Flannery+O'Connor

Here is a site that has a recording of O'Connor reading "Good Man is Hard to Find" in case anyone would like to hear her voice.

http://themorningoil.blogspot.com/2008/09/flannery.html

As far as the letters go, feel free to read them - think some of you might enjoy them. I enjoy reading O'Connor's thoughts about faith - her first letters to Betty Hester (listed as A. in O'Connor's letter collection and the Library of America edition) are particularly interesting. The first is from 7/20/55 (page 942 in L of A) - the next 15 pages or so is good stuff (up to around 956 or so [9/15/55]). Also like the one from 1/17/56 (982) a great deal too.

These stories are a different type of intensity from the previous two – feel that O’Connor had grown as a writer, was in greater control of her talent as a writer, though as was mentioned last week, some see this control as a fault of her stories. Here are some questions/thoughts – please feel free to add your own or discuss them a bit in the discussion form as a prelude to tomorrow’s discussion (and an apology for not getting these up earlier in the week). Again, the caveat that you may want to have read the stories before perusing these bad boys.

1. First, our good friends at wikipedia on the myth of Europa.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_(mythology)

Oops, that didn't work - but it gets you one simple click away.

2. I think O’Connor is playing some games with gods here – obviously Zeus (well, only obviously if you’ve read some notes about the story – I had no clue when I first read it – perhaps certainly would be a better word choice here than obviously? Don’t want to try to make myself seem all smart like some Alex Trebek on Jeopardy), but did the part on 502, “the wreath slipped down to the base of his horns where it looked like a menacing prickly crown” remind anyone of anything else? Or course she could still be with the Greeks there (kind of like old-timey Olympians getting their garlands for victory, though I would prefer a medal of gold myself – would fetch more at my local pawn shop) – I hope I am not forcing a Christian reading on the story here, don’t know that I would have noticed this moment if I did not know about O’Connor’s biography.

3. What do you think of Wesley and Scofield, Mrs. May’s sons? They are pretty clearly not characters we are meant to admire, but which do you like less?

4. What of Mrs. Greenleaf’s prayer healing (505)? How do you feel about her manner of praying? What do you think O’Connor thinks of it? “Every day she cut all the morbid stories out of the newspaper – the accounts of women who had been raped and criminals who had escaped [notice the rhyme there – I feel it creates a sing-songy effect] and children who had been burned and of train wrecks and plane crashes and the divorces of movie stars.” Feel there is a little of a “one of these is not like the other one” going on there. Why put that one there? Why in so prominent a spot? What do you make of it (I am particularly excited about question 4 here – I love the way that sentence works, but am unsure of what to make of it)

5. As with “Good Man,” a second reading of the story shows some foreshadowing (506: “violent unleashed force had broken out of the ground and was charging toward her,” Mrs. Greenleaf screaming out for Jesus to stab her in the heart)– why include these things? Do they help the first time you read the story?

6. Again on 506, what of Mrs. May’s thoughts on religion? “She thought the word, Jesus, should be kept inside the church building like other words inside the bedroom. She was a good Christian woman with a large respect for religion, though she did not, of course, believe any of it was true.”

7. I love this exchange (514) between Mrs. May and Mr. Greenleaf, respectively: “I thank God for that!” “I thank Gawd for ever-thang.” Love the dialect, and that he drawled it – good word choice there – beats said. Mrs. Turpin in “Revelation” might say the same thing as Mr. Greenleaf – does either mean it?

8. Don’t know if you guys get to read Kafka’s “Metamorphosis,” at school, but think O’Connor is having a little fun at the bottom of 517 with the description of the table falling on Wesley.

9. What of the description of Mrs. May at the end of the story, “freezing unbelief,” “sight suddenly restored” (both on 523)? Is what happened to her at the end of the story a good thing? I know that is horrible to say, but I feel there may be some evidence in the text to support the claim – I can imagine a number of commentators finding this idea a horrible one, and I could kind of agree. Still …

10. I love the setting of “Revelation” – who’d have thunk there would be such drama in a doctor’s waiting room (one where you could smoke – that detail just kills me)?

11. I suppose I am a little more conscious of this since I just got done reading Huck Finn for a class, along with some criticism of the novel (could also be because this story talks a great deal about race), but what of the use of the n-word? The word pops up quite a bit in O’Connor’s stories, even in the title of her own personal choice of her favorite story that she wrote. I’m sure a common defense might be that its use is true to how the characters might talk, but I don’t think that would make it any less painful to hear if you were a black student in class discussing it. In my literature class we did not say the word aloud, but it some ways I find that problematic because one is giving power to the word for those who would want to use it to hurt others.

12. What do you make of the long paragraph on 636 where Mrs. Turpin sorts the races? What of the final sentence of that paragraph?

