A Good Man is Hard to Find - Flannery O’Connor
I found this story to be very odd and disturbing. One of the first things that I found interesting were the details that the author chose to go into great lengths about. Such as what the old grandmother was wearing for one. Ironically, the grandmother wanted to look as she did in the event that she was in an accident, it would be able to be seen that she was a lady. Ironically, not only was she in an accident, but she was ultimately killed by the fugitive on the run. He must not have cared too much that she looked like a lady. I also thought about the irony of it all - that the reason that they were out on the road where they had the accident in search of a house that wasn’t going to be there at all because the grandmother forgot that it wasn’t in Georgia, but in Tennessee, and also how fate would have it, that because they went to search for the house, they had the accident and that inevitably would be their demise. I didn’t understand what point the grandmother was making at the end - I am not the best at figuring out symbolism in stories often times - so I didn’t get what she meant by “You’re one of my babies. You’re one of my own children!” as Bailey was her only boy. Did she mean it in the way that he was just like one of her own children? I just didn’t understand that.
Overall - I don’t really like stories that are dark. I think about how cold blooded the other outlaws were too to kill little children and a baby. The author, while maybe a great writer - I can’t quite relate to minds like the authors that I have read this week.
Greasy Lake - T. Coraghessan Boyle
As with A Good Man…..I didn’t care for this story either. The characters in the story at first come off as real tough guys and not having a care in the world. The spend the third night of summer vacation getting drunk and doing other things and then they come to Greasy Lake because they can’t find anything else to do. There they mistake a car for a “friend” of theirs and that is when everything just gets a little crazy. They end up getting in a huge fight, and the narrator spends much of the night thinking that he killed a man with a tire iron. The story talks about them looking for something that they never find. I was left wondering what it was that they were looking for. More booze? More drugs? Girls? It never states. A car comes along and the three young men hide - the narrator ends up in the creek that was once clear - but is now murky and filled with litter with a dead body. Eventually, the narrator hears the voice of the man that he thought was dead - so I could sense relief that he hadn’t in fact killed him. However, the car that came along, obviously had friends of the man and they were wanting desperately to find the three young hoodlums. By the end of the story, the three seeking revenge leave and the three hoodlums come out of hiding. They check out the damage that was done to the car of the narrator's mother and decide to get out of there when yet a mustang comes along carrying two young girls. They are in search for Al - who as we find out is the body of the dead man in the creek. The boys say they have not seen him when asked by one of the girls. The same girl asks them if they would like to party with her and do some drugs with her. To me at that moment, when the boys turn her down and you can feel that they aren’t quite as tough as they seem - because they have no desire to party with her - they all just want to leave and go home. I see at that point that there is some innocence left in them and that there may quite possibly be some hope for them. They saw that evening what can/would happen to them if they kept going down the road that they were going.
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