ENGL 4310

I want to write something about the "Free Radicals" story, yet I'm not entirely sure what. This story obviously fit into the "when a stranger comes to town" archetype, so I'm not sure what to say about that. I do have a question though, and hopefully it will be brought up in class. I have NO idea what the whole "poisoning the girl my husband was sleeping with" thing was about. I get that Nita pretended to be Bett, but I wasn't sure whether Bett had actually attempted to poison Nita (and Nita found out about it), or whether Nita just thought that if she had been Bett, she would have tried to poison the person putting her marriage in danger. Any clarifications on this?

Also, Is it weird that I connected the guy with (ah I forget his name...if there was a name) the guy in O'Connor's story where the guy marries the girl for the car and ends up leaving her. I know that is pure coincidence, but I think this story is somewhat O'Connor-esque (if that's a word I can make up). However, I don't think that O'Connor would kill him in a car crash. She would probably have let him go on living...or at least never tell us what happened to him. Does anyone agree/disagree?

"Free Radicals" by Alice Munro.

Let us explore the matter of the "Stranger Comes to Town" in a very current form.

I thoroughly enjoyed O'Connor's Writing Short Stories Essay, she is so down to earth and hilarious. While reading I kept the question "Does O'Connor describe the things she does in her own writing?" in the back of my mind. She stresses that fiction writing is a matter of showing things rather than a matter of saying things. I believe wholeheartedly that her writing is faithful to what she stressed, at least upon this point. I am captivated by O'Connor's imagery. In every story there are visual pictures painted for us that neither have, nor necessitate an explanation. For example, Parker's Back's image of the whipped and beaten Christ portrayed on his back under the tree; The vivid picture of Norton throwing up at the beginning of The lame shall Enter First; The mirror images of characters presented in Everything that Rises must Converge and The Artificial Nigger. I could go on and on and there are often multiple images in a single story. I've begun, also, to notice reoccurring images in some of her stories or echos, if you will, of the same image. Again, like in The Lame Shall Enter First where we see Norton eating garbage while his father describes seeing Johnson eating garbage. I am always in awe of the visual stimulation O'Connor provides in her stories. The visions she describes her characters as having literally become a vision for the reader and I believe that is what captivates, at least me as a reader.
I can't help but look at Porter as well in this regard. Some of her stories that speak to me most, He, are pictures painted for us, characters and lives described with no explanation necessary. Two other comments struck me in her article. First, that we, as readers ourselves, may not be able to describe the connections we've made in the story: "He may not even know that he makes the connection, but the connection is there nevertheless and it has its effect on him." When we do put words to that connection, it is long after we have experienced the effect. Second, I liked her comment that a short story must be still complete and that a complete story is "one in which the action fully illuminates the meaning." Again, I believe she accomplishes this. It is through her imagery and vision that we attain the must meaning in her stories.

So on Thursday we sort of classified "A&P" as a pseudo-epiphany story in which Sammy has a moment of insight but there isn't really a moment of realization. For some reason, though, this idea of a pseudo-epiphany doesn't really sit well with me. It seems that an epiphany is an all or nothing kind of thing, so how can he only go part of the way? In the story, I felt like he did have an epiphany, but he either chose not to share it with the reader or refused to acknowledge it for himself.

So here's what I'm thinking...maybe he subconsciously chose not to accept the epiphany. For me, it seems like there is an epiphany when he watches the girls walk "against the usual traffic," in their bathing suits, while the "sheep" abruptly avert their eyes. Sammy clearly recognizes that these girls are breaking the social norms by their disruptive behavior. He calls the other customers "sheep" which could just be some kind of inside joke, or perhaps he actually realizes that they are all the same. He admires these girls, but we don't really know if it's because of his adolescent hormones or because they, unlike so many others, are going against the traffic. At the end when he quits his job on the basis that his boss humiliated the girls, maybe it's because, unconsciously, he sees the significance of breaking the norm. However, once he's realized that he is now unemployed and will soon face the wrath of his parents, all he can think is, "crap, what now?" Maybe he never has a chance to share his epiphany with the reader because of the uncomfortable situation he places himself in, or maybe, all along, he only recognized the epiphany on a subconscious level.

After reading what O'Connor had to say about writing short stories, I feel just as I did before. It's just one more person saying "Well, this is what I think." Be that as it may, I think that I agree with a lot of what she says. I think that writing short stories just happens naturally. I love when she wrote about her writing of "Good Country People" because she didn't even start off with the girl with the wooden leg and the bible salesman. They simply appeared in her writing process.

I also love that she states that she didn't know what a "frame-within-a-frame" short story was because that is the type of thing we learn about in school. It makes me wonder sometimes if the best writers are those who just do it, and those who can't do it learn all about technique and all that (okay, I take it back, I know most English majors would kill me for saying that!).

I still think that writing short stories is just natural. As O'Connor says, it's one of the "Most natural and fundamental ways of human expression" (87). I hate saying that you just have to do it to know it, but I feel a little better knowing that that is exactly what O'Connor said. The less you know about what you are writing the better in her mind (though that is the exact opposite of how I roll. I always have to outline and all that crap before I write anything!).

I hate to be one of those people that says, “Well, the only way to know the difference between a short story and a novel is to write them.” But, maybe the only way to know the difference is to experience the work behind it. In class on Tuesday we talked a lot about the way stories felt. Some stories feel like a short story. Some stories feel like a novel. This idea of feeling is interesting in this context, because it is so individualized. But I’ve done it.

In Kay’s playwriting class, I had an idea for my one act play. It scared me, because it just kept feeling like a short story to me. I talked to her about it and she said to just try it as a play. I did and I hate it, it is a short story. It feels like a short story. But I know that Kay could take the same idea and make it a play. Maybe this is why writing is so hard to teach to someone else. It is all about feeling things.

Okay I got side tracked, but I think the same feeling principle can be used for the short story vs. novel. There is this almost innate (though I hate using that word) thing that happens with writing. A writer will see something, say a sparrow landing on a tree, and it was important to them. So they take that moment and write it. It could turn into anything, fiction, nonfiction, poem, play, what have you. But for that writer, they know what this moment is and where it belongs. They can just feel what it wants to be. And it happens. And sometimes it works, if you are lucky.
Maybe it can all go back to this idea of feeling, for both the reader and the writer. The reader needs to feel it just as much as the writer. It is the contract they both sign. Perhaps the answer in the question goes back to that thing about writing that we, I, can’t put my finger on, the idea of feeling and knowing.

Here's a link to the Flannery O'Connor self statement on the writing of short stories. It's a PDF file, and it is full of her standard distrust of academic matters. In any case, I think it will fuel a good discussion for us on Tuesday.

"Writing Short Stories" by Flannery O'Connor from Mystery and Manners FSG 1962.

It is upsidedown, but you can fix that when you print it by manually rotating the pages 180 degrees. I know, how old school is that?

Enjoy, and get some sleep.

While looking up the epiphany stories in one of my old anthologies I stumbled upon a question answer section in the book and found some addressing the short story that I thought were interesting. After I read some of the blogs in response to epiphanies in the stories we just read, I wanted to share them with you all to see what you think.

Question:

Is there anything new to say about the American short story that Edgar Allan Poe
hasn't already said in his famous remarks about Hawthorne's short stories?

Answered by Joyce Carol Oates:

Poe's remarks are inappropriate to our time, and in fact to the marvelous
modern tradition of the story that begins with Chekhov, Joyce,
Conrad, and James. Speculation about short fiction should probably
remain minimal since "speculation" about most works of art is usually a
waste of time. Those of us who love the practice of an art often hate
theorizing because it is always theorizing based upon past models: as
such, it must inevitably incline toward the conservative, the reactinary, the
exhortative, the school of should and should not. Genuine artists create their own modes of art and nothing interest them except the free play of the imagination. . . .It isn't true short stories are necessarily short.

I'm not sure which section of Poe's essay she is responding too, but perhaps
not the excerpt I shared with you on effect. I think some of her argument is relevent, but I have difficulting thinking Poe's remarks inappropriate for our time when we are still reading what was written in his time. I do really like what Poe has to say it that it is helpful to me as a reader. I like this next comment of Faulkner because I seems to reitterate some of the things Poe said and is reminisant of all I'v ever been taught and believed about short stories.

Question:

Mr. Faulkner, you spoke about The Sound and the Fury as starting out to write a
short story and it kept growing. Well now, do you think that it's easier to write a novel than a short story?

Answer from William Faulkner:

Yes sir. You can be more careless, you can put more trashin it and be excused for it. In a short story that's next to the poem, almost every word has got to be almost exactly right. In the novel you can be careless but in the short story you can't. I mean by that the good short stories like Cheknov worte. That's why I rate that second--it's because it demands a nearer absolute exactitude. You have less room to be slovenly and careless. There's less room in it for trash. In poetry, of course, there's no room at all for trash. It's got to be absoulutely impeccable, absolutely perfect.

