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Literary analysis on flannery o'connor
Analysis of Flannery O'Connor's writings
Literary analysis on flannery o'connor
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A grotesque character is one who is abnormal and twisted through intense obsession, and these grotesque characteristics are shown through hidden characterization and only seen in the character’s action or emotions. A writer might include a grotesque character in a story to offset a good-natured hero, but few authors will create a story consisting entirely of grotesque characters. That is what Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964) did in her short story The Life You Save May Be Your Own. To boil the story to the bear bones, the story details how a con-man, Tom Shiftlet, tricks a mother, Lucynell Crater, into marrying her disabled daughter, also named Lucynell Crater, to him, taking off with the car, and leaving the disabled girl in a dinner by the road. However, on a deeper level, the story explores the obsessions which cause character’s actions and the guilt which pounces once the actions are completed. The title of The Life You Save May Be Your Own by Flannery O’Connor, gives insights to the the characters’ endings and the meaning of the story.
Mrs. Crater is obsessed with ensuring the preservation of her
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disabled daughter and the plantation after she dies, however she is left with less than what she started out. Stern, old Mrs. Crater takes care of both her rotting plantation and her disabled daughter for years. In that time she comes to realize that she won’t be alive forever and the two concentrations of her obsession will decay rapidly in her absence, thus Mrs. Crater jumps at the chance to have it all without actually checking if the man she is entrusting her land, money, and daughter to possesses all the qualities it takes to fulfill the responsibilities. Mr. Shiftlet himself brings his own credibility into question as he comments, “I can tell you my name is Tom T. Shiftlet and I come from Tarwater, Tennessee, but you never have seen me before: how you know I ain’t lying? How you know my name ain’t Aaron Sparks, lady, and I come from Singleberry, Georgia, or how you know I ain’t Thompson Bright from ToolaFalls, Mississippi?”. With this insight into the character of Mr. Shiftlet, one can see that he is of dubious nature and shouldn’t be trusted farther than one can throw him. Yet, Mr. Crater seems to ignore all the signs of the man’s true intentions and forcibly encourages Mr. Shiftlet to marry her daughter. One might seen Mrs.
Crater as planning for the future, but in actuality she is desperate to push her responsibilities onto another person. Mrs. Crater’s daughter, Lucynell, is said to be thirty years old and Mrs. Crater is no spring chicken either. Spending so many years as the caretaker of an individual incapable of being independent, one might feel burdened by the dependent nature of the relationship, and Mrs. Crater wants to escape the entrapped feeling of being the single caretaker of Lucynell. Despite how awful it sounds, there are many cases where a husband or wife will leave a spouse if the spouse has been diagnosed with a terminal disease to avoid the exact situation Mrs. Crater finds herself in through the years. The title The Life You Save May Be Your Own divulges Mrs. Crater’s actions to rid herself of her disabled daughter and save her remaining
life. The Life You Save May Be Your Own centers around Mr. Shiftlet arriving at a plantation and tricking the family into getting his obsession, an automobile. It can be inferred that Mr. Shiftlet is a drifter who left his family at an early age and takes advantage of other families to get what he wants. Mr. Shiftlet is given the trust and favor of both Craters by keeping up the slight appearance of a man who is disgusted by the world. Unlike Mrs. Crater, Mr. Shiftlet’s grotesque characteristics are hidden to the reader until the last few paragraphs of the story. Throughout the story whether or not Mr. Shiftlet will take care of Lucynell is up in the air, but all comes to light when he leaves her at a dinner by the side of the road. Obviously he feels guilty for doing this as O’Connor reveals, “He war more depressed than ever as he drove on by himself. The late afternoon had grown hot and sultry and the country had flattened out... There were times when Mr. Shiftlet preferred not to be alone”. While Mr. Shiftlet feels depressed over leaving Lucynell, he looks for a hitchhiker to pick up instead of going back and getting her. It is apparent that Mr. Shiftlet has the capacity to experience guilt and regret over his actions, but he actions in response to these feelings don’t match how a normal character would act. However there is conflicting aspects of Mr. Shiftlet. As just he abandons an individual who needs another person to survive, he looks for hitchhikers to pick up as he has a responsibility to other humans.The title The Life You Save May Be Your Own plays an interesting role here as instead of Mrs. Crater looking out for only herself, in Mr. Shiftlet’s case the phrase is warning to not being able to save another life and failing in his responsibility to others. Lucynell Crater is the most tragic out of the characters in the short story, The Life You Save May Be Your Own by Flannery O’Connor. With her disability blocking her from connecting with other people and mentally understanding the world around; it is nearly impossible for her to deal with the situations at hand. Lucynell is abandoned by the two people in the world she encounters regularly. First her mother pans her off to a man who is obviously not a respectable human being. From the initial conversation between Mrs. Crater and Mr. Shiftlet it is transparent that Mrs. Crater is practically trying to sell her daughter off to the tramp who walked down the road. Mrs. Crater is successful and Lucynell doesn’t have single clue that she is getting married when the three characters hop in the car that Saturday. Second, Mr. Shiftlet leaves her at a roadside dinner after marrying her. This abandonment cuts deep as Lucynell took an instant fondness to Mr. Shiftlet. O’Connor explains, “...