“Grand Stand-In”, a short story by Kevin Wilson, is about the morally questionable career of a fifty-six year old woman who has never married or started a family. She has a job with Grand Stand-In, a company that provides imitation grandparents for children whose parents are not capable of admitting to their children that their grandparents have died. She has memorized the family history and customs of five families that she works with, and claims to have learned to disconnect from them as soon as she leaves them because she knows that her job with each family will not be permanent. Disconnecting from these families, however, is harder than the woman makes it seem. She likes the feeling of opening her door and “finding a little boy or girl …show more content…
There is an abundance of tension, anger, and vulnerability displayed by both characters involved: the woman and Mr. Beamer. The use of the word “ridiculous” to describe the situation the Beamers have put the real grandmother and Greta in expresses how powerful the woman’s feelings towards the subject are (22). She is not just a bit uneasy about it; she is absolutely dumbfounded that someone would be so cruel. The tone exaggerates the connection the woman has to the moral aspect of her job. Mr. Beamer also shows anger and aggression when “he frowns, touching his finger to his temple” and is confrontational when the woman calls his scheme ridiculous (22). He also tries to put her back in her place when he tells her she isn’t “the only grandmother around (23).” These actions anger the woman even more, but in the end she still decided to stay with the family, and claimed that she was just “out of sorts (23).” Her desire to stay with the family shows how much attachment she really does have with the family, because she still wants to be a part of their life even though she feels it is morally wrong. In the closing of the passage, she says “No matter what I think of them, I want the Beamers to love me (23).” She values the connection and fulfillment of having the family over the ethical aspect of
With these two divergent personas that define the grandmother, I believe the ultimate success of this story relies greatly upon specific devices that O’Connor incorporates throughout the story; both irony and foreshadowing ultimately lead to a tale that results in an ironic twist of fate and also play heavily on the character development of the grandmother. The first sense of foreshadowing occurs when the grandmother states “[y]es and what would you do if this fellow, The Misfit, Caught you” (1042). A sense of gloom and an unavoidable meeting with the miscreant The Misfit seem all but inevitable. I am certain that O’Connor had true intent behind th...
Since the beginning of the story, the readers have come to known the grandmother as a spiteful old lady due to her repulsive and deceitful attitudes toward others. Right from the start, we can see the grandmother using her manipulative tactics on her family. “The grandmother didn't want to go to Florida. She wanted to visit some of her connections in east Tennessee and she was seizing at every chance to change Bailey's mind.” (O’Connor 1) This initial quote shows an early indication that the grandmother is determined to obtain whatever she wants and will not allow anything to get in her way, even if it means manipulating her own family. This line already suggests that the grandmother may have sly motives concealed in her mind. “Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is a loose from the Federal Pen a...
The grandmother is the central character in the story "A good man is hard to find," by Flannery O'Connor. The grandmother is a manipulative, deceitful, and self-serving woman who lives in the past. She doesn't value her life as it is, but glorifies what it was like long ago when she saw life through rose-colored glasses. She is pre-scented by O'Connor as being a prim and proper lady dressed in a suit, hat, and white cotton gloves. This woman will do whatever it takes to get what she wants and she doesn't let anyone else's feelings stand in her way. She tries to justify her demands by convincing herself and her family that her way is not only the best way, but the only way. The grandmother is determined to change her family's vacation destination as she tries to manipulate her son into going to Tennessee instead of Florida. The grandmother says that "she couldn't answer to her conscience if she took the children in a direction where there was a convict on the loose." The children, they tell her "stay at home if you don't want to go." The grandmother then decides that she will have to go along after all, but she is already working on her own agenda. The grandmother is very deceitful, and she manages to sneak the cat in the car with her. She decides that she would like to visit an old plantation and begins her pursuit of convincing Bailey to agree to it. She describes the old house for the children adding mysterious details to pique their curiosity. "There was a secret panel in this house," she states cunningly knowing it is a lie. The grandmother always stretches the truth as much as possible. She not only lies to her family, but to herself as well. The grandmother doesn't live in the present, but in the past. She dresses in a suit to go on vacation. She states, "in case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady." She constantly tries to tell everyone what they should or should not do. She informs the children that they do not have good manners and that "children were more respectful of their native states and their parents and everything else." when she was a child.
There are three phases of thought for the Grandmother. During the first phase, which is in the beginning, she is completely focused on herself in relation to how others think of her. The Second Phase occurs when she is speaking to The Misfit. In the story, The Misfit represents a quasi-final judgment. He does this by acting like a mirror. He lets whatever The Grandmother says bounce right off him. He never really agrees with her or disagrees, and in the end he is the one who kills her. His second to last line, "She would of been a good woman," The Misfit said, "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life," (O'Conner 152). might be the way O'Conner felt about most of us alive, or how she felt that God must feel about us.
Although this story is told in the third person, the reader’s eyes are strictly controlled by the meddling, ever-involved grandmother. She is never given a name; she is just a generic grandmother; she could belong to anyone. O’Connor portrays her as simply annoying, a thorn in her son’s side. As the little girl June Star rudely puts it, “She has to go everywhere we go. She wouldn’t stay at home to be queen for a day” (117-118). As June Star demonstrates, the family treats the grandmother with great reproach. Even as she is driving them all crazy with her constant comments and old-fashioned attitude, the reader is made to feel sorry for her. It is this constant stream of confliction that keeps the story boiling, and eventually overflows into the shocking conclusion. Of course the grandmother meant no harm, but who can help but to blame her? O’Connor puts her readers into a fit of rage as “the horrible thought” comes to the grandmother, “that the house she had remembered so vividly was not in Georgia but in Tennessee” (125).
