Monthly Archives: September 2016

HW for October 5

Leave a reply

Hi class,

A note regarding your homework for next week:

  1. There’s no class on Monday, but the electronic copy of Essay 1 is due online by 4 pm.  Please note that late papers will either suffer grade penalties or will not be read at all.
  2. For class on Wednesday, we are beginning a new unit, comparing and contrasting two stories from different time periods and traditions, addressing similar topics.  Please read “The Management of Grief,” formulating questions, to guide your reading, based on the first few paragraphs of the story. We have done this a couple times now in class, and cannot afford to keep spending time going over what we have already covered.  Come prepared to share these questions with the class on Wednesday. (30-45 mins)
  3. You should also have your physical copy of Essay 1 ready to turn in at the beginning of class on Wednesday.  This copy should be identical to the one you turn in on Monday.  In other words, please finish the essay on schedule, so that you can devote Monday and Tuesday night to reading and responding to “The Management of Grief” (a 10 page story, for the record).
  4. Group 2 is scheduled to post about “The Management of Grief” on Wednesday.  Using your chosen questions, write a Connect, Create, or Clue blog that comments on the interplay between any two Elements in the story.  This can be a passage that offers a clue to understanding how the plot shapes your understanding of the characters; or a passage that reminds you of another story where the style shapes your experience of the plot; or maybe a passage that inspires you to write the same moment from another character’s point of view (say, Judith Templeton).  As usual, blog entries are due by 5 pm Tuesday and comments by 10 am Wednesday.

This is a long weekend, but if you have been already writing the essay and preparing for it, it should not be onerous.  We are reaching the 6 week mark in this class, and my hope is that our classes will continue to be productive and lively.

I have noticed a drop in preparation, which has affected how much ground we’re able to cover.  (Today, for example, we weren’t able to talk about the interplay between elements – because we took so long talking about questions raised by the introduction, and because our discussion of Flannery O’Connor’s non-fiction essay was much more prolonged than it needed to be).  Your decisions have consequences, good and bad, for the whole class!  Please keep this in mind.

I look forward to reading the essays and to discussing Mukherjee’s story on Wednesday’s class.

Clue for A Good Man Is Hard To Find

3 Replies

While I was reading A Good Man Is Hard To Find the question that come to my mind was why the grandmother does not have a name? The little girl June Star has a name, but the mother and the grandmother does not have a name. T

he grandmother plays a big rule in this story, she is the one who want the kids to see this house and she is the one who scared the cat when she realized she has directed Bailey to go the wrong way and causes the accident and got the whole family killed by the Misfit, but she does not have a name. O’Connor purposely not giving this major character a name because he believe a hypocrite and racist character like grandmother is common. It will be more significant to leave her unnamed and focus on the way this character would speak and dress.

The grandmother have the most dialogues in the story. O’Connor make sure the grandmother to express all her opinion to show the kind of shallow and mean person she is. “Little n___s in the country don’t have things like we do. If I could paint, I’d paint that picture.” the grandmother said when they pass by the shack with an African American child standing by it. She is surprise and pointing at the child like he is an animal at the zoo and using offensive word to describe him.

Before the family leave for their trip, O’Connor describe the grandmother’s attired very throughly ,”the grandmother had a navy blue straw sailor hat with a bunch of white violets on the brim and a navy blue dress with a small white dot in the print…in case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady.” This is a very strange metaphor to use for describing someone who is dress very nice and this line also foreshadow what is coming for the grandmother. She is a very vivid character, but with no name, O’Connor wants his reader to have a clear picture in their mind of this character, her characteristic is more important, the title of the person is not important.

O’Connor Clue

3 Replies

The question that hit the moment, I began to read the story was what effects does the Misfit have on the family? From the moment the Misfit was mentioned and the fact that Bailey payed no mind to the grandmother talking about him, really got me thinking what role will the Misfit play in the story.

“A good man is hard to find,” Red Sammy said. “Everything is getting terrible. I remember the day you could go off and leave your screen door unlatched. Not no more” was a statement by the owner who was having a conversation with the grandmother about the Misfit who had just escaped from prison, gives a clue of what kind of influence the Misfit is going to have on this family. A family who seems to always go vacation to Florida coming to face with a man who had just escaped prison and was heading the same way. This man just buy hearing his name could be no good of a man just like the owner states. He would have to be one of the reason why in those days you would not leave your screen door unlocked anymore. Even in the mist of an accident where one would believe that someone would be helpful and kind to the person or people in trouble but what the family got was not what they expected. They had the worst of luck to face criminals who were not good men and help the family out of the accident. Showing that a good man really is hard to find.

Xiara Guzman Create

2 Replies

As Bobby Lee cleans up the mess The Misfit left for him he quickly asks “You seem as if killing that old lady wasn’t as fun like the other ones.” The Misfit looked at him with a sorrow face but quickly mask it. “She just brought up some old memories, crazy old lady shouldn’t have laid her fingers on me.” Bobby Lee looked at him with pity, “Forget about those parents of yours you have a new family people who understand you.” The Misfit looked at him with a mischievous smile remembering how he burned his family home down with both his parents inside. “Thank you Bobby Lee for that slight reminder of who I am.” He looked at him confused but shrugged it off as they both walked toward Hiram.
My question towards the end of the story was what happened to The Misfit that lead him from a well happy home to a mass murder? I created this piece by explaining that he became like this due to setting his home on fire with both of his parents inside. Concluding that he was lying about his father dying of a flu and it was really him who killed him, but doesn’t want anyone to know. Basically he found joy in killing and just continue doing it and that’s how he became The Misfit.

Connect in “a goodman is hard to find” by Flannery O’Connor

1 Reply

Do evil change people from good to bad or is it people that make them a monster ?

The story “a goodman is hard to find by Flanders O’ Connor is about a grandmother that believes that she shouldn’t be killed because she’s a lady. For the grandmother a good man means having the same values she has. She believes in Jesus , and thinks that even if you do bad in this world you will still go to heaven. Which applies to her, since she’s a very selfish person. Who manipulate her son and lies to her grandchildren. And when she’s confronted by the misfit in the woods after the car accident, she don’t even please for the life of her family. The misfit is a man who believe that nothing in this world is pleasure. And since the grandmother is one evil person she trigger the misfit to become the misfit and do what he does to people. Which is basically taking the evil road. This story is told in the limited omniscient in describing the thoughts of the main characters. The main theme is about the goodness in a man. It symbolize the loss of innocence when the misfit is judge and charge of things and then proven guilty.

This story is similar to young goodman brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne in the way that young goodman brown is a goodman who believe in Jesus and the people and is pull into the evil. This story take place in the woods which is why it’s also similar to “a goodman is hard to find” . We also know that this story is told in the third person limited omniscient. We can also compare the theme of young goodman brown being a good man. And symbolism of a goodman loss of innocence. Overall these two stories are very similar after all.