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Literature and the human condition
Literature and its impact on society
Literature and its impact on society
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Lack of intelligence is a major issue in society. People sometimes don't know how to act in many situations and make the wrong decision that can affect them badly. In ¨Good Country People,¨ Hulga was a very smart woman but when dealing with people she lacked intelligence. In “The Life You Save May Be Your Own,” Lucynell, who is a mother to a disabled blind girl named Lucynell, has lack of intelligence by forcing a stranger who calls himself Mr. Shiftlet, to marry her daughter, Lucynell and take her away to live with him. In “A Good Man Is Hard To Find,” the grandmother has lack of intelligence because when they ran into the misfit she didn't keep her mouth shut and blurted out that she knew who he was which got them into a very bad situation. …show more content…
People are sometimes taken advantage of because of their lack of intelligence. If society continues to expand with lack of intelligence then people are going to suffer and continue making bad choices that make life harder for themselves. In the story ¨Good Country People,¨ Hulga was a very intelligent woman when it came to education, but when it comes to dealing with people, she lacked intelligence. She had a prosthetic leg due to a hunting accident when she was ten years old. ¨In a letter to a reader, the author blames Hulgas ¨fine education¨ for eradicating her faith, claiming that her ¨purity has been overridden by pride of intellect. In the end, however, O´Connor continues, Hulga experiences the ¨realization that she ain't so smart¨¨(Cusatis 2). She makes herself seem so smart because she has a doctoral degree in philosophy but she's really not that smart. Maybe it's because she lives in a place where people have little to no education at all. ¨The girl had taken the Ph.D. in philosophy and this left Mrs. Hopewell at a complete loss. You could not say, "My daughter is a philosopher"¨(O'Connor 184). Her mother didn't like her major she picked at all and went against the religion. By her going against what she believes in is out of stupidity. Manley Pointer who was the bible salesman was one of the people she didn't know how to deal with. She emotionally let him in but didn't know he was just using her and would leave her so quickly with her prosthetic leg. ¨She saw him grab the leg and then she saw it for an instant slanted forlornly across the inside of the suitcase with a Bible at either side of its opposite ends, he slammed the lid shut¨(O´Connor 204). As they were alone together he explained to her that he wants her to take off her leg to prove to him that she loves him. ¨But when Hulga quickly discovers that Manley professed a naive Christian faith just to get his way with her, he malevolently grabs her wooden leg, stuffs it into his suitcase, and leaves her stranded in the loft¨(Basco). He manipulated her and made it seem that he was an innocent Christian at first. Hulga quickly gained trust in him thinking he never done anything scandalous before like her but she was wrong. She socially lacked intelligence and didn't know how to see through people. She should have waited longer to get to know him in order to prove that she ¨loves him.¨ He lied to her and took her prosthetic leg and ran off leaving her there without her prosthetic leg. “As a result, she acquiesces to his demand to remove her leg, which is "like surrendering to him completely." O'Connor notes that Hulga's surrender is like "losing her own life and finding it again, miraculously, in his"(Cusatis). She agreed to take her leg off because she didn't want him to feel like she doesn't love him. She saw the good in people and didn't realize that she needs to take a step back and see all of them. She later saw the true colors of Manley and didn't like what she was witnessing. "You're a Christian!" she hissed. "You're a fine Christian! You're just like them all -- say one thing and do another. You're a perfect Christian, you're . . ."(O´Connor 204). It was almost like she was in denial of who the real person he really was. She wanted to believe he really was a fine Christian but Manley himself knew he wasn't and he knew exactly what he was doing to her that night when they were alone. Hulga seems to be a very gullible person and this is where lack of intelligence plays a role because she was so quick to believe people and didn't know how to deal with a person like Manley Pointer. In the story ¨The Life You Save May Be Your Own,¨ Lucynell lacks intelligence by forcing the man to marry her daughter, who she just recently met. Mr. Shiftlet arrived at her doorstep while Lucynell, the mother, and Lucynell, the daughter, her outside on the porch. "Even if I ain't a whole one. I got," he said, tapping his knuckles on the floor to emphasize the immensity of what he was going to say, "a moral intelligence"(O’Connor)! He believes he has moral intelligence meaning he knows right from wrong but I disagree because what he does to Lucynell. He asked if Lucynell was her daughter. ¨She's the sweetest girl in the world. I wouldn't give her up for nothing on earth¨ (O'Connor 56). She brags in the beginning that she wouldn't give her up for anything in the world but then towards the ending she encourages Mr. Shiftlet marries her daughter. She realized that she wants her daughter to experience marriage and have a man care for her. She felt like he was good for her because over the days he's stayed there, he treated her really well and even taught her to say ¨bird.