Comment by A.L. Bader:

Any teacher who has ever confronted a class with representative modern short
stories will remember the disappointment, the puzzled "so-what" attitude, "They
just end," or "They're not real stories" are frequent criticisms. . . Sometimes the phrase "nothing happens" seems to mean that nothing significant happens, but in a great many cases it means that the modern short story is charged with a lack of narrative structure. Readers and critics accumstomed to an older type of story are baffled by a newer type. They sense the underlying and unifying design of the one, but they find nothing equivalent to it in the other. Hence they maintain that the modern short story is plotless, static, fragmentary, amorphous--frequently a mere character sketch or vignette, or a mere reporting of a transient moment, or the capturing of a mood or nuance--everthing in fact, except a story.

I like this comment because It helps explain the difference in early short stories and more modern ones, and yet I still believe Poe's idea of every word contributing to still be true. Some stories or epiphanies within the story seem to come out of nowhere, but if we were to re-evaluate the story I think we'd see is just seemed more suttle, perhaps more true to life (or realistic). It like our epiphanies come out of everyday experiences to suprise or enlighten us.

I'm starting to come to the conclusion, that, well there isn't an exact precise boundary between novel and short story. Like (was it Chelsea?) said, it seems to me that the definitions of both are created culturally. But a much broader, vaguer description came to me as I read our three short stories.
Someone said in class Tuesday that story-telling is a natural, human characteristic. How many times have we had to sit through a story from a older relative, or perhaps had to empathize with a friend as she went on about something she realized. This word, "realize" is so key in understanding a short story. When someone is sharing a story about something that happened, whether it was years ago or just the other day, there was something that made them remember, and what I've noticed it is because that person came to a new understanding of something. When the couple in "The Gift of the Magi" realized the irony of their situation, it was worthy to tell, because they both discovered something new...that epiphany we have been talking about. Now what a novel or novella on the other hand seems to do, is provide not only an epiphany or realization of the characters, it provides all the detail for the reader to lead into some climax or obstacle and show the character(s) coming to some life altering conclusion about how to deal with said obstacle. Perhaps it is like the difference of catching up with Mom and she relates some noteworthy experience she had at work, or watching a movie, where each detail is constructed for us.

So here is the thing I kept forgetting in class on Tuesday:

Neena kept using the word “control.” Here is my take on the short story. I have a theory (that I, myself, can think of exceptions to, but let’s move past that—there will be exceptions to everything).

I think a way to set a short story apart from a novel (and a novel from a novella and a short story from a piece of micro-fiction, etc.) is to look at what is asked of the reader. It is my opinion that the longer the piece of work is, the less work the reader is asked to do. If someone reads ^War and Peace, they are not asked to fill in a lot of details. Most of them are in the text. Whereas if we read a one-sentence story by Lydia Davis, “Samuel Johnson is indignant that Scotland has so few trees,” we have to fill in ^a lot of details on our own. (By the way, her story isn’t really her writing; it is a statement made by James Boswell that she’s displayed as a story—like dada-ish “found” art. It’s a found story.)

To localize this theory, of sorts, we could return to the story that won’t rest with me: ^Theft. That story requires ^a lot of work brought to the table by a reader. In order to make sense of that story, there is work to be done.

Now, this is not to say that novels ^don’t require work from a reader. They do. It’s just that it’s a different kind of work—maybe even a voluntary work. In books worth reading, there is always something past the surface events. So in a novel worth reading, there is work to be done by a reader—but it’s not the same as basic work to be done to come to ^any understanding of the text.

In my Theatre History course right now, we are on absurdism. We are talking about Beckett right now—we just read and watched ^Play. And especially with absurdism, the work is all reader’s/viewers. Something is presented (in this case, three people in urns speaking quickly and in mostly monotone, there is repetition, there is no ^easy conflict or conclusion…) and the reader of this “text” is left to sort it all out.

So that’s getting off-topic, but basically, I think there is something to be said for what the reader is asked to bring to the table. That may help us to differentiate the short story from the novel. This actually touches on the idea of resolution vs. epiphany. The short story states, “this thing happened to end in a change,” and the novel goes on to explain what resulted because of that change.

I keep thinking about the article Neena handed out to the class on Tuesday, and I've decided that I agree with Poe. I think short stories may be one of my favorite genres simply for the reason that they produce a "single effect" without cessation. When I read, I often become engrossed in the story, as I'm sure many of us do, and when this happens in a novel, I inevitably have to set it down and this abruptly takes me out of the story. Even though I can still think about it, I don't feel engrossed in the plot anymore and when I do have a chance to revisit the novel, the effect is not the same because it takes me a while to get back into the swing of things and, often times, I even have to re- read the previous chapter in order to refresh my memory. So, for me, the short story does produce a "single effect," whereas the novel produces multiple effects as a result of multiple readings.

I was also thinking about how little kids like to see the same movie multiple times or hear the same bedtime story over and over, and I wonder if it just comes from a comfort of knowing what will happen next. When I read a short story for the second time, there are very few things I forget since the first time and so I feel confident to explore other avenues that I may have previously missed. Conversely, when I re-read a novel for a second time, there is so much information that I missed the first time, and so I feel like I have to read a novel more than two or even three times in order to grasp everything. Neena talked in her blog about how a short story is kind of in between a novel in a poem. In a poem, every word and punctuation counts and must be considered when doing an analysis. In a novel, every word and action may be important, but it cannot be analyzed the same way as a poem. The short story, however, allows the author to emphasize certain things that are more likely to grab the readers' attention because there isn't as much information to process. This allows the reader to explore every aspect of the story, which would be incredibly difficult to do with a long novel.

After reading the three selections on epiphanies, a question comes to mind: Should an epiphany come out of nowhere, or should the entire story lead up to it?

"Araby" by James Joyce and "A&P" by John Updike both seemed to come from nowhere. The boy has been shopping for a gift and then suddenly decides he doesn't need one because he is vain. He didn't have a single inkling of this fact before, nor did the reader (at least, I didn't. Obviously it is vain to want to impress a girl he likes, but it's so common that it doesn't seem to phase me). And In "A&P" the guy suddenly decides to quit, just because. If he was doing it to impress the girls, he was pretty stupid because they didn't even notice. Of course, that could have been the epiphany for him. He did something stupid and rash, and got nothing for it.

"The Gift of the Magi" was more predictable, but probably just because I've heard the story before. It had at least hinted that something like that (buying a gift that they no longer needed) was going to happen. Yet I was under the impression that this was the example of the fake epiphany. I admit that this story wasn't very well crafted in terms of the epiphany, but I thought that epiphanies were generally backed up by text, even if you didn't get it at the time. Maybe I didn't read the first two stories carefully enough, but when I was done and knew what the epiphany was....well, I wouldn't have seen it coming if I looked back and read the text again. There simply wasn't any leading up to an epiphany for me.

I liked O'Connor and Porter's epiphanies simply because they did have things that fit into the epiphany when you finally realized what it was. After having the epiphany you look back on the story and say, "Why didn't I see it coming?" But I didn't have this in these stories. I was simply surprised. Am I just biased in thinking that this is the only way an epiphany should be crafted? Did I miss something while reading those stories?

Here are some links to on-line versions of the three epiphany-based stories we would like to discuss tomorrow.

Araby by James Joyce
Gift of the Magi by O. Henry
A & P by John Updike

Enjoy!

The short story genre is so hard to define. Some places I looked at said short stories were less than 5,000 words. Others said that they were anywhere from 500 to 50,000 words. I think this is good and bad. It's good because then people get to do what they like when writing. They do not have to do certain things in order to fulfill requirements. However, as a student trying to define the genre, it is incredibly difficult to not have an actual answer. I suppose higher education is all about figuring out what you don't know.

We touched on the idea of short story spawning from storytelling, and I found an article on it that I enjoyed. I like this idea because it makes the short story seem so natural. Novels don't alway seem natural because they are so long (I still love them nonetheless!), but for me short stories often feel like I am sitting down and listening to a friend tell me a story about someone they know.

The article I read is called "A short history of the short story" by William Boyd (website address http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=7447). I like the beginning of the article where Boyd discusses the possibility of short stories being hardwired into our human discourse. I think it's true. I know that when my husband gets home, he tells me stories and I tell him mine from the day. When I see a family member or friend, it's the same. Telling stories is what we do. It only seems natural to write short stories because it's just a written version of what we do in everyday life.

Anyway, I still am not quite sure what defines a short story, but I do think that we instinctual recognize them when we encounter them.

I've been thinking all weekend about what defines a short story and also trying to remember some of the ones I've read in the past so that I can better define, for me, what a short story embodies. We talked about in class how a short story seeks to tell a story with a revelation whereas a novel seeks to tell a story with a resolution. Nearly all of the short stories from both Porter and O'Connor do have some kind of revelation at the end, but I was wondering if the definition I mentioned above applied to the reader or the characters in the story. In "He," "Good Country People" and many others, the characters ultimately have some kind of revelation and we are left wondering how they are changed by that experience. However, I have read other short stories that I felt left the main characters relatively unchanged at the conclusion of the story, while I, as the reader, have experienced some kind of revelation.

One example of a short story I was thinking of was Stephen Crane's "The Open Boat." In the story, we begin with four men (I think) stranded in a boat out in the ocean and the entire story focuses on their struggle for survival. At the end, all but one of the characters reaches land alive. Undoubtedly, these characters have been changed by this experience, but I don't feel like they had any kind of revelation. As I was reading, I didn't really feel like I had some huge revelation either. However, looking back on the story, there are several small things that I think the story was trying to point out. Since this story was created out of the literary movement of Naturalism, perhaps Crane was more focused on showing the reader the powerful forces of nature rather than giving us some deeper insight into the lives of the characters. If this is the case, I'm not sure that the previous definition applies.

