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Death as a theme in literature
Essay death in literature
Death as a theme in literature
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Grandmothers are always there when we need them most. They are kind, loving and wise from their long living experience in this world. The worst thing that could happen sadly is when it is time for them to leave this world later on in life before your very own death. From old age, sickness or get shot countless times in the body from a crazy serial killer, grandmothers tend to leave this world before you know it. For example from the world of literature, two grandmothers have from two very different stories has met their maker either they like it or not. One of the grannies is good old Granny Weatherall from the short story “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” by Katherine Anne Porter and the other is the Grandmother from the short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor. Both the grandmother in “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” have to experience different lives, families and views of religion but soon experience death. Granny Weatherall was eighty years old and on the border between life and death. Her daughter Cornelia brought Doctor Harry to check Granny but she keeps shooing him away. Doctor Harry confirms however that Granny Weatherall does not have much time left in this world. Cornelia wants to take care of her mother but Granny Weatherall told her to leave her alone and that she will be fine. Granny Weatherall was too stubborn to see that she is dying but she started to doubt. Granny Weatherall later think about her long life and the hardship she been through as a single mother raising her children. She also thought about her first love George who did not showed up at their wedding and her husband John who died a young man. Granny rethinks about her life as a mother and her c... ... middle of paper ... ... she was scared and alone. With the Grandmother, she already prepared to die if anything happens. She doesn’t have to wear the fancy outfit for the trip but she did it anyways. At the end, she refuses to die and begs for survival. In the end, she realized the error of her ways in the story and that even with the difference between her and The Misfit, they are both the same in sin. Both the grandmother has reach an understanding of fear of death and have self-discover who they really are their whole lives. Both the grandmothers are different in many ways. Their actions and views towards the people and world they know are different. In the end however, no matter how they live their lives and how they treat other people, they both have to face the same reality. Everyone will face death either they like it or not and they will have to face who they truly are in the end.
The Grandmother often finds herself at odds with the rest of her family. Everyone feels her domineering attitude over her family, even the youngest child knows that she's "afraid she'd miss something she has to go everywhere we go"(Good Man 2). Yet this accusation doesn't seem to phase the grandmother, and when it is her fault alone that the family gets into the car accident and is found by the Misfit, she decides to try to talk her way out of this terrible predicament.
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...
From the very beginning of this story, it came to my attention that Granny continually repeats are "there's nothing wrong with me" and "that's for tomorrow.” This repetition, to me, shows two very important aspects about Granny Weatherall as a person – she’s stubborn and hardworking, yet procrastinates all the time. When she felt death come upon her on her bed that day, she wasn't expecting it. We know this because of the repetition of all that she needs to do and that she'll get it done tomorrow. At the same, who can blame her for not expecting it? I mean, who really expects to die every day they wake up? Sure, one knows they are going to die, but they don’t wake up planning it to happen that day. Aside from that, it stood out to me that Granny Weatherall didn’t fail to mention that she thought she was going to die once before during her sixties. From this near death experience, she somehow, in my opinion, allowed herself to think she was invisible and immortal simply because she managed to survive.
Though the grandmother dies in the end, O’Connor’s use of foreshadowing, characterization, and a distinct point of view lead me to believe this is the beginning of a different life for The Misfit. After he kills the grandmother The Misfit immediately starts cleaning his glasses, an indication that he sees the world in a different way. He had originally thought there was no pleasure in anything but cruelty, eventually the Misfit decides “It’s no real pleasure in life.” He had wanted to see Jesus raise the dead more than anything, and The Misfit ultimately got his wish; the grandmother had a last minute relief from her unbearable pomposity and then died, presumably redeemed. And the Misfit finds a glimpse of human empathy and compassion from the last woman we would have expected it from.