¨ By her thinking that he would really care for her and actually be with her shows how idiotic the mother really is. Mr. Shiftlet asked Lucynell for her car and she said only if he fixes up her house and then he will receive the car in return. It was clear he was using her for the car. “Many Americans have felt that obsession with money and material goods blinded people to their duties towards others and made them selfish and greedy, encouraged crime”(Deignan). This source explains how Americans can be greedy for money or for stuff that has value. Mr. Shiftlet shows greed by wanting to take Lucynell’s car and only fixes her house because he wants something in return not because he actually cares. Lucynell, the mother, didn't see that, she saw him as a caring guy and felt like he’d be good for he daughter but she was wrong. When he was done fixing the stuff around the house Lucynell, the mother, convinced him to go marry her daughter. They went to the court and got married. Right after they got married, Lucynell forced him to take her daughter with him to live. At first, he refused and don't want to take on that responsibility but he finally gave in and began to think of a plan. They were off driving on the road together as a married couple. They stopped at a diner to eat before continuing again on the road. They order food and Lucynell falls asleep on the table. He then decides to pay for the food and just get up and leave without her, abandoning her in the diner. Before he leaves a waiter says "she looks like an angel of Gawd," he murmured. "Hitch-hiker," Mr. Shiftlet explained”(O’Connor 64). He had the audacity to leave her there when he knew she had a mental illness and decided to tell the waiter she was a hitchhiker. I blame no one but the mother because how could she be so stupid to let a stranger take her daughter away from her. In the story ¨A Good Man Is Hard To Find,¨ the grandmother has lack of intelligence several times throughout this story. The grandmother and her son and his family are going on a trip the grandmother suggested to go to Georgia. ¨The grandmother badgers her son, Bailey, for dragging the family on a vacation to Florida, where a serial killer is "aloose from the Federal Pen"¨(Rea). Out of all places, the grandmother picked the place where a serial killer was loose and we could predict how that vacation is going to go just by her poor decision on location. The grandmother was so naive that she misplaced where she was and demanded that her son takes them to an old plantation she used to go when she was a child not realizing that it was in another state. She then realized that is wasn't where she thought it was and instantly felt embarrassed but didn't have the guts to say something. "It's not much farther," the grandmother said, but as she said it he realized something terrible. ¨The thought was so embarrassing that she turned red in the face and her eyes dilated and her feet jumped up, upsetting her valise in the corner¨(O'Connor 11). The grandmother has lack of intelligence by mixing up where she grew up from where they are traveling on vacation. She made them waste time to go to something that was actually nothing. Her mistake causes a major accident making her feel even more guilty. As they are driving on the gravel to get to the ¨plantation¨ the car flips over and they suddenly got into an accident. ¨The car turned over once and landed right-side-up in a gulch off the side of the road¨(O'Connor 11). Not only did the grandmother waste time by taking them to the wrong place but she risked the families life by taking them on a dangerous road that caused the accident. The other reasoning for the grandmother´s lack of intelligence is what happens after the accident.
They all got out of the car safely and no one was injured. They all stand there with puzzled faces waiting to see for a car to seek some help. They finally see a car in the distance and wave them down. The car reaches them and the men climb out of the car. The grandmother instantly felt like she knew who on of then men were. ¨When brought face to face with The Misfit, the grandmother knows that "[h]is face was as familiar to her as if she had known him all her life but she could not recall who he was" (314). She is trying to remember and create a bond between herself and another creature, allowing her to break out of her alienation, but her escape cannot happen quite yet¨(Keil). Finally, it clicked in her head and she shouted to his name in front of all of them which might have been one of the biggest mistakes shes ever made. ¨The grandmother shrieked. She scrambled to her feet and stood staring. "You're The Misfit!" she said. "I recognized you at once"(O'Connor 14)! The Misfit was a murderous guy who escaped and was on the loose. The grandmother imprudently shouted out that she knew who he was which caused the family to be at risk. The Misfit and the two other men had no choice but to kill all five of them. The grandmother caused this family to suffer due to her lack of
intelligence. Throughout life, people will make bad decisions that will cause them to suffer. Lack of intelligence can make people's lives even harder though. Some people lack intelligence when dealing with other people or just sometimes forget important information. “Good Country People”, “The Life You Save May Be Your Own”, and “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” are three stories by Flannery O’Connor that all have someone that lacks intelligence very badly. They all suffer in some type of way due to not knowing how to deal with something or just by making poor decisions.