She is a manipulator when it comes to any aspect of her life. Ideally, the grandmother was selfish and care about herself. For instance, when the author has her saying “In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady (O’Connor). The author let it be known at that second that the grandmother was only thinking about herself. As if she was traveling with a group of strangers. Throughout the story, the grandmother shows that she can be dishonest towards her family. “She woke up and recalled an old plantation that she had visited in this neighborhood once when she was a young lady” (O’Conner). The grandmother did this to manipulate the situation causing the ride to be delayed. Thus, she was lying to the children about the secret panel in the house. Therefore, she caused chaos in the car. The author made it seem that the grandmother was very content with that she has caused. Even when she realized that the location of the house that she was referring to was not up that road at all. But she remained quiet or did she know this along. She was quick to judge and tell someone what not to do. But she never turned her eye on herself. That she was selfish and dishonest to her
The grandmother had the highest status of the family because she ordered and punished the four grandchildren and Mrs. Dollanger. The grandmother at that point was now of authority status to the grandfather because he was sick in his dying bed. This goes against the definition of sexism, stating that men are believed to be superior to women. The oldest sister Cathy begins to encounter a role conflict within herself. She takes on the role of a sister and she also depicts a mother, because she is the one that cares for her young sister and brother. Strangely, she takes on the role as the sexual partner of her brother, Chris, because they do not yet understand that this is wrong because of their entrapment from society. Mrs. Dollanger then receives a sanction when her father dies, which is to inherit her father's estate. This was her reward for her father thinking that she hadn't had children. Her sanction at the beginning of the novel was the punishment of marrying her half uncle by her father disinheriting her.
these young women turn to a replacement family, a place where they feel they are needed and
...promising dreams, relationships often fall apart under strain from unemployment, drug and alcohol abuse, imprisonment, conflict and betrayal. Finally, we get to the heart of what marriage means to these mothers and why they say that successfully raising children is the most important job they will ever have. Almost all of the women said things like “It’s only because my children that I am where I am today.”
...ut to leaver her children who desperately pleaded for her. The saddened case was not an isolated but a common reality for many of the freed people who wished to reunite their dislocated families.
Looking back on the death of Larissa’s son, Zebedee Breeze, Lorraine examines Larissa’s response to the passing of her child. Lorraine says, “I never saw her cry that day or any other. She never mentioned her sons.” (Senior 311). This statement from Lorraine shows how even though Larissa was devastated by the news of her son’s passing, she had to keep going. Women in Larissa’s position did not have the luxury of stopping everything to grieve. While someone in Lorraine’s position could take time to grieve and recover from the loss of a loved one, Larissa was expected to keep working despite the grief she felt. One of the saddest things about Zebedee’s passing, was that Larissa had to leave him and was not able to stay with her family because she had to take care of other families. Not only did Larissa have the strength to move on and keep working after her son’s passing, Larissa and other women like her also had no choice but to leave their families in order to find a way to support them. As a child, Lorraine did not understand the strength Larissa must have had to leave her family to take care of someone else’s
The grandmother is very old and has lived a very tough life in Vietnam. She “‘lost four of [her] children… twelve of [her] grandchildren and countless relatives to wars and famines’” (Meyer, 74) while in Vietnam. During her life she had very little time to enjoy herself, instead she had to focus on not only surviving, but also holding a family together and getting them through the hardships as well. On top of the Vietnam War, which killed an estimated 500,000-600,000 Vietnamese citizens alone (Weisner), she had to live through 2 additional wars and several famines. The implicated stress and hardships are almost unimaginable. This is evident in her stories and fairy tales she tells her granddaughters, which always have dark twist or no happy ending, or as the granddaughters say “The husband comes too late” (Meyer, 77) to stop the bad guy or save the
As Marlow describes, she is a very nice lady and she does whatever she can to fulfill her nephew’s wish. Marlow, on the other hand, seems to feel a little disconcerted because of asking for the help of a woman. This can be inferred from the utterances of Marlow. While telling his story to his friends he says “I, Charlie Marlow, set the women to work— to get a job. Heavens!” (Conrad 2013, P. 8). The word “Heavens!” indicates a lot. He gives us the feeling of not being content with requesting the help of a woman. However, even this statement is very supportive for my thesis if we inspect the way men look at women in 1900s. Men tended to see women as housewives taking care of the children and chores. And Marlow’s discontent shows the big effect of his aunt on his adventure even though he does not want to
Katherine, Mrs. Stockmann, is a mother and a wife who’s portrayed as a loving and loyal housewife. At the beginning of the play she was against the idea of Dr. Stockmann who wanted to write an article criticizing the Baths, “Ah, yes, right, right! But what good is the right, if you don’t have the might?” (96). However, when everyone began siding against Dr. Stockmann, Katherine decides to remain loyal to her husband and support his ideas. The reason she supports him is because she’s loyal and she wants to protect her family.
Research conducted regarding modern society’s motherless children stresses the importance of a motherly (or even parental) relationship throughout the developmental years of a child. Hope Edelman, a motherless child herself explains, “I can tell you, based on both personal experience and interviews with hundreds of motherless American women, that losing a mother at an early age is one of the most stressful life events a person can face. It completely rips apart the fabric of a child's life.” If a child experiences the death, abandonment or absence of a mother, they fail to receive an adequate substitution. This deficiency can generate long-term damage to his or her self-esteem, ability to relate to other people, overall feelings of security and ability to trust others. The absence of a mother in a child’s life limits their support network, discipline, and supervision (Amato). An immense variety of possible negative outcomes emerge from being orphaned or possessing a single pa...