AdrianneM+OConnor

Class Notes 4/12 - Flannery O'Connor

Wrap-Up Faulker: questions? between this and what the character does. This is obviously a rhetorical question. make money, he succeeded.
 * Why does Temple lie? There seems to be a shift in her personality? Faulker will presnt motives but there is usually always a disconnect
 * What is Faulkner trying to get us to understand? Is there a moral or is //Sancturay// an entertainment novel? If his goal was to shock and
 * Does this book exemplify America? No and yes. We have motives for right and wrong and we do things on a whim.

Transition into O'Connor: Is there justice in the world?
 * O'Connor punishes people - gives them their "comeuppance" - karma
 * O'Connor writes with a difference voice - she wants you to be engaged but she doesn't want to give you any blanks to fill in - there is always a "Woah!" moment.
 * She is a mster of crafting the stories with clues so that surprises aren't really a surprise - irony and dramatic situation.
 * Her stories are supposed to bother and intrigue us.
 * She was a devout Catholic but she had a particular belief in sacrifice and shedding of blood.
 * She is a misfit herself. She lived in the deep Bible Belt south where Catholicism was not accepted. She was very ill with lupus and died a very early and painful death. She was discovered when she was very young and participated in an artist colony. She found community in her art, not her religion.
 * O'Connor doesn't have to kill characters in her stories, but she does. She said that the violence was necessary - to see how people would live their lives with a (literal) gun to their head. Irony is rich in her stories.

__A Good Man is Hard to Find__
 * "She would have been a good woman if she had somebody shoot her every minute of her life." (A Good Man is Hard to Find)
 * This story is written in limited third person omniscient. O'Connor uses this alot. We are told thoughts and ideas that we wouldn't get from anyone else.
 * Story begins in the middle of action. Grandmother wants to go to Tennessee to avoid the Misfit. The irony is that the Misfit ends up coming to her.
 * O'Connor uses fate and destiny. Can we avoid fate? If you can't, why would you just walk to your death?
 * She wants us to focus on possible redemption.
 * Is the Misfit a sociopath or schizophrenic? He has a warped perspective on reality. Some have even said he is an epelleptic because he doesn't remember parts of reality - go into the spirit realm and are privy to information others would not normally get.
 * Her stories are used in medical schools to diagnose conditions and symptoms. Also in law schools.
 * The Misfit should be looked at as "the every man".
 * Do you consider the grandmother an honest person? She does not accept responsibility for anything. She is manipulative. She has the basic response of "pleading" when the Misfit puts a gun to her head.
 * The grandmothers family shuts her out, makes her a Misfit as well. They are mean to her and have no respect.
 * Every character in this story has some element of guilt.
 * The number 3 is very important to O'Connor and it shows up alot in her stories.
 * Old South vs. New South - the grandmother vs. the kids, Bailey and the wife
 * Grandmother represents the "proper life" - she needs to make sure she looks good in case they get in an accident. New generation has no respect for the old.
 * The car is a literal representation of the pent up catalysts getting ready to explode.
 * The Misfit takes the shirt of the father - the taking of one's shirt off their back is very important in the Catholic faith - it is the ultimate sacrifice - the assumption of someone's identity.
 * "You're one of my babies!" the Misfit as Jesus and the Grandmother as Mary
 * Crime and Punishment are not always on an equal scale. Sometimes there is a (literal) miss fit between crime and punishment - the Misfit might have the mentality of "I've been punished for all of these crimes I might as well commit them." pg 132 - pleasure in meanness
 * The touch of the grandmother becomes the catalyst for her death. Usually touch as a nurturing effect, here it is the opposite.
 * Why is the grandmother smiling up to the sky after she dies? Her Christian belief that she'll be in Heaven with her family is probably at work here. She could be a martyr. Often O'Connor constructs the "twist" and it seems a little forced at times. She warps human philosophy.
 * Keep in mind for next class: Focus on guilt, blood, inheritance, and misfits.