[Mr. Shiftlet] began on the roof of the garden house while Lucynell... sat on a rock and watched him work....The big rosy-faced girl followed him everywhere..”. It’s obvious that Lucynell took a liking to Mr. Shiftlet, and that makes the betrayal of being left at the dinner cut deep. The title The Life You Save May Be Your Own reveals a sad truth about Lucynell which is that she is the one that is pawned off by her mother so her mother can feel free and the one that isn’t saved so Mr. Shiftlet can save his own life. Insights to the character’s ending and meaning of the short story, The Life You Save May Be Your Own by Flannery O’Connor, are revealed through the title. Mrs. Crater is obsessed with ensuring the preservation of her disabled daughter and the plantation after she dies, however she is left with less than what she started out. The Life You Save May Be Your Own centers around Mr. Shiftlet arriving at a plantation and tricking the family into getting his obsession, an automobile. Lucynell Crater is the most tragic out of the characters in the short story, The Life You Save May Be Your Own by Flannery O’Connor.
Tragedy acts as an antidote to human fallibility; it also warns individuals of the dire consequences of follies in a way that comedy cannot. It accentuates how a character of high rank falls from grace due to his or her character flaw. More importantly, the downfall evokes pathos, which results in the viewers’ emotional cleansing and purging. In Richard Van Camp’s short story, “Mermaids”, the main character “Torchy” is a native Indian who struggle to find a goal in life. To cope with the loss of his brother and his traumatic life, he abuses alcohol and drugs.“Mermaids” is not considered as a tragedy since the main character does not fulfill a noble tragic hero, he does not go through peripeteia, and the ending of the story does not let the
After a basketball game, four kids, Andrew Jackson, Tyrone Mills, Robert Washington and B.J. Carson, celebrate a win by going out drinking and driving. Andrew lost control of his car and crashed into a retaining wall on I-75. Andy, Tyrone, and B.J. escaped from the four-door Chevy right after the accident. Teen basketball star and Hazelwood high team captain was sitting in the passenger's side with his feet on the dashboard. When the crash happened, his feet went through the windshield and he was unable to escape. The gas tank then exploded and burned Robbie to death while the three unharmed kids tried to save him.
So far in the book the main character (narrator) remains anonymous to the reader, and refers to himself as the “Invisible Man”. According to himself, he believes he is invisible due to the fact that he has no place in society. Throughout the book he has been constantly rejected by everyone, his friends, fellow african americans, and the white americans who were “superior” at the time. However, besides his depressive feelings for himself, he isn’t as innocent as he portrays himself to be. The Invisible man is actually rather threatening than he is friendly, which feeds the reasoning why he is constantly rejected by everyone. The reader can witness his lack of innocence in a quote the narrator stated “I sprang at him, seized his coat lapels
Flannery O 'Connor wrote The Life You Save May Be Your Own in 1955. She had a terminal illness and focused many of her stories on the truths of reality. Within this story, she describes an innocent girl, Lucynell, and the dishonest people around her. She keeps Lucynell a constant innocence throughout the story as the other characters lose their purity. The main thing separating Lucynell from the other characters is her lack of sensibility and general awareness of reality. Flannery O’Connor reveals innocence is only for the unaware using color imagery, situational irony, and allusion.
In Winesburg Ohio, the reader is first introduced to “The Book of the Grotesque”. This introductory chapter, provides the reader with what might be considered a summary of the characters in the novel itself. The elderly writer, who has obviously seen and experienced a lot of the world’s turmoils, e.g. The Civil War , has been haunted by the faces of all the people he has ever known. The faces of these people are twisted and distorted, and ultimately appear “grotesque” to the elderly writer: It was his notion that the moment one of the people took one of the truths to himself, called it his truth, and tried to live his life by it, he became a grotesque and the truth he embraced became a falsehood.” (p.24).
After her diagnosis of chronic kidney failure in 2004, psychiatrist Sally Satel lingered in the uncertainty of transplant lists for an entire year, until she finally fell into luck, and received her long-awaited kidney. “Death’s Waiting List”, published on the 5th of May 2006, was the aftermath of Satel’s dreadful experience. The article presents a crucial argument against the current transplant list systems and offers alternative solutions that may or may not be of practicality and reason. Satel’s text handles such a topic at a time where organ availability has never been more demanded, due to the continuous deterioration of the public health. With novel epidemics surfacing everyday, endless carcinogens closing in on our everyday lives, leaving no organ uninflected, and to that, many are suffering, and many more are in desperate request for a new organ, for a renewed chance. Overall, “Death’s Waiting List” follows a slightly bias line of reasoning, with several underlying presumptions that are not necessarily well substantiated.