Before we d0 a lot of research and discussion of the short story, I wanted, out of my own curiosity, to record how I have learned (I realize my own experience reading and taking lit classes etc. have shaped my understanding) to define the short story. When I think of defining the short story, I want to establish a basis for judgment according to the genres of poetry and the novel (have I just learned to do this?). I tend to compare these three not necessarily according to form, but from a personal experience of reading and writing.
First, poetry is such a precise means of communicating ideas, images, or some sort of story, theme etc. As a reader I know that every word is important and significant to the overall meaning of the poem., every word contributes. Novels are a much more relaxed form of writing and therefore language less qualifying. We are told a story, but there may be digressions that, though they may contribute to tone or mood of a particular moment or a character at a given point, it may not express an importance to the main themes etc. of the book. A short story falls somewhere in-between. Because it is much shorter, there is less room for unimportant or insignificant information. I have always understood that any image, character, scene, etc. is important to the whole of a short story. It is there for a reason and it creates an overall unity. I remember a teacher in one of my classes telling us to ask “why is that in there?” both when we write and when we read.
Because a short story is short, I’ve learned to pay closer attention to repetitions in words or phrase use, in colors or images. I’ve learned they are clues to help in understanding the story. These can be, but aren’t always, important in a novel and there is more room in a to deviate from the main ideas to form many more themes. I’ve learned to pay attention to the opening of stories. In a novel that first chapter can tell you a lot. In a short story that important set up for the story is compacted into a few paragraphs, so I always reread the opening as well as the ending few paragraphs. One teacher I had claimed that everything about the outcome of a short story was there somewhere in the opening few paragraphs. I think it could be a strong argument.
Well, that’s not much. I believe in stories for stories sake. I love them for pure entertainment, but I recognize that the more unified the elements, the more effective the story becomes and the more I enjoy rereading them. The more unified or “tight” they are I find that I learn more or see more in a reread as I recognize more fully those contributing elements.

Our discussion in class today spawned some other thought processes of mine about the personable more character natured writing that Porter creates versus the more issue/situational stories that O'Connor seems to focus on. Again, I always have to tie in my own experiences off in some tangent, but walking home from class I really asked myself, what is it that I have discovered reading Porter? One thing that interests me is this unfamiliar territory that Porter writes about that touch me very personally, which is taking the perspective of a young woman, who comes to some epiphany and finds something about herself. These "ah ha!" moments are so interesting to me because they really are turning points that spark momentum in a character to keep them moving in a certain direction in their life.
For me, (there I go again) these realizations, like the woman in "Theft," are what I look for everyday, although they seem to come very uncommonly. I don't know, perhaps it is the dramatic success of a sudden "lightbulb" of an epiphany that thrills me. But it is also somehow an awakening to the fact that I am, finally entering a realm where I have to be an adult, no matter how "adult" I thought I was yesterday, or three years ago when I was still nineteen. Each epiphany provides a realization of the fact that I am still learning so much about who I am, reminding me that I am still so naive and young. Maybe that's what is so fresh about Porter's characters. They, like all of us, think they've figured everything out so far, only to realize that they still had something to learn.

We cannot break the Ten Commandments. We can only break ourselves against them.
-Cecil B. DeMille, director of The Ten Commandments

We have Flannery O'Connor, a writer who uses Christian themes, imagery, and symbolism in her work. I started out with the intention of compiling a list of the times the eighth commandment - "Thou shalt not steal" - was broken in her stories (and in Porter's stories, as well), but then decided it might be more fruitful to look at the hugely influential list of The Ten Commandments as a whole, see what commandments were broken where, when, and by whom, and see if that got me anywhere good.

I. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
One of the things I've heard and discussed often in church settings is that "having other gods" isn't just as clearly defined as actually getting on your knees and praying to a figure that is not the true God. Anything that takes the place of God in our hearts as the item or idea or _____ that we value more than Him is that "god" had before Him.
This being so, we have "gods" before God all over the place. Sheppard in "The Lame Shall Enter First" doesn't claim belief in any god at all; his godlessness and his obsession with fixing/solving the problem that is Rufus Johnson is, in effect, his god. The god that Lucynell Sr. cherishes in "The Life You Save May Be Your Own" is getting her daughter married off. Helton's gods ("Noon Wine") are his harmonicas. Every story, as far as I can tell, has an example of breaking this commandment that could work.
II. Thou shalt not make unto me any graven image.
The image of the Byzantine Christ on Parker's back in "Parker's Back" is a graven image, a depiction of the invisible God. In general, his tattoos are, according to Sarah Ruth, "a heap of vanity. Vanity of vanities," (pg. 660) indicating another sin. Actually, on page 663 we read, "They were married in the County Ordinary's office because Sarah Ruth thought churches were idolatrous." Under that interpretation, I suppose any story with a church in it could be considered to be showing a violation of this commandment ... although I can't think of any O'Connor stories that feature a church ... HOW STRANGE! Whoa. Weird. I remember that Juan and Maria Concepcion were married in a church, but other than that ... I don't think I remember an actual church. Help?
III. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.
The first instance I thought of for this commandment is when the Grandmother appears to be swearing in "A Good Man Is Hard To Find." (I found one time on the bottom of page 151, but it seems like there was another time, too ...) In general, I'm not sure I would've noticed every instance of "Lord," "God," and "Jesus" being said frivolously in the dialogue, but I assume it happened every now and then.
IV. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
Umm ... ideas? I don't remember it being notable that certain events took place on the Sabbath.
V. Honor thy father and thy mother.
Oh, boy. Which stories feature this broken commandment? "The Enduring Chill," "Everything That Rises Must Converge," "Good Country People," "A Good Man Is Hard To Find," "The Lame Shall Enter First," "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall," "Noon Wine," and "The Fig Tree." So that's a lot. We've addressed the parent/child thing a lot, and there are also several instances of a father or a mother not honoring his/her children (though that doesn't violate any of the Ten Commandments).
VI. Thou shalt not kill.
This commandment is broken in "Maria Concepcion," "Flowering Judas," "Noon Wine," "Pale Horse, Pale Rider" (if we want to look at killing in battle as a violation), and ... well ... "The Fig Tree," if you count the baby bird. "The Lame Shall Enter First" and "A Good Man Is Hard To Find," also.
VII. Thou shalt not commit adultery.
Interestingly enough, I could only find one concrete time this one was violated, and that was in "Maria Concepcion." It's also implied in "Theft" that the man in the cab is a philanderer, but it's not explicitly stated. I find it very interesting that the breaking of this commandment, one that has been so studied and salivated over and written about, should come along so rarely in Porter's work and not at all in the stories of O'Connor that we've studied. For O'Connor, a writer who deals so consistently with faltering morals and broken commandments, it's surprising that the seventh commandment, out of all of them, should not be addressed. However, the same rule that I talked about with the first commandment could apply here; maybe it's adultery anytime a spouse is replaced with something/someone else in a person's heart.
VIII. Thou shalt not steal.
We have the stolen purse in "Theft," the stolen leg in "Good Country People," the stolen (or lost, or, in any case, taken and unreturned) harmonica in "Noon Wine."
IX. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
Johnson implies false things about Sheppard in "The Lame Shall Enter First," and the villagers don't tell the whole truth about Maria Rosa's death in "Maria Concepcion," but for the most part, I can't think of any other super clear examples of this one. Ideas? There's some definite lying going on, but I don't think it's all "against thy neighbor." Hmm.
X. Thou shalt not covet.
I think of "Everything That Rises Must Converge" for this one. Julian covets a more elevated, more interesting, less common life than the one he has. Generally, I think a lot of covetousness is implied in these stories.

One of my favorite sentences comes at the end of this story, “In this moment she felt she had been robbed of an enormous number of valuable things . . . all that she had had, and all that she had missed, were lost together, and were twice lost in this landslide of remembered losses” (Porter 64). She, the main character, is suddenly filled with regret for all these things she had once had, and filled with that regret a second time. In that single moment there was such a disenchantment of the self. With every item that she lost there was a disillusionment of her. She had lost herself. It made me want to go make a list of things I could remember losing.

On another note, she is so paranoid about losing her purse in the story; her reaction after it was stolen was surprising. “She came out of the bathroom to get a cigarette from the package in the purse. The purse was gone. She dressed and made coffee, and at by the window while she drank it” (Porter 63). In the beginning of the story she seems to have almost an extension of self when it comes to the purse. She makes conscious checks on the purse and the items in it. When it comes up missing she takes her time getting dressed, makes coffee, and sits down to casually drink it? I found myself laughing a little at the fact that there was no urgency. It seemed completly out of character. It made me wonder if there was something else to it. I almost wondered if she left it out on purpose, like she wanted to have something taken. Just a thought.