This essay will contrast a good and evil concept between two different stories. There is an obvious distinction that stands out between the stories; however they are similar in one way. In A Worn Path (Eudora Welty) and A Good Man is Hard to Find (Flannery O’Conner) the one thing that sticks out, is the main character in both stories. The main character in both stories being the grandmother. Grandmothers are of course an important part of the family. In each story we have a grandmother of a different race, appearance, and attitude. In each story the grandmothers take different journeys, but there is one thing they both face being treated disrespected. We live in a world in which the grandmother resides with the family and helps to take care of the grandchildren. In the world today things are different and times are still hard if not harder. We live in a time when respect is no longer earned. Now days it seems as if respect is not as important as it was in earlier years and it is evident in these two stories.
The grandmother; is not godly, prayerful, or trustworthy but she is a troublesome character. She raised her children without spirutuality, because she is not a believer, she is Godless.
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.
From the realization that Granny Weatherall doesn't have much time left, being eighty years old, it is easy to sympathize with her. Granny is an old woman who is constantly nagged by her daughter, Cornelia, about being old and not wanting her to do anything around the house. I can relate to that perfectly. My grandfather was very ill because of the chemotherapy he took when battling lung cancer in the summer of 1999. He ended up dying in August of that year, but he never thought of himself as being sick. On the contrary though, Granny sees this as a setback because she is not sick, even though she is on her deathbed, and feels the doctor should, "Get along and doctor your sick. Leave a well woman alone" (271). Granny also scolds Doctor Harry by saying, "Where were you forty years ago when I pulled through with milk-leg and double pneumonia?" (271). While being aware of her condition before, I feel it is simpler to understand why she didn't want Cornelia around because she was such a nuisance. Cornelia only made it worse for her, being her daughter, as she, "and Doctor Harry were whispering together" (271).
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).
As they speak with one another The Misfit collectively sends members of the family into the woods. Before long the family is all killed and only the grandmother remains. At this point the reader can sense what will happen next. The grandmother is becoming deeply religious as her death nears her. Finally the grandmother realizes she is no better than The Misfit and touches him on the shoulder. O’Connor demonstrates the dominant grandmother finally does not get her way. She is shot three times and thrown into the ditch soon after (Bloom
She only cares for herself and uses her manipulative skills to trick the other characters into doing what she wants. However, she views herself to be of higher moral standings than the other characters. If the grandmother has any lesson for the reader, the lesson is that no matter how tricky one is or how high one holds their standards to be, not everyone gets their way all the
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
The narrator says “I am not sick” (Porter 77). Granny becomes angry as the doctor examines her because she thinks she is healthy when in actuality she on her death bed. The dreadful memories that Granny has been harboring in her mind for so long are contributing to her current mental state of scattered thoughts. The attitude Granny shows toward the doctor is hostile because of all the loss in her life. Granny keeps her faith although, but in her dying moment she asks for a sign from God. Granny kept her life in order but never has true devoutness towards God because of the guilt she felt and her incapability to forgive George. Memories that Granny represses impacts her negatively causing her not to live a life that she desired. Granny’s death at eighty years old was unexpected to her even though she been preparing for death since she was sixty. The amount of memories Granny still has to face keeps her drive alive to keep on living. Granny wants to live long enough to get over her humiliation and forgive
In the essay " a celebration of grandfathers", the author was trying to prove a point and i believe his point was to remember and respect not just your grandparents but all your elders for one day one will miss them,they will be gone. The author was brought up as a respectful child.To respect his elders. the author today now tries to teach young people of our time to do and be the same,respectful. The grandfather, in his older age of course begins to become weaker and can't work or probably think the way he use to. however 'this process is something to be faces, not hidden away by false images. Dying is something that must occur in a person's life when his grandfather said "death is only this small transformation in life" He learns that he
The difference between my two grandmothers is evident, yet it is difficult to deny that my heart holds a special place for both of them. What is left to say about grandmothers? In the end, God saw every thing He had made, and, behold, it was very good. God blessed the seventh day, for it was the day of rest, and He blessed us all when he created