“The Life You Save May Be Your Own” is the title of Flannery O’Connor’s short story that is about characters who are living life as they wish it to be. In our textbook, we learn about “grotesque” characters, who are bizarre and twisted. After learning about these literary characters, one would assume that the following text would be a terrifying and/or gruesome plot to read with crazy characters. Once a reader begins reading, they wouldn’t assume that any of the introduced characters are twisted or dark. Later in the short story, one begins to see the decisions the characters are making to create the path for their own
Phillips, Terry. "A Study In Grotesques: Transformations Of The Human In The Writing Of Liam O'flaherty." Gothic Studies 7.1 (2005): 41-52. Academic Search Premier. Web. 12 June 2014.
Flannery O’Connor seems to always have a way with developing characters and stories that have multiple meanings. Maintaining this pattern, The Life You Save May Be Your Own can be considered representative of several different things. From salvation to evil intent, the story symbolizes the journey of any person throughout life. Along with struggles for survival, the text also has implied temptations and trials. While these are mostly pertaining to Mr. Shiftlet, they can also be applied to Mrs. Crater. Lucynell, however represents innocence and hope. Each character has its own separate fate; however they are tied together in multiple ways.
“And as a writer now, I want to save Linda’s life. Not her body- her life” (O’brien, 236). This quote is said by Tim O’brien in the last chapter of The Things They Carried. His childhood love, Linda, died at the age of nine because of a brain tumor. O’brien states this quote when he is forty-three years old and looking back at all his old pictures from 1956. He wanted to save Linda’s life because now that he is older and a writer, he wants to bring back her soul through his stories. That’s why he says he doesn’t want to save her body, but her life because in stories he can revive her for a short amount of time. I think this quote is significant because it can relate back to basically the whole book and O'brien's stories about death. Throughout
mid-1900s before she passed away. One of her famous stories, “The Life You Save May Be Your Own,” represents people who have dishonest or discreet souls. In this story, O’Connor uses Tom’s character as an example of how appearances can produce a misperception. She characterize him as evasive, meticulous, and self-assured. All of which makes up Tom’s personality.
“The Life You Save May Be Your Own” was written by Flannery O’ Connor, published on May 12, 1955. The symbolism used by Flannery O’ Connor described a sense of mystery for the story. With color imagery, O’ Connor foreshadowed the plot of the story, and O’ Connor plotted a series of situational irony throughout the whole story, making contrast between the characters at the beginning and at the end of the story.
One theme found in “WHY ME?” by Sarah Burleton centers around the motif of feeling alone; In a world of abuse, people often feel alone. For example in the beginning of the story when Sarah, the abused protagonist, had a very bad morning at home before her first day of elementary school she said “...I couldn't tell Mrs. Slagle that I had drunk so much juice then I would have to explain why”(Burleton 1). Sarah’s mother never wanted her she was young herself when she had Sarah, she abused her and made her feel unwanted and unloved starting at a young age. Her mother would always make her feel bad by calling her names and making fun of the way she looked and her weight she was a bully to her own child. Once when Sarah was in elementary school, her mother made her eat soap and wash her mouth out with glasses of orange juice just because Sarah said that her food was nasty.
The term ‘a good man’ is commonly referred to it as a worthy person that has done a marvelous deed. A person look can be deceiving and as it is actually difficult to know whether that person is generous or malicious. In a short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor, the audience's focus primarily on the grandmother’s interactions toward the other characters around her. The story is set to be in a big irony about a family vacation has gone wrong. There is a numerous reference about the word ‘a good man’ throughout the story, but the most important scene is the interaction between the grandmother, who is the protagonist of the story, and The Misfit, who’s a wanted criminal and the antagonist. Throughout the conversation between
With her experience with the southern point of view, social rankings, and Catholic beliefs, Flannery O’Connor shares her award winning yet haunting literature through her Southern Gothic writing genre. Through her cultivating allegories, O’Connor presents her pejorative writing style. Her compelling main characters are criticized for their cynical and hypocritical demeanors. While on the other hand, violent conclusions are used to reveal to the characters their immoral acts and personalities. Furthermore, the clever usage of literary devices reveals not only the theme but the characters’ misdemeanor. Overall, Flannery O’Connor’s pejorative infused grotesque style is distinguished by her alluring characters, shocking plot twists and exceptional use of literary devices.