I woke up the other night at about three thirty, my thoughts instantly went to Pale Horse, Pale Rider. I laid awake thinking about the dreams that haunt Miranda. These dreams seem much more than just fever dreams. The visions and images are biblical, prophetic almost. The pale rider of death visits her dreams, warns her of things to come. Yes, Adam's chances of surviving the war are scare to none, but the visions are undeniable. Death is ever present in their relationship. Miranda is preoccupied with buying or not buying bonds, with the headaches that plague her, yet death is her constant companion here. The pale rider is depicted at first as a stranger, unfamiliar. The rider invades her visions and her sense of reality. As the dreams come more and more explicate and intense, Miranda becomes more familiar with the haunt. It is not unlike the stranger coming to town in many of the other stories we have studied. The rider comes with a strong message of death. She becomes a vessel of revelation, even in the highest of her fever dreams. Yes, the things she speaks are uncontrollable, and seem to be filled with ideas that are not hers. But there is a... I want to say tent revival, quality to them.

It was also interesting to note the mind/ body complex of this story. Miranda feels alienated from her body, it becomes unfamiliar, a stranger. "The body is a curious monster, no place to live in, how could anyone feel at home there?" (Porter 313). The body and mind are disconnected and aware of one another, but only through her illness.

I'm not really able to judge when I am and when I am not being cynical. Some of the things I've said/written/thought in response to our stories have been sort of cynical, but I think some of that just comes from critical thinking and close reading. Whatever. In any case, reading and reflecting on "Good Country People" left me looking back, cynically, on what the women in our stories have been forced to learn.

What a Woman Learns in "Good Country People"

This story ... I swear ... if an acquaintance asked me to summarize it, I'd say, "Basically, this woman who's got a fake leg is super independent and doesn't trust men or people in general, and she sort of looks down on country people even though that's what she is, and then she meets this guy, this Bible salesman, who's really simple and sweet and just instantly adores her, and so SHE LETS HER GUARD DOWN FOR ONCE! And then it turns out that the guy is really a creepster, and he takes her fake leg and leaves her stranded after making out with her in a barn. Basically." And ... okay, this is where I leave behind the pretense of this being grounded in critical thinking and just confess that I'm reading this as a girl who thinks it's crappy that, in fiction and in reality, there's a tendency for women to "lose their wits," surrender their hearts, and get screwed over. If this is a text about what women are taught in relationships, then boo for that. Joy/Hulga is taught:

• She cannot trust her instincts.
• Her will ought to yield to a man's; she can be ordered around. (pg. 279: "You ain't said you loved me none. You got to say that." pg. 280: "I just want to know if you love me or dont'cher?" "Yes, yes.")
• Being vulnerable results in being taken advantage of.

What a Woman Learns in "Pale Horse, Pale Rider"

• Her role in the time of war is to be kept busy with inconsequential things.
• Her love, her one moment of hope, is gone and has deceived her (pg. 317: "... what do you think I came back for, Adam, to be deceived like this?")

What a Woman Learns in "Theft"

• She is her own thief, her own enemy. She cannot trust herself (similar to what Joy/Hulga learns in "Good Country People").
• Her mind can be made up by a man - or, even more interestingly, by a man's letter.
• The female reader could learn that the unnamed woman - the every-woman - is dispensable to all the men she encounters.

So cynical.

"Everything That Rises Must Converge," "Theft," "That Tree" and other stories by Porter and O'Connor all have something in common....hats. Now, mind you, in the eras these two others were writing, hats were a common staple in everyday attire...but interestingly the hats mentioned in these stories are ugly hats. I could be way off base, but the hats seem to reflect the people they belong too, who are naive, or being judged in someway from the person observing the hat which is usually the main character. In "Everything That Rises Must Converge," the ridiculous hat floats upon the foundation of the story, that Julian's mother is ignorant...but in reality the hat stares right back at Julian as if it is saying, "listen buddy, you are the character in this story that is supposed to learn something....you are the one whose true person will be revealed in the end."
Aside from symbolism I am interested in the appearance and style of these so-called ridiculous hats that we see in these stories...what do they actually look like, aside from being bent strangely with sometimes funny colors?

Well I couldn't find an exact replica of Julian's mother's hat, but I did find perhaps one of the ugliest, strangely bent hats on the web, and a green-haired mannequin head to match. Cute huh?

As I read anything, (which I'm sure everyone does) especially the stories in this class, I find myself trying to figure out the behaviors of the characters. I want to understand their psyche, I don't know, maybe to understand human nature better. I can't help it, I am just drawn to their behaviors and personalities...what makes them tick. But when I read "Theft" I was ecstatic to find out, that I really can't pin the main character's personality and behavior down, or why she acts the way she does.

The conclusion I came to, finally, was that Porter hid the main character's reasons and background from us on purpose, it's the vagueness of the main character that sets up the mystery of her and truly made me think, "Why did she come to her own conclusion on page 65 that she 'was right not to be afraid of any thief but (herself), who will end by leaving (her) nothing'?" Instead of the other stories where I (okay maybe naively so) understood why the character acted a certain way.

For our main character in "Theft," I couldn't help but think that she was simply careless about what was going on around her....not necessarily lazy or idle. This scarily touched home with me, as I'm sure it perhaps did with other readers, because there are my days where I am so careless about events going on around me. Perhaps for the woman in "Theft" it is some type of avoidance behavior from reading the letter and then burning it. But either way, she is her own thief, because she doesn't ever take opportunities to experience something. Her interaction with Bill on page 62 suggests this, as she seemingly and carelessly turns the attention from Bill's drama to a rug on the floor. Or perhaps the main character is too busy trying to remember the mysterious letter's words.

In “That Tree” the issue of male masculinity is again brought up. It is when the main character (I just realized that he doesn’t have a name) and Miriam go out to dinner, there is a fight between some generals. When the general’s guns come out, all of the Mexican girls do what is expected of them, “The point was, every right-minded Mexican girl just seized her man firmly by the waist and spun him around until his back was to the generals, holding him before her like a shield” (70). The correct thing to do in that culture was to save yourself, while sacrificing your man. Miriam did not know this and did not do what she was “supposed to.” “His wife Miriam had broken from him and hidden under a table. He had to drag her out by the arm before everybody” (70). I feel that if a girl really loves her man, she won’t hide behind him when guns are pulled out. She would find a way to not only save herself, but her man too. I’m sure that this was a sort of idea that was running through Miriam’s head. “It had been the most utterly humiliating moment of his whole blighted life. He had thought he couldn’t survive to pick up their things and get her out of there” (70). It’s interesting that his masculinity, for him, weighed upon whether his wife used him as a human shield.

Everyone in the café carried on as if nothing had just happened, “Indeed, nothing had happened to anyone except himself” (71). His masculinity had been insulted because his wife had not used him as a human shield, but he was really the only one that cared. Miriam thought that he was being stupid that he could take that so personally, and take it as a direct attack against his masculinity “She could not understand at all. Sometimes she said it was all perfect nonsense” (71). Most people in that situation would never think of using their husband to protect them from a bullet, but the main character is so selfish that he simply can’t see her point of view; he wants to make it all about him and make him the victim, “It should have had something to do with him” (71). Miriam not only thought that he was stupid for what happened that night, but she also thought that all of the Mexican girls were stupid for “feeding the male ego.” “At last she said, she hadn’t the faintest interest in what Mexican girls were born for, but she had no intention of wasting her life flattering male vanity” (71). Miriam is a woman who will not do things she considers stupid just to keep her man happy.

I know that I am going back a ways, but I would like to discuss the tractor scenes in “Parker’s Back” and “The Displaced Person.” These are images that have really stuck with me. One is comical and the other is rather sad. Dr. P mentioned that he would like to see what “stories” come to mind when we read the stories assigned. I hope that this is what he meant. For me, the tractors did that for me in O’Connor’s stories. I am from a small community that consists of a lot of farming, my family included. My siblings and I have been driving tractors since we were very young, as have many of my friends. So I’ve heard great stories about tractors getting stuck in swamps and being flipped over in odd ways, etc.

The scene in “Parker’s Back” where he runs into the tree, I found extremely comical. I can just imagine a tractor going about 10-15 mph hitting a tree, which would make the tractor go up on to just the back tires flinging Parker a good distance, and then the tractor landing upside down and bursting into flame. I can just imagine it like in cheesy movies when a car crashes and explodes into a mushroom cloud when in reality that would never happen. I know that this scene was not meant to be comical, but I found it extremely so.

On the other hand, in “The Displaced Person” the scene involving the tractor I found extremely disturbing.
Mrs. McIntyre was looking fixedly at Mr. Guizac’s legs lying flat on the ground now. She heard the brake on the large tractor slip and, looking up, she saw it move forward, calculating its own path. Later she remembered that she had seen the Negro jump silently out of the way as if a spring in the earth had released him and that she had seen Mr. Shortly turn his head with incredible slowness and stare silently over his shoulder and that she had started to shout to the Displaced Person but that she had not. She had felt her eyes and Mr. Shorty’s eyes and the Negro’s eyes come together in one look that froze them in collusion forever, and she had heard the little noise the Pole made as the tractor wheel broke his backbone. (325-326)

My whole life I have known people who have either died from or been crippled from tractor accidents. When I was six I had a friend that fell off of a tractor and was ran over, which killed him. About eight years ago a family friend’s husband was working on a tractor, the tractor slipped, running him over, crushing his pelvis and damaging many of his internal organs. He has never fully recovered from that. The scene in “The Displaced Person” brought back those memories and others that I also find very difficult to deal with. So I understand a little of what happens to Mrs. McIntyre, which was that she “came down with a nervous affliction and had to go to the hospital” (326). But in her case I believe that the reason why she reacted so harshly was that she felt it was her fault that the man died. Moments before Mr. Guizac’s death she had been thinking of why she disliked him, “Of all the things she resented about him, she resented most that he hadn’t left of his own accord” (325). Another interesting aspect is if he had left earlier of his own accord, he wouldn’t be there in a situation that would wind up leaving him dead.