While reading Flannery O’Connor “A Good Man is Hard to Find” we read that a family of five are on a roadtrip to Florida where they go every year. We have The Grandmother who derailed her family from the actual road to see a house she thought was in those parts of town. When all of a sudden her helpers are the murders she is afraid of. The murder “The Misfit” kills off the rest of her family and leaves her to dwell in her sorrow that she will be next. The Grandmother tries to maneuver her way out of dying by sweet talking The Misfit into thinking she can love him as her own child and that he doesn’t have to kill anymore. When she tries to reach for him he moved back and shot her. The Grandmother didn’t want him to be violent anymore and thought
The conversations between The Misfit and the Grandmother are quite interesting. When she is face-to-face with him and her death is imminent, she is the least willing of the family to accept it. Only the grandmother attempts to talk her way out of the situation even though the rest of her family lies assassinated in the woods behind her. In a last effort to escape with her life, she offers The Misfit all the money she has. He responds, “‘Lady,’ The Misfit said, looking beyond her far into the woods, ‘there never was a body that give the undertaker a tip'” (O’Connor 30).
Why does The Misfit say after killing the grandmother “she would have been a good woman if it had been some body there to shoot her every minute of her life? Pg.150 The Misfit
The Grandmother is an elderly woman who believes she possesses all of the qualities to be a lady. However, she passes judgement on to others thinking only highly of herself. Ironically, the Grandmother’s own actions are the ones that lead to her encounter with the Misfit and consequently leads to the death of her family and herself. Moments leading up to her death the Misfit helps lead the Grandmother into realizing that she is not better than anyone else. Her true moment of clarity is stating that the Misfit is one of her own children. Grandmother stating this shows she does not see herself as someone who is better than the Misfit. Moments after this realization the Misfit murders the Grandmother. After murdering the Grandmother the Misfit states, “‘She would of been a good woman,’ The Misfit said, “if it had been somebody to shoot her every minute of her life’” (O’Connor 430). The Grandmother lived a life where she only revealed her true kindness in moments of death. In Good Country People Hulga is a thirty-year-old overweight woman with a disability who still lives with her mother. Hulga has a doctorate in philosophy which leads her to have a much different outlook on life than those around her. She does not believe in religion and believes that she knows all there is to know about life and that she has society figured out.
O’Connor proves this theory with two characters, the misfit and grandmother. The grandmother is defined by her self-centered qualities, and her Christian influences from God. The grandmother first acknowledges the wanted misfit when she was traveling with her family down a long secluded dirt road, and becomes the cause of a car accident, leading their car to be flipped upside down.... ... middle of paper ...
...d both of them do not quite understand what being saved actually means. In the end, “when she saw the man’s face twisted close to her own (367).” the grandmother realizes that she and The Misfit are both on the same level and she is no worse than the latter. Almost like taking a look into a mirror and pondering upon one’s own reflection. The story takes a quick pause, when the author writes the line, “His voice seemed to crack and the grandmother’s head cleared for an instance (367).” What were the thoughts that went through the grandmother’s head? What happened during the “instance” that changed the grandmother’s view on her beliefs? The sole purpose of the phrase drowns a reader with questions and uncertainty. The story makes a final closure with The Misfit’s remark on how his source of happiness by performing violent acts brings “no real pleasure in life.”
After the accident that the grandmother had unintentionally caused by manipulating the image of a nonexistent house into her family’s head, they run into the Misfit. No one else in the family knew who he was or anything about him. They all thought someone had come to their rescue and was going to fix the car, but nothing gets over on the grandmother. Blatantly putting the whole family in danger she blurts out, “’You’re the Misfit!’…’Yes’m…but it would have been better for all of you, lady, if you hadn’t of reckernized me’” (192). At this point in time, she knows that she is going to die, trying to save herself and not caring about the rest of her family clearly as she has witnessed the Misfit’s goons kill off her whole family, she tries to manipulate him. She brings up that he is a “good man at heart” (192) and telling him if he “would pray…Jesus would help” (194). That was just simply her trying to plea for her life, but when she realized she was getting nowhere her “head cleared for an instant” (196), she knew this was an opportunity to try and manipulate the Misfit into letting her go, to make him feel like he didn’t have to be a killer anymore, to comfort him “she reached out and touched him on the shoulder” (196). The Misfit jolted away and shot her three times in the chest because he saw through her manipulative ways which if clear when he
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.
To buttress this she pointed out that even at the grandmothers death misfit confirmed her to be a good woman in his statement “she would have been a good woman if she was to face death every minute of her life” (437). In contrast to her opinion Stephen Bandy a notable literally critics in one of his articles “One of my babies “: The Misfit and the Grandmother” he compared the characters of both and argued that despite the fact that O`Conner claimed the grandmother was merely filled with “prejudice” of her time, He described the grandmother as racist, busy body and utterly self-absorbed. When she saw that her child and grandchildren was been killed tried to manipulate Misfit to spare her own life whereas she was the one that lead them to their death.
