly who Joy-Hulga and Mrs. Hopewell really are. In the story a young man named Manly Pointer comes to the farm and says that he is a bible salesman. Mrs. Hopewell assumes he is good country people because he is respectful and a Christian. Manley Pointer tells Mrs. Hopewell that he has a heart condition; at that point Mrs. Hopewell sympathizes with him because Joy-Hulga has the same condition (Flannery O’Connor). At first Joy-Hulga wants nothing to do with Manly Pointer because she is an atheist and he is a Christian. They eventually form a connection because they both share the same condition and Manly Pointer tends to say all the right things to bring her in. Hulga soon realizes that she is not who she thought she was when she is face to face with evil. Manly Pointer is an evil young man and a direct reflection of who Hulga wanted to be.
Physical surroundings (such as a home in the countryside) in works of literary merit such as “Good Country People”, “Everyday Use”, and “Young Goodman Brown” shape psychological and moral traits of the characters, similarly and differently throughout the stories.
I’ve always been the type of person that truly enjoys athletics and have participated in nearly all sports offered to me. I started playing sports in elementary with club softball and basketball. As I entered my middle and high school years I was able to add the school sanctioned sports to my list of activities. This afforded me the opportunity of competing in volleyball, basketball, golf, track and softball. The camaraderie and life lessons of sports seemed invaluable to me.
Difficulties Attending College Today everyone thinks in order to succeed financially in life they need to have a college education, or at least most of the time this is true. I personally think that despite the many difficulties that a person is faced with, they can overcome their troubles somehow, even though sometimes they can not help but think otherwise. I, myself, have three different reasons why people find it difficult to stay in college. For one, sometimes they still have to keep on working while going to school. Two, they have children, too.
Flannery O'Connor's "Good Country People" is a story told through the examination of the relationships between the four main characters. All of the characters have distinct feelings about the others, from misunderstanding to contempt. Both Joy-Hulga, the protagonist, and Manley Pointer, the antagonist, are multi-faceted characters. While all of the characters have different levels of complexity, Joy-Hulga and Manley Pointer are the deepest and the ones with the most obvious facades.
Mairs, Nancy. “On Being a Cripple.” Writer’s Presence: A Pool of Readings. 5th ed. Ed. Robert Atawan and Donald McQuade. Boston:Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2006. 183-193. Print
Another concept I have learned from my participation in running is teamwork. No matter how hard we try, we cannot live our lives without others' help or without helping others. We must work together to succeed on the road ahead. This is the essence of teamwork. I know that even my personal success in cross-country and track is not solely mine. I know that my three district titles, one in cross country and two in track, in the 800 meter and 1600 meter runs, could not have been accomplished without my team's unequivocal support and for that, I thank them.
My sophomore year had begun and I wasn't sure whether or not I was going to do track this year. Last year I played football in the fall and soccer in the spring. Not really enjoying it, the decision was made to play " real futbol" (soccer) in the fall, leaving the spring sports season open. My friend kept telling me how fun track was, so I decided to give it a try.