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Flannery o'connor literary analysis
The life you save may be your own meaning
Flannery O'Connor story analysis from the author
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“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. From the story, O’ Connor wrote, “She had long pink‑gold hair and eyes as blue as a peacock's neck” (Connor); in this sentence, the description described the dressing of Mrs. Crater. However, a peacock was mentioned; peacocks in literature often symbol nobility, beauty, and mystery. In this case, mystery would be the suitable symbolism …show more content…
for peacocks. With a sense of mystery, Mrs. Crater’s hair color wasn’t usually the type of color for an old woman who already had a daughter who was nearly thirty-two-year-old. Also, the name for Mrs. Crater’s daughter was exactly the same as hers: Lucynell Crater. People often added a junior behind the offspring of a person if they had the same name; but in the story, Mrs. Crater and Ms. Crater had the exact same first name, which made readers wonder why. Next, by looking at the second paragraph, “The daughter, a large girl in a short blue organdy dress, saw him all at once and jumped up and began to stamp and point and make excited speechless sounds.” (Connor), the body language of Ms. Crater gave the readers a lot of suspense. The moment when Ms. Crater first saw Mr. Shiftlet came up the road, she made excited speechless sounds; but as a reader, we can’t tell why she was so excited. Different objects and motions displayed in the story foreshadowed the following plot and created mystery. At the third paragraph, Mr. Shiftlet first came to the farm wearing a black suit with a brown hat, “He had on a black town suit and a brown felt hat that was turned up in the front and down in the back and he carried a tin tool box by a handle” (Connor). Black often represent death or a negative feeling, which readers can inferred that there might be some tragedy later in the story. Mr. Shiftlet brown hat might symboled death or the renunciation of his life as well. However, at the second paragraph, “The daughter, a large girl in a short blue organdy dress, saw him all at once and jumped up and began to stamp and point and make excited speechless sounds” (Connor), Ms. Crater’s blue organdy dress gave readers the impression of hope, love, and naïve. Also, when she was getting married with Mr. Shiftlet, “Lucynell was dressed up in a white dress that her mother had uprooted from a trunk and there was a Panama hat on her head with a bunch of red wooden cherries on the brim” (Connor), the white dress she wore represented the girl’s innocence and purity. The color white of her wedding dress showed the readers with the feeling of a bright future, which might suggested the sweet life of Mr. Shiftlet and Ms. Crater. Last but not least, Mr. Shiftlet painted the car dark green with a yellow band around it under the windows. The green on the car was also considered as a regeneration of soul and a new start. Nonetheless, the yellow band suggested betrayal or treason. The two colors gave a strong contrast between the meanings of the colors. The colors hidden in the stories gave clues to what might happen in later of the story or linked back to some conversation in the story. Throughout the whole story, situational irony left its trace everywhere.
“Although the old woman lived in this desolate spot with only her daughter and she had never seen Mr. Shiftlet before, she could tell, even from a distance, that he was a tramp and no one to be afraid of” (Connor), Mrs. Crater said Mr. Shiftlet was a tramp and no one to be afraid of; however, Mr. Shiftlet proved her wrong by leaving her daughter Ms. Crater in The Hot Spot and drove the car away by himself. Next, “‘Lady,’ he asked finally, ‘where would you find you an innocent woman today’? I wouldn't have any of this trash I could just pick up.’”(Connor). From the quote that was spoken by Mr. Shiftlet, he appeared to be looking for an innocent woman, or an honest woman to marry. However, he did found an innocent woman, but he abandoned her at the end. If Ms. Crater was the innocent woman he was looking for, then why did he dumped her at the end and moved on to Mobile with a stolen car? Another example was given when Mr. Shiftlet first stayed at the farm. “‘Why listen, Lady,’ he said with a grin of delight, ‘the monks of old slept in their coffins!’”(Connor). In this conversation, Mrs. Crater could only offer him to sleep in the car. Then, Mr. Shiftlet compared himself to monks who slept in their coffins and that he could definitely sleep in the car. However, at the end of the story, he stole Mrs. Crater’s car, who was his host, that’s not what a monk would do. With the situational irony in the story, it provided many unexpected ending at the end of the story and displayed the changes that happened to the
characters. In conclusion, symbolism throughout the story created suspense for the readers, and the color imagery provided more suspense with the hidden meanings of colors. Last but not least, situational irony demonstrated the difference of a person at the beginning and at the end, and provided unexpected plots for the readers.