One thing that I have found very interesting throughout several of O’Connor’s stories is the “struggle” between children and parents. I already made a post concerning “Good Country People” and I just want to expand and include other stories into the child vs. parent idea. In some of the stories it is more of a power struggle, a basic “who will prevail”, and in other stories it is a form of child becoming parent, and parent becoming child, where the roles are reversed.

Everything That Rises Must Converge: This is one of those stories that involve a reverse of roles. Julian is the son, but he does everything that he can think of to no longer be under his mother’s power. At one point he even thinks to himself that “He was not dominated by his mother” (492). He believes that he is more intelligent and more “open minded” than his mother will ever be. He even views his mother as someone who is childlike when sitting on the bus seat, “Her feet in little pumps dangled like a child’s and did not quite reach the floor” (494). When Julian decides that he is the authoritative figure, he decides to teach his mother a lesson, much the same way that a parent teaches a child. When the “lesson” is done, Julian disapproves of how his mother is acting and chides her just like a child: “’I hate to see you behave like this,” he said. “Just like a child. I should be able to expect more of you”’ (500). His plan of course backfires on him and Julian once again becomes the child when his mother dies, when he cries for his “Mamma”.

The Artificial Nigger: This story is about power struggle and the reversal of roles. The morning that Mr. Head and Nelson leave to go to the city, Mr. Head had planned on getting up earlier than Nelson because “The boy was always irked when Mr. Head was the first up” (211). And Mr. Head was a bit annoyed when Nelson was the first up. Throughout the entire story they are always trying to outdo the other. But it is also mentioned a few times that each takes on the physical form of the other: “Mr. Head looked like an ancient child and Nelson like a miniature old man” (230). The roles of the grandfather and child are reversed, Mr. Head has turned into a child, and Nelson has turned into the old man. Nelson has the qualities of an adult, he may be a child, but he still has many qualities of someone much older. Mr. Head tries to act like an adult, but he has many qualities of a naïve child that believes whatever he is told, while Nelson questions authority and wants to learn for himself.

The Enduring Chill: This is a story that involves not quite a power struggle, but a child trying to “get back” at the mother for whatever misdeeds that she did. Asbury hates his mother, he feels that she killed his artist abilities, but not his desire to have those abilities. In his letter to his mother he even asks that she had also killed his desire so that he would not have to be a failure: “‘It [my imagination] was some bird you had domesticated, sitting huffy in its pen, refusing to come out!’ … ‘I have no talent. I can’t create. I have nothing but the desire for these things. Why didn’t you kill that too? Woman, why did you pinion me?’” (554). Asbury really has no reason to hate his mother, she just happens to be the best excuse as to why he is a failure. He can’t take responsibility for himself.

The Lame Shall Enter First: This story is interesting because the power struggle is really between Sheppard and Johnson, not Sheppard and Norton, but Sheppard considers Johnson as a son. Johnson strongly dislikes Sheppard because Johnson believes that Sheppard is self-righteous, he even calls Sheppard “God” and “Jesus” several times. Almost everything that Johnson does is just to “get back at” Sheppard. Johnson only teaches Norton about the bible because “This would be Johnson’s way of trying to annoy [Sheppard]” (613). Sheppard is determined not to let Johnson win, Sheppard is convinced that he will “save” Johnson from a life of crime. “Secretly Johnson was learning what he wanted him to learn—that his benefactor was impervious to insult and that there were no cracks in his armor of kindness and patience where a successful shaft could be driven” (611). In the end it is Johnson who wins, Sheppard himself resigns to failure.

I keep writing about the stories that just “get me.” So I thought, for a change, that I would go back through the stories that we’ve read and do a bit-o-blogging on one of the stories that didn’t catch my fancy or that I predict I won't say, “OH man…” to in three more years… Maybe it would be The Enduring Chill? So what do I attribute this forgetability to?

It’s not that I didn’t enjoy reading the story. Because I did.
It’s not that there weren’t unforgettable details. There were.
It’s not that I don’t identify with the character in the story, because I do (unfortunately).

Maybe it’s that I don’t have much sympathy for Asbury. I mean, in Pale Horse, Pale Rider, I feel for Adam and Miranda. In The Lame Shall Enter First, I feel for Norton. In Parker’s Back, I want to simultaneously smack Parker upside the head and hug him with tears in my eyes, yelling at Sarah Ruth to see what’s he trying to do for her. But with Asbury, he had too much sympathy for himself for me to feel like I should dole any out.

This is going to be off-topic, but I remember reading an essay of waiting tables. (Surprisingly not a gender-based one—but for the record women do make more tips than men.) Oh, no! It was an episode of This American Life, I think. Anyway, the results of this little experiment-type thing were that the servers who were super-happy and helpful got worse tips than the ones who seemed like they were having a crumby day, but service didn’t suffer. The servers who were clearly negative, unhelpful, and who were too bummed out also got crappy tips.

Moral of the story: If a character doesn’t need my sympathy (tips), then I don’t give them. If a character is demanding that I give them my sympathy (tips) then I am resistant. It’s those characters smack in the middle, like Parker, that end up winning the “Aw…poor guy/girl!” factor in my book.

Say what you will, but I can’t help but read with feminist theory in mind. Maybe it’s the vagina*—I don’t know. :)

Katherine Anne Porter seems to lend herself to feminist ideas in her texts, especially in Pale Horse, Pale Rider.** I cannot get over the intimidating military men and the passive adherence to war-time gender roles and that passage—ah that passage…

“Bread will win the war. Work will win sugar will win, peach pits will win the war. Nonsense. Not nonsense, I tell you, there’s some kind of valuable explosive to be got out of peach pits. So all the happy housewives hurry during the canning season to lay their baskets of peach pits at the alter of their country. It keeps them busy and makes them feel useful, and all these women running wild with the men away are dangerous, if they aren’t given something to keep their little minds out of mischief. So rows of young girls, the intact cradles of the future, with their pure serious faces framed becomingly in Red Cross wimples, roll cock-eyed bandages that will never reach a base hospital, and knit lovingly sweaters that will never warm a manly chest, their minds dwelling lovingly on all the blood and mud and the next dance at the Acanthus Club for the officers to the flying corps. Keeping still and quiet will win the war.”

… that passage. (It’s on page 290.)

The language of “happy housewives” and “the alter of their country” and “all these women running wild… are dangerous” is shocking and makes me feel fiery. Attribute it to whatever factor in my life you want to, (the women I've seen stamped on, the men I've seen do it without a second thought...) but I do not deal well with being commanded or hearing other people commanded to keep still and quiet (or the like) in a caustic, demeaning, “your humanity is not worth my time” tone.

So as far as Katherine Anne Porter writing a passage to win my loyalties over to one side, this one’s done it.

*Not to imply that one has to have a vagina to read with feminist theory or that or that possessing a vagina makes you read with feminist theory—because neither of those statements is true. I just happen to have a vagina.

** I also know that a lot of masculinity ideas are explored in this story as well—an important point. So maybe I should be reading gender-theory, but for the point of this post, I’m not commenting on the address of masculinity (at least not much).

When we discussed "Noon Wine" in class (I know - journey back to that day), there was a brief foray into regional dynamics of conversation. Todd, coming from North Plains people, talked about the whole "not talking" thing that we can see exhibited in Mr. Helton (from North Dakota, I believe) and how it's pretty characteristic of that whole area. We then touched on our perceptions of conversational dynamics in the South, mostly as formed by the stories of Porter and O'Connor, and the term I settled on in my notes was "chewing the fat." I think of the Grandmother and Red Sam in "A Good Man Is Hard To Find," sitting around talking. There's also the doctor's office exchanges in "Revelation" and the city bus exchanges in "Everything That Rises Must Converge." It seems to be a part of having good manners - you say pleasant things to people for as long as you are in their presence. In "Noon Wine," Helton's lack of conversational delicacy is a concern for Mr. and Mrs. Thompson, as you recall.

I wrote down a question in the margins of the classroom notes: "Utah dynamic?" I've thought about it a little since then, and it's hard for me to pin down if there's a code of well-mannered conversation in southern Utah (or Utah at large - but I've never lived in northern Utah, and I don't feel as qualified to comment on that area). A few things I've thought about: (1) When I sit in a doctor's or a dentist's office, I don't make small talk and I don't often find myself a part of the small talk initiated by another. (2) It may be a generational thing, because, in my extended family, my dad's generation and my grandpa's generation are very sociable people, the kind who do make small talk at grocery stores or on airplanes, but I'm certainly not that way, and neither are most of my cousins (even with each other). (3) For the last three days, I've spent time in the Sharwan Smith center trying to sell Valentines for Sigma Tau Delta. I think the responses have been pretty fairly split between people who ignore me outright (even when I make a greeting) and people who smile politely and respond. Clearly, most of the people I saw were students between the ages of 18 and 24 (guesstimate), and my obvious role as someone who was trying to sell them something may have had a lot to do with being ignored when I was. Still, though, I found myself thinking, "Hey, I'm not that social either, but if someone says 'hi' to you, you say 'hi' back. That's just how this works." So it's not much, but maybe there's something of a conversational expectation.