The grandmother has never truly understood what being saved means. She is also ignorant to what salvation is. The Misfit is missing the ability to empathize and bind with other people. He does not hold respect for human life. In “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”, it says “She would of been a good woman, The Misfit said, if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life” (430). In “‘One of My Babies’: The misfit and the grandmother”, written by Stephen C. Bandy, it says “The Misfit has already directed the execution of the Grandmother’s entire family, and it must be obvious to all including reader and the Grandmother, that she is next to die” (108). These example justifies that The Misfit does not have any regard for human life. The only people that he has are the two goons that help him murder people. The grandmother sees that The Misfit has never had anyone to take care of him. At the end of this story she tries reach out to him on a spiritual level, but he shoots her three times in the chest as soon as she touches
She knows that she is going to die. She reaches out to The Misfit and tells him “Why you’re one of my babies. You’re one of my own children!”. She doesn’t literally mean that he is her child but that they are both human, both children of God. The Misfit, being completely amoral and totally cut off from his own humanity, recoils from her touch.”The Misfit sprang back as if a snake had bitten him and shot her three times through the chest.” At this moment of her death, the Grandmother is more genuine than she’s ever been in her life. At the very end of her life she achieved a state of grace. The Misfit too, also undergoes a transformation. He realizes there’s “no real pleasure” in the way he’s been living his life. That’s not to say that The Misfit would stop killing. Only that, like the Grandmother, he realized a truth about
In the text “The Life You Save May Be Your Own” by Flannery O’Connor, a common mood emerges from the somewhat humorous yet unfortunate work. A mood of grotesqueness among the characters and overall story as it presents itself, generally, making the audience feel quite uneasy and uncomfortable while reading it. Grotesque is a literary style, which comically and somewhat repulsively represents a distorted character or a series of twisted actions or thoughts that embody a character. The text creates a grotesque mood simply because the actions carried out by the characters resemble an extreme sense of despair and uneasiness, yet the way in which it is executed is somewhat funny and jocular to the reader, therefore creating an awkward overall mood
The grandmother says “I know you’re a good man. You don’t look a bit like you have common blood. I know you must come from nice people,” showing how she is trying to find a shred of hope in a murderer. O’Connor’s use of southern diction and religious banter develop the grandmother away from superficiality and towards genuineness. The grandmother says “’Listen,’…’you shouldn’t call yourself The Misfit because I know you’re a good man at heart. I can just look at you and tell.’” The Misfit replies “I pre-chate that, lady,’” by using the phonetic spelling instead of proper diction O’Connor is showing that the grandmother believes he is a fellow southerner. The grandmother is talking to The Misfit about salvation and she has an epiphany, O’Connor writes “His voice seemed to crack and the grandmother’s head cleared for an instant. She saw the man’s face twisted close to her own as if he were going to cry and she murmured, ‘Why you’re one of my babies. You’re one of my own children!’” After discussing religion and seeing his perspective the grandmother finally feels real sympathy for The Misfit; up until that point the grandmother had been trying to compliment and talk her way out of being killed along with the rest of her family. Unfortunately this is also when the struggle between good and evil ends with the grandmother being killed, “The Misfit sprang back as if a snake had bitten him and shot her three times through the chest.” The Misfit then says “‘She would of been a good woman’ … ‘if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.’” He realized that her gesture at that moment was out of pure kindness and
...this is after she figures out whom he is. The Misfit has all of the Grandmother’s family escorted into the woods and killed. And as the story ends he takes the Grandmothers life when she touches him on the shoulder.
Never once as the Grandmother was begging for her life, did she stop and beg for the life of her family. Her tactic to save herself went from “You wouldn’t shoot a lady would you?” (O’Connor), to “You’ve got good blood! I know you come from nice people” (O’Connor), then lastly to “If you would pray, Jesus would help you” (O’Connor). Yet to every beg the Grandmother made, the Misfit was completely honest with her, admitting that he would hate to have to kill a lady, but he would do it, admitting that he did come from good people but that he is not good, and admitting that he does not want Jesus’ help, that he is perfectly fine alone. Because the Misfit was so honest and open about who he was and his flaws, the Grandmother realized that she is not a “Good Man”. That she has been lying to herself and the people around her. The Misfit allowed the Grandmother to come to terms with who she really is a person. The Misfit giving her this eye opening realization before taking her life gave her the redemption she needed so