In the book Soldier's Heart By Gary Paulsen the main theme is how war changes a person.
The social group of women is often focused on by Gwen Harwood within Selected Poems of Gwen Harwood through the themes of motherhood and domestic life which play an integral role in many of her poems. These themes define a stereotypical role for women representing them as subordinate in a patriarchal society through a range of her poems such as In the Park, The Violets and Prize Giving. Harwood portrays women as subservient and inferior, with the main purpose to be household mothers and wives which was based on society’s expectations during Harwood’s time however her later poems such as Father and Child develop to contain hope for societal progression through occasionally defying these stereotypes.
The drama, Mission of Mercy, by Esther Lipnick is a very inspiring read. It tells about a girl who doesn’t want to be like her proper, fancy family at all. Instead she wants to become a nurse. She leaves her home and becomes a nurse. It inspires me because both of my parents, and other family members of mine, are teachers, although I’m not going to be one. Mission of Mercy is a drama that could inspire many people to go for what they want, even if other people don’t always approve of it. Florence changes throughout all of the the scenes 1, 2, and 3.
I enjoyed reading Disciplined Hearts by Theresa O'Nell because i find that many people today do not know a lot about the Native American culture and what they have been through. Their cultures history is not talked about as much the African American or Hispanic's are. Most Americans know about the hardships that the African American and Hispanics had to overcome to assimilate to the level that they are today. I think O'Nell is trying to talk about the history of the Native American culture because, she believes that the reason that their culture is not well-known because of the fact that they have chosen to keep living like their ancestors and not assimilate to the American culture.
There are many policy issues that affect families in today’s society. Hunger is a hidden epidemic and one major issue that American’s still face. It is hard to believe that in this vast, ever growing country, families are still starving. As stated in the book Growing Up Empty, hunger is running wild through urban, rural, and even suburban communities. This paper will explore the differing perspectives of the concerned camp, sanguine camp, and impatient camp. In addition, each camps view, policy agenda, and values that underlie their argument on hunger will be discussed.
In Flannery O’Connor’s “Revelation” a woman, as the title implies, who experiences a revelation. Pigs are an important symbol in the protagonist’s, Ruby Turpin’s, revelation. Throughout Ruby’s journey to her revelation, pigs appear frequently in “Revelation” and are important to Ruby’s revelation at the end of the story. Pigs reflect several aspects of Ruby’s life, primarily her perceptions. Ultimately, pigs reflect Ruby’s true character throughout the entire story.
A Stolen Life by Jaycee Lee Dugard is an autobiography recounting the chilling memories that make up the author’s past. She abducted when she was eleven years old by a man named Phillip Garrido with the help of his wife Nancy. “I was kept in a backyard and not allowed to say my own name,” (Dugard ix). She began her life relatively normally. She had a wonderful loving mother, a beautiful baby sister,, and some really good friends at school. Her outlook on life was bright until June 10th, 1991, the day of her abduction. The story was published a little while after her liberation from the backyard nightmare. She attended multiple therapy sessions to help her cope before she had the courage to share her amazing story. For example she says, “My growth has not been an overnight phenomenon…it has slowly and surely come about,” (D 261). She finally began to put the pieces of her life back together and decided to go a leap further and reach out to other families in similar situations. She has founded the J A Y C Foundation or Just Ask Yourself to Care. One of her goals was, amazingly, to ensure that other families have the help that they need. Another motive for writing the book may have also been to become a concrete form of closure for Miss Dugard and her family. It shows her amazing recovery while also retelling of all of the hardships she had to endure and overcome. She also writes the memoir in a very powerful and curious way. She writes with very simple language and sentence structures. This becomes a constant reminder for the reader that she was a very young girl when she was taken. She was stripped of the knowledge many people take for granted. She writes for her last level of education. She also describes all of the even...