Anyway, the whole idea of regionally determined conversation styles/patterns/expectations is fascinating to me, and it's one of the things I'm considering as a final presentation topic. Basically, any comments you can give - insights into relevant readings or into different regional codes you're familiar with - would be mucho appreciated.

The thing I couldn’t get past in That Tree was the unusual point of view. (It almost seems like a ridiculously redundant thing to fixate on, no?) But especially after class on Tuesday, I couldn’t help but wonder what Porter intended for us to take from knowing the story we’re hearing is being told to another man in a bar. We are essentially taking the place of the eavesdropper. (Again, wit the eavesdropping, Chelsea? Have you no respect for personal privacy?) So does that alter the way we are supposed to view the story? Does that mean maybe we should think of the story as being embellished by camaraderie and a bit of alcohol?

There are indications that we, as readers, are overhearing a story in the first few pages, but the first solid omniscient thing we see happen is on page 68. This one-sentence paragraph follows an ellipsis trailing off from a reverie of the journalist defending Miriam to his second wife. It says, “They both jumped nervously at an explosion in the street, the backfire of an automobile.”

To me, this felt like, in film, the camera finally pulling away from the close-up shot of someone telling a story to reveal where the story-teller is and who he’s really with.

So another tired type of question: what’s the significance of the journalist being called “the journalist”? Frequently, Porter’s and O’Connor’s characters bare monikers that aren’t names so much as titles. The Misfit, the Grandmother, the Old Woman for O’Connor. Then we have He, the journalist, the unnamed couple in Rope, the main character in Theft… and that’s really all I can think of right now, but you get my point.

The characters that have no direct names are frequently referred to by what seems to be the most noteworthy thing about them. He is “He” because he isn’t treated like a person, and people have names. The Misfit doesn’t have a name, because the most defining or important thing about him is that he was/is a rogue. In That Tree, the journalist is not given the moniker of “the poet” or “the husband/boyfriend” or “the father”—he’s not even “the deadbeat” or “the cheating jerk.” He is the journalist.

So, I think we need to take not that he is the journalist and work on how that reflects on his character. We are hearing his story as it’s being reported to someone. Miriam (who is named) comes back to him because of his writing. He found a passion in writing, as we discover through his interaction with the sausage-man in the purple suit.

Anyway, I’ve wanted from where I started. So how do we perceive this story by knowing we’re hearing a story from a journalist who is telling his tale (the one we’re hearing) to a comrade? The journalist even acknowledges story-telling techniques. On page 78 we read:

“Now he had done it. He smoothed out the letter he had been turning in his hands and stroked it as if it were a cat. He said, ‘I’ve been working up to the climax all this time. you know, good old surprise technique. Now then, get ready.’

“Miriam had written to him after these five years, asking him to take her back.”

Even though we have a narrator, the journalist narrates, too. So what’s the deal? What’s the point? Why aren’t we just hearing it from the journalist directly? Why do we step out of him and have omniscience sometimes?

P.S. There is a really wonderful poem by Richard Siken entitled Boot Theory that you should read if you feel so inclined. It's really wonderful. At that link, it's the second to last poem on the page. Also, the typesetting is definitely not correct, but I can't find a copy on the internet that is, and I feel weird creating one with copywrite and such. But it's really a wonderful poem. (Did I say that yet?) It's not related to O'Connor or Porter; In that poem Richard Siken uses the line, "A man walks into a bar and says:"

It is obvious that Sheppard damaged and hurt Norton, but I also believe that Johnson also committed wrongs against him. When Johnson very first appears, he says basically two sentences to Norton, and then immediately treats him like a stupid slave by making Norton get Johnson a sandwich, an orange, and a glass of milk. He even calls Norton “waiter.” Johnson treats Norton with no respect whatsoever even though he is the stranger that should have no authority in that house. Johnson next criticizes Sheppard, which is a hurtful for Norton to hear. Johnson then commits what Norton holds as a grave sin. Johnson enters the mother’s bedroom, and uses her comb in his dirty, greasy, wet hair. Then he goes through the mother’s clothes, and Johnson even goes so far as putting on her corset and dancing around in it. Johnson completely defiles the mother’s things. To put the icing on the cake, Sheppard then basically gives Johnson that room to use as his own. I honestly believe that it must have broken Norton’s heart to have a dirty, deformed, homeless, criminal have no respect for and defile his dead mother’s things.

It is now interesting that after defiling the mother’s things, Johnson now becomes the hope that Norton is looking for. Johnson is the one that Norton relies on to provide information on about where his mother is. Norton can’t handle the idea that his mother no longer exists, so now that Johnson claims that she is still “there” Johnson becomes Norton’s savior in a sense. Just the fact that Norton would rather his mother be in hell than nonexistent, shows how desperately he needed his mother to still be in “being.”

Unfortunately Johnson tells Norton about the bible and heaven, not to help Norton but to spite Sheppard. “This would be Johnson’s way of trying to annoy him” (613). I don’t even think that Johnson even considered that Norton would take what he was saying seriously. But Norton did, he even took what Johnson said about where heaven was as fact, “’It’s in the sky somewhere,” Johnson said, “but you got to be dead to get there. You can’t go in no space ship”’ (612). That is why Norton became obsessed with looking through the telescope; he was looking for his mother. When Norton finally finds what he believes to be where his mother is, he takes Johnson’s words and uses them to get to his mother, which was by killing himself.

(Backtracking a little bit here...) One thing that struck me as I read "Noon Wine" was the fact that when Mr. Thompson first encounters Mr. Helton, he seems to view him as some kind of exotic species from North Dakota that is so unlike himself. Mr. Helton has the simple request to work for Mr. Thompson, and we see that Mr. Thompson is anything but simple. He is "hearty and jovial" (224) and he begins to "laugh and shout his way through the deal" (224). It seems to me that nearly all of Mr. Thompson's actions are exaggerated whereas Mr. Helton maintains his serious simplicity. We are not treated to a glimpse of what Mr. Helton's impressions of Mr. Thompson are, but I would imagine they would be similar to Mr. Thompson's impression of Mr. Hatch, well, at least in the beginning.

When the stranger, Mr. Hatch, comes to Mr. Thompson's small farm, he immediately makes Mr. Thompson feel uncomfortable. If we contrast this encounter with the encounter between Mr. Helton and Mr. Thompson, we see that the roles are reversed; Mr. Thompson becomes the quiet, serious one, while Mr. Hatch is the one exhibiting exaggerated displays of emotion. Mr. Thompson immediately becomes quiet as soon as the man begins speaking to him because he was "so taken aback by the free manner of the stranger" (243). Mr. Hatch "haw haw(s)" and "roar(s) with joy" (243) which is clearly an echo of Mr. Thompson's braying and "haw haw(ing)" (224) in his first meeting with Mr. Helton. I'm still not entirely sure what to do with this, but the parallels here are undeniable. Perhaps Mr. Thompson is becoming more and more like Mr. Helton and he is, in reality, just as crazy as Mr. Helton. Mr. Helton was a murderer, and Mr. Thompson also becomes a murderer. He cannot clearly recall the events of that afternoon, but continues to claim it was all in defense of Mr. Helton. However, no such wounds were found in Mr. Helton's body, so that could suggest that much of the incident was created in Mr. Thompson's mind. I think his desperate attempts to convince the neighbors of his innocence is his method of convincing himself. Unfortunately, he is unsuccessful and cannot live with knowledge that perhaps he, too, is crazy.

Undoubtedly like many others, "The Lame Shall Enter First" had a proufound effect on me. We talked in class about how we are given an unfavorable first impression of Norton that immediately causes us to dislike him. I disliked Norton up until the point when Sheppard found him in his mother's coat in the closet; at that point I realized that he was just a lost, lonely little boy who misunderstood his mother's death and whose father had essentially given up on him. Obviously, we see that Sheppard's slow descent as he fails to notice the vital changes emerging in his own son come as a result of his absorption in the life of Rufus Johnson. I, however, would like to suggest that Johnson is not just a distraction or a mission for Sheppard, but he becomes a replacement for Norton and Norton is left without a niche to occupy which is why he ultimately ceases to exist.