13. I feel that there is a great deal of talking without saying anything by the characters in the story – would you agree? Think of your own experiences in situations like that (elevators, public transportation), or maybe how often you do (or hear others do) that same thing (people movin’ their mouths, but nothin’ come out – thanks to Eminem for that one) everyday. Does that bother you? Do you think that is why the girl threw the book? Why else might she have done it? I feel again, not that this is necessarily true, but if I had to pick which character O’Connor has the most in common with, it would be the book-throwing girl. Part of why I love the story is that I feel O’Connor also recognizes that the girl acting the way she does is non-sensical, appealing as it might have been. Anybody applauding when the book was thrown (love the straight-forward description: “The book struck her directly over her left eye.” Like that the action happened without a description of the action (ie, the girl stood up and threw her book and it struck …)?

14. On 639: “you got to love em if you want em to work for you.” That’s why we’re called to love others, right? So they’ll work for us, yes?

15. I also like the moment on 640 where Mrs. Turpin tells the drug store messenger where the button is – it works well because she gets to feel good about helping, and helping someone she imagines to be less fortunate, when, if I were a betting man, I would bet that the messenger was just taking his time so he wouldn’t have to get back to work.

16. What is the last thing Mrs. Turpin says before she gets drilled by the book (Human Development of course)? She thinks that same thought to herself on the first paragraph on 642.

17. The white-trash woman in the waiting room gets to thank Gawd too in the story on 647 (for not being a lunatic). There is a great deal of God-thanking going on in these two stories? What do you make of it?

18. Coming back to the control thing, though not O’Connor’s, but this time Mrs. Turpin’s – what do you think of the control she has over her life? Her certainty about the way the world is? Don’t most of us feel that way, at least until something happens?

Discussion Questions
Here are some discussion questions for "A Good Man is Hard to Find" and "Good Country People," more for the former than the latter. I encourage you not to read them until you have read the stories, for they contain spoilers. Please feel free to add some of your own questions to the page, or start responding to them in the discussion forum on this page. Morgan, Blake, and Leigh - please use this page as well to post biographical/conversion/cultural-historical information as well. Thanks and hope all of you enjoy (is that the right word here? Perhaps "find interesting or thought-provoking" works better, even though O'Connor is often wickedly funny) the reading.

1. One fun question to examine with O’Connor’s work is the authorial stance she takes toward her characters – is she laughing at them or with them? Or is the joke on the reader? How does the satire in her stories work?

2. In “Good Man,” what is the name of the children’s mother?

3. Another question about O’Connor as author – are her stories too controlled? Do her characters feel free, or more like puppets? Is her authorship too God-like?

4. On 148, the Misfit quotes his father as saying, “it’s some that can live their whole life without asking about it and it’s others has to know why it is, and this boy is one of the latters.” Do you think the having to know why a blessing or a curse?

5. The Misfit observes on 150 that, “I don’t want no hep. I’m doing all right by myself.” Is this feeling one you can identify with?

6. What disturbs you about this story, if anything? Some things that confound me: A) that I actually find a great deal of what the Misfit says to be things that make sense, meaning that I find myself agreeing (at times) with the character who brutally murders a family of six, B) that I find myself disliking a number of the characters (the Grandmother, the little brat children), but it’s not like I wanted them to die, C) that the Misfit is incredibly well-mannered and polite (e.g. when he apologized for whatever Bailey says to his mother when she reckernized the Misfit), as opposed to the brat kids and the silly Grandma, up until, you know, he starts killing people.

7. On both 151 and 152 the Misfit claims that “Jesus thrown everything off balance.” Do you agree? The second time he claims that Jesus shouldn’t have done it – why is that?

8. “I wisht I had of been there. It ain’t right I wasn’t there because if I had of been there I would of known. Listen lady, if I had of been there I would of known and I wouldn’t be like I am now.” Again, I am actually kind of sympathetic to what the Misfit is saying here.

9. What do you make of the Misfit contradicting himself with the last line of the story? Which is it, no pleasure, or no pleasure but meanness, or neither?

10. How many times in your life have you heard that you should live each day as if it were your last? Isn’t what the Misfit says in the third to last paragraph the same thing?

11. What do you make of Mrs. Hopewell’s favorite sayings at the bottom of 264 and top of 271 – what purpose do they serve?

12. On 268, Mrs. Hopewell describes Hulga (what a name!) as being, “brilliant but [Hulga] didn’t have a grain of sense.” How so?

13. On 280, Hulga says that she is one of those who has, “taken off our blindfolds and see that there’s nothing to see.” Do you think this is true? What does she mean by her claim?

14. Hulga claims to see “real innocence” on 281 – what might that look like?

15. I love that our Bible salesman proves on 283 that he can spit out clichés just as readily as Mrs. Hopewell can.

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