In the short story “A Kind of Courage” by Ruth Sterling, the protagonist, Davy, is trying to win Ginny’s heart.
Throughout reading this novel, my thought on transgender and transsexual individuals was pretty set and stone. For example, I knew from reading the textbook that a transgender is a person that is born—in Jenny’s case—a male, but was psychologically and emotionally born a female. However, Jenny took things one-step further and became a transsexual, which is an individual that underwent surgery to obtain the genitals that match the psychological and emotional gender within, which in her case was a female. Therefore, Jenny Finney Boylan would be considered a transsexual female. What I did not know prior to reading this book is how tedious the process is to make a sex change. To be honest I never thought about the process a transsexual needed to go through to become one’s self, I did not think about the many steps taken to obtain the voice, or look of a female that Jenny was striving for. I also did not think about the surgery, and how scary that type of surgery could actually be. For example, on page 124 Jennifer is discussing the process of transition with her psychologist, Dr. Strange. On this page Dr. Strange is beginning to inform Jenny, and essentially myself, on how to begin the transition of becoming a female. First Dr. Strange was listing off the effects the hormones will have on Jenny’s body, and I first they made sense to me; softer skin, fluffier hair, but I never knew the physical changes hormones could have on someone, especially a man. For instance, I learned that there is such a thing called “fat migration.” This is when the fat on previous parts of your body migrates to another location. I learned from this novel that fat migration is a result of hormones, and since Jenny was once a man, her face would become less r...
The author begins the story with a strong statement, “I found myself in a Chinese funeral parlor because of a phone call I made to my cleaning lady” (Schmitt); it takes the reader right into the funeral parlor and draws the reader into the story: how she got to the funeral parlor and what she doing there was the question I had. She starts the story with some background about how she got to China. Then moves on to the funeral that was happening in her neighbors’ home. She describes how the family was grievously weeping as she was walking toward her apartment. She noticed what happened and wonder why they were weeping. “Do you know why the neighbors are very sad?” she asked her cleaning lady.
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 the novel “Shane”, by Jack Schaefer, Marian, the wife of Joe and the mother of Bob is initially played out to be a very simple character. She cooks and cleans and cares for her family. She starts to develop a more complex character as Shane arrives. You can tell from the beginning that Marian wants to impress her guest with her cooking and her curiosity of the latest fashions. But as the novel progresses you begin to see that Marian may want more from Shane than originally shown.
Religion and nature are both thought to bring beauty to life. Religion gives some a purpose to live while for others, nature provides a natural escape from the problems of modern day life. However, author Flannery O’ Connor uses both of these elements in her short story, The Life You Save May Be Your Own, for a different purpose. Religion and nature provide the reader with insight into the main character, Tom Shiflet, a troubled drifter with one arm who comes into the lives of the Crater women and leaves them abruptly. Shiflet’s moral corruption is represented in the story’s weather change and the numerous Christian symbols that surround the various characters.
Shiftlet drives to the courthouse and gets married with Lucynell, while the Senior Lucynell is a witness. Mr. Shiftlet is not satisfied with the act of signing of papers, and he mentions again that if they cut his heart out they still wouldn’t know anything about him. He says that he was raised knowing that he should send his wife to a hotel and a nice dinner, but since he had no money to do that, he ‘milked’ the Senior Lucynell for seventeen, fifty dollars for a modest honeymoon. Mr. Shiftlet and the young Lucynell take a trip for their honeymoon and the Senior Lucynell felt pained saying goodbye to her daughter for the first time, but she knew or she thought she knew that they were going to come back in two
In the book This Song Will Save Your Life written by Leila Sales, the main character, Elise Dembowski, struggles with accepting herself for who she is. Elise spends the summer of ninth grade completely renovating herself. She tries to study pop culture, update her wardrobe, and exercise. Elise’s first day of school does not go too well, and she struggles to make new friends. When a final attempt at popularity fails, Elise stumbles upon an underground warehouse club where she meets Vicky, a girl in a band; Pippa, a carefree spirit from England; Char, a charming DJ; and most importantly, her newfound love for DJing. This witty novel shows a brave protagonist, characterization, and an abundance of complicated conflicts.