We are blatantly told that Norton is a disapointment to his father in the very beginning of the story. So, right off the bat, Sheppard is eagerly looking for a solution to his child's short-comings and he attempts to find it in Johnson. It seemed to me that Sheppard was ashamed and embarrassed by his son, which is why he completely turned his attention away from him. We know that Sheppard is attempting to make Johnson a second son. At one point, he even tells us that he has looked into adopting the boy, but couldn't because his grandfather was his legal guardian. However, he does not foster a second son, but replaces the old, defective one. The epiphany in the story, for me, was when Sheppard stood in the hallway between the boy's rooms. He had seemingly just recieved a "thank you" from Johnson and was overcome with emotion. He leaves Rufus's room by saying "good night, son" (619). When he leaves this room, he finds the door to his biological son's room open, with Norton "beckon(ing) to him" (619). However, Sheppard completely ignores his pleading eyes for fear of betraying Johnson, the new son, "he saw the child but after the first instant, he did not let his eyes focus directly on him. He could not go in and talk to Norton without breaking Johnson's trust" (619). It may be significant to note that, in one page, he goes from calling Rufus "son" to identifying his own son as "the child". The transition is thus complete. From this point forward, Sheppard barely acknowledges Norton's presence and the child must find his identity within the stars where he believes his mother resides.

It was discussed in the “Artificial Nigger” about denying one’s son when Mr. Head denied Nelson just like Peter did with Christ. In “The Lame Shall Enter First” Sheppard also denies his son, just is a different way. Like Chelsea Lane pointed out, Sheppard had the “God” role in the story, but he completely messes it up. He tried to do good, but it was for all of the wrong reasons. He tried to help the “juvenile delinquent” who really didn’t need help, when he should have been helping his son Norton the whole time.
From the beginning Sheppard sees no potential in his son, and if he does, that potential isn’t what he wants for his son, “He would be a banker. No, worse. He would operate a small loan company. All he wanted for the child was that he be good and unselfish and neither seemed likely” (595). Sheppard sees his son as a failure, someone that can’t live up to Sheppard’s expectations and because of that he can’t see that his son needs help, and or even wants to help his son.
Sheppard sees Norton as a selfish coward and weak, “This was not a normal grief. It was all part of his selfishness. She had been dead for over a year and a child’s grief should not last so long” (597). Sheppard is an atheist who views those who believe in religion and the bible as weak. “’That book is something for you to hide behind,’ Sheppard said. ‘It’s for cowards, people who are afraid to stand on their own feet and figure things out for themselves’” (627). According to Sheppard Norton falls under that category because he cannot accept Sheppard’s explanation for where his mother is, “Your mother isn’t anywhere. She’s not unhappy. She just isn’t” (611). Sheppard fails to even recognize that this answer doesn’t satisfy his son, and excuses his son’s behavior as being selfish.
Finally Sheppard does recognize that his son needs him at the very end of the story, but it is only realized when he failed Johnson that he also failed his son. “He had done more for Johnson than he had done for his own child” (631). Sheppard finally sees that he ignored and had failed his own child, “His heart constricted with a repulsion for himself so clear and intense that he gasped for breath. He had stuffed his own emptiness with good works like a glutton. He had ignored his own child to feed his vision of himself” (632). But Sheppard realizes this too late, once again failing his son (for the last time).

In order to clean up the first round of reflective posts, everyone should log in and check on the status of their posts. Some are still only DRAFT posts, which means they won't appear on the blog.

To change the post from DRAFT to PUBLISHED, you will need to go to Posting --> Edit Posts then click the edit button and click on "Publish Post," which is the orange button on the lower left.

You see the Post Successfully Posted message.

Check through to see if any posts are accidentally still in draft mode.

(Note: The explanation for this post can be found in it's first installment, entitled "The Lame-o in Porter's Stories.)

O'Connor

The Artificial Nigger: This one seems pretty clear. Mr. Head's entire objective in going to the city with Nelson is to teach him a lesson and to prove his superiority in all sorts of ways, including his knowledge of colored people, his sense of direction, etc. Mr. Head proves himself to be lame-o when he doesn't claim Nelson as his grandson for fear of being arrested or scoffed at.

The Displaced Person: Mrs. Shortley and Mrs. McIntyre. Uppity, self-important, morally superior women. Lame-o.

Everything That Rises Must Converge: This is actually the story I thought of initially when forming this little hypothesis that all (or many) of the intellectual or morally superior people in these stories prove themselves to be jerks. Julian obviously prides himself on being sophisticated, advanced, and educated, but our glimpses into his way of thinking about his mother, her neighborhood, and the colored people in his community let us know that he is lame-o.

Good Country People: This is an interesting one, because we have our intellectual - Joy/Hulga - and a number of the morally superior folks - Mrs. Freeman, Mrs. Hopewell, and Manley. Of course, Mrs. Freeman and Mrs. Hopewell sort of drop out of the picture by the end of things, and our focus is on Manley and Hulga. Hulga's intelligence is superceded by Manley's deception, and I think it's safe to say that at least one of them qualifies for lame-o, if not both of them.

A Good Man Is Hard To Find: The Grandmother fits the bill of a morally superior person. Her morality seems to manifest itself in manners, which she has in abundance and which her grandchildren and Bailey lack (she dresses well for a trip, she has respect for her home state, etc.). Whether or not she reveals herself to be lame-o in the end is not really fair to say, because, as we discussed in class, the reactions that a person would have in a situation like this one - having been overtaken by The Misfit, family shot in the woods - are not fair indicators of that person's identity or character. You could make a case for her being lame-o and against it, but I don't think it entirely fits the criteria, so we'll rule this one a failure.

The Lame Shall Enter First: Yet another handy example. Sheppard is the morally superior person who doesn't believe in God or religion, the intellectual. His lame-o-ness has been expounded on previously and does not need repeating.

The Life You Save May Be Your Own: Tom Shiftlet's brand of moral superiority comes from knowing interesting things (the human heart, how to do things around the farm) and saying things well. Also, his sole male presence in a female environment sets him up to be honored and lusted after by the mother Lucynell on behalf of her daughter. Basically, he's in a position of respect. He takes that power and abuses it, abandoning Lucynell at the diner, and drives off in a cloud of lame-o.

Parker's Back: Sarah Ruth is OE's moral authority in this story, and by continually rejecting his body and soul, she is cast as lame-o.

Revelation: Similar to "Good Country People," we have the intellectual (the girl in the doctor's office who attacks Mrs. Turpin) and the morally superior person (Mrs. Turpin herself). The lame-o award in this instance goes to Mrs. Turpin; though the girl does something wrong and somewhat crazy by lunging at Mrs. Turpin, we as readers are not close enough to her to identify her actions as lame-o or otherwise. Mrs. Turpin, however, is someone whose thoughts we get to know intimately, and we see the holes in her high opinion of herself.

Question: does the "predictability" of characters and roles in these stories, particularly O'Connor's, hurt her stature as a writer in any way? My response is "no," but I'm not sure why. Does anyone have an opinion as to why this predictability actually enriches the reading instead of hurting it? Does anyone have a different opinion altogether? I'd be interested to know.

I want to make a good list - not a complete one, but a solid one - of the people in our stories who have been represented as either intellectuals or as morally superior people, and I want to see how many of them fit in with the pattern of being lame-o. I understand that "lame-o" is not a very academic word, but I think it fits. Many of these stories seem to have been written in a way that will leave the reader feeling like one of the characters is undeniably messing things up and isn't doing what he/she really ought to be doing. Basically, I'm using the word "lame-o" for any of the figures who made their mark on the stories by doing things that the reader (okay, maybe just I) disagreed with.

Porter

Maria Concepcion: The apparently morally superior person in this story is Maria herself, and while she ended up committing a mortal sin by killing the other Maria, I wouldn't really identify her as "lame-o." She doesn't, in my opinion, kill the Maria Rosa because she hold herself higher or to rid the world of the sin Maria and Juan had committed; she does it out of grief and jealousy.

Rope: Both husband and wife consider themselves as morally superior, and in that identification, I believe they do lean slightly more toward lame-o than okay.

He: Mrs. Whipple, in her closeness to the preacher and her talk of "Lord's mercy" and "Lord knows," stands out as the supposed morally superior person in this story. She is lame-o because she neglects her son whilst claiming to cherish him.

Theft: I'm exempting this story from my analysis. Personal choice. In my opinion, this isn't a story that leaves opportunity for figuring out who's good/bad/right/wrong, and none of the characters earns a lame-o or non-lame-o rating.

That Tree: Miriam is, in her way, lame-o, but my closeness as a reader to Joe leaves me to focus on him. Even though his pride comes from being down on his luck, being down on his luck is only a source of pride because it is his preference, his choice, and it can only be his choice because he is (dum dum dum) an intellectual. On page 73, in reference to his sexual relationship with Miriam: "His intention to play the role of a man of the world educating an innocent but interestingly teachable bride was nipped in the bud." Being smart makes him better, and it's important to him to be both smart and better. So, the question: is Joe lame-o? Hmm ... well, as far as comparing him to the lame-o characters we've encountered in other stories, I think any lame-o factor in Joe is pretty tame. I'll mark this one as a 'no.'

The Jilting of Granny Weatherall: As we discussed in class, the way this story is related is rather scattered, and for good reason. I don't really know what to make of it as far as who's an intellectual/morally superior character, though I think I could make a case for Doctor Harry filling that role in Granny Weatherall's eyes. Still and all, no one gets a lame-o rating from me.

Flowering Judas: Braggioni is an intellectual, as is Laura. I think they're both lame-o to an extent. Laura's indifference toward the people of Mexico, while perhaps not entirely in her control, still casts her in an unfavorable light. Braggioni is more responsible for his misbehavior, and therefore, more awful. Speaking in reference to the men who work for him, "They are closer to him than his own brothers, without them he can do nothing -- until tomorrow, comrade! Until tomorrow. 'They are stupid, they are lazy, they are treacherous, they would cut my throat for nothing,' he says to Laura." This, I believe, is his excuse for abandoning his men. Lame-o.

Noon Wine: Mr. Hatch is the one I've pegged as villainous in this story. He's a bounty hunter, but he makes overtures of being a morally upright man. He claims to be motivated by lawfulness and loyalties to Helton's family. I think this is all done to prove his trustworthiness and superiority; he makes a more concerted effort at this when he devalues Mr. Thompson's choice of tobacco. Though it's not as evident here as in some of the other stories, I think Mr. Hatch qualifies as someone who thinks himself morally superior, and his lame-o-ness is clear. Check.

Pale Horse, Pale Rider: The only ones I can peg as "morally superior" and "lame-o" are the men who pressure Miranda to buy a war bond. Still, I don't think this story really fits the formula. There's no one to side against; Miranda and Adam have and deserve all of our loyalty.

The Fig Tree: Grandmother and Harry both sort of perform the same function as an intellectual or morally superior person. I'm thinking of Neena's post about how children are a class of their own. What I sort of took from that is that children are left to be ruled over by adults. So, in this story, Grandmother and Harry are the privileged ones, and in disregarding little Miranda's requests to return home, to save the little bird, they are portrayed as lame-o.

And in my next post ... O'Connor's stories.

Sheppard sat helpless and miserable, like a man lashed by some elemental force
of nature. This was not a normal grief. It was all part of his selfishness. She
had been dead for over a year and a child's grief should not last so long.
"You're going on eleven years old," he said reproachfully.

For the past two summers I have worked at a clothing store in St. George called Van Heusen (thankfully, that will not be the case this summer). Among the many moments I remember from my experiences there is one that I was reminded of when reading the above passage from "The Lame Shall Enter First." A young boy was being mildly rambunctious in the store, and I overheard his mother say in a stern and exasperated voice, "Stop it; you're acting like a little kid." My guess was that the boy was maybe six or seven years old. I thought to myself, "What's your point, lady? He is a little kid; that's why he's acting like a little kid." My reaction was similar in this instance. Just what are you driving at, Sheppard? There's nothing wrong with a child crying over the death of his mother, even if it was a year ago, no matter his age. Are you so out of it that you don't recognize that?

Neena and Jillian both said they were disturbed by the story and by Sheppard's relationship with Norton. I, on the other hand, was just really sad. The images did it all for me.

Norton throwing up his cake/peanut butter/ketchup concoction? Wow. On page 599:

He [Sheppard] got up and carried the plate to the sink and turned the water on
it and watched grimly as the mess ran down the drain. Johnson's sad, thin hand
rooted in garbage cans for food while his own child, selfish, unresponsive,
greedy, had so much that he threw it up.

When I read that, I wrote, "He threw up because he was CRYING, because you're an insensitive father! Sheesh!" (I've seen my younger brothers throw up many a time, even when they weren't sick, simply because they'd been crying so hard and gotten so worked up.) We've mentioned before that there's a tendency for alliances to shift in O'Connor's stories, and this is the moment when I firmly lost all sympathy for/loyalty with Sheppard; he couldn't show love or understanding for his son, his eleven year old, practically orphaned son, even when he'd been crying so much over missing his mother that he made himself sick.

On page 607, Sheppard finds Norton in one of his late mother's old coats. "He pulled it open and winced as if he had seen the larva inside a cocoon. Norton stood in it, his face swollen and pale. Sheppard stared at him." Again, no sympathy from father to son. It makes me so sad. And furthermore, Sheppard uses this instance of his son's grief to his own advantage (or what he would claim was to Johnson's advantage), telling Johnson, "I've got a problem. I need your help." My, how problematic for him to be burdened with a son in pain. How inconvenient.

The thing that's finally so, so sad is Norton's decision to take his own life. He's a little boy. I can't get over that: a little, little boy. He found his mother in the sky ("I've found her! Mamma! She's there! She waved at me!"), and reflecting on a prior conversation with Johnson (who was ultimately a more reliable, and more dastardly, source than Sheppard on the matter of where his mother was), decided - not without justification - to join her.

The child still looked puzzled. "Where?" he said. "Where is she at?"

"On high," Johnson said.

"Where's that?" Norton gasped.

"It's in the sky somewhere," Johnson said, "but you got to be dead to get there. You can't go in no space ship." There was a narrow gleam in his eyes now like a beam holding steady on his target.

Rufus Johnson declares the Bible’s proclamation that “The lame shall enter first,” and follows with “The lame’ll carry off the [not my] prey” (p.631). What makes us sick as readers is the realization that Norton has been, in a sense, “carried off” to “Heaven” by the lame Johnson, but has been “prey” to his own father. O’Conner’s story has the effect upon me that He did in that I found myself revolted by the treatment of “the child” by his father. This story is a little different from the other O’Conner stories that we’ve read. It seems more straight forward. She lays it all out for us with few ambiguities. I found myself looking for that typical O'Conner vision of allegorical significance. Each character seems to have a less distinct vision of their own, but I’ve settled upon O’Conner’s imagery as the most distinct and significant vision for myself as reader. It is that opening picture of Norton eating stale cake with peanut butter and katsup, only to regurgitate it, that gives image to my own revulsion to the situation. While Sheppard imparts his observation of Johnson eating garbage, he fails to recognize that his own son is eating garbage. O’Conner initially collapses Norton’s and Johnson’s characters just enough that we may recognize that there is little difference in the injustice of their individual sufferings and the need it invites. O’Conner does this in at least three ways. 1.) They both eat garbage. 2.) They are both presented as in some degree lame or hampered (Norton answers Johnson’s questions “lamely,” indicating the inability Sheppard sees in Norton. 3.) They are both abused, and although Norton’s abuse may not be considered in the physical nature that Johnson’s is, “He looked as if he had been hit in the mouth” (p. 597) indicates it is abuse none the less. If the rest is a little hard to catch, there is no missing the vomiting image that should signal to us that there is something very wrong and that lingers with us to the end of the story where we find that there are sickening consequences to stuffing ourselves with any kind of garbage. O’Conner spells it out for us completely then when Sheppared recognizes that “He has stuffed his own emptiness with good works like a glutton” and it is he who has been selfish. “He had ignored his own child to feed his vision of himself” (p.631). The visions each character has is significant to the story (Sheppards vission of himself as savior or angel; Johnson's vision of the devil, a sinner or as the lame and saved; Norton's vision of his mother in the stars and his ability to be there with her), but it is the lack of vision Sheppard has that makes his own visions a heap of garbage.

I am really a fan of compact pieces like Theft. It is exciting for me to be compelled through a closer analysis— like in poetry. I know we can deep read through all stories, but I like to read the pieces that ask for it. This piece asks for it. Theft is a piece that lays out all the information without explaining a bit. It feels like a conversation you’d eavesdrop on (well, I would eavesdrop on… I don’t know if anyone else looks for eavesdropping opportunities…) between two close friends. There are hints of relationship ties…but we never hear the whole story. The story leaves us with the task of putting it all together. I am a fan of that. There are names brought up that the background is never supplied for, there are hints at careers, there is a mysterious letter that the main character decides to tear “the letter into narrow strips and [touch] a lighted match to them in the coal grate.”

On a side note, I’ve recently decided that even though it can be a bit cliché to burn things from people who’ve done you wrong, I am generally a fan of the symbolism. Throwing things away is not nearly as satisfying as burning. I remember learning in chemistry (yay for gen-ed work!) that when anything burns, the chemical compound changes and that thing is physically and chemically something else altogether. That stuffed animal, those dried flowers, that book, that sweater, that bottle of perfume, that letter is no longer that thing. It is now a series of carbons, water, and released heat. (Released heat… great right? It’s released. It’s let go.) But that’s a side note.

So what I had to (chose to) do when I got done reading the story was map it, of sorts. I wrote down each character name and each important object/symbol (like the purse) and made note of the things that were said about that person/thing and tried to pull together a more holistic was of seeing these characters and things. It was pretty sweet. It’s pretty difficult to portray the lists and connections in this kind of format, (I already tried and it doesn’t make any sense) but it was helpful for me. It drew attention to the fact, for example, that the main character’s one interaction with a woman is with the janitress. It drew attention to the fact that to the she tells Bill to, “let [the money] go then…” and after she realizes the purse is gone, to herself she says, “Then let it go.”

So I would assume that a more careful reader probably picked up on these on a first read, but this slowing down, mapping, and unpacking thing worked well for me, and I remembered how much I love stories that evoke this sort of process.

What chiefly remained in my mind after reading "Pale Horse, Pale Rider" was that, after Miranda survives her challenging battle with the illness, she seems to resent the fact that she didn't die like so many others. She is obviously not happy with her situation in life, nor is she pleased with the situation of the country. We know this is the case, so why does she have that burning will to live which ultimately saves her from an otherwise guaranteed death? I absolutely love the passage where Porter eloquently portrays Miranda's fight for survival,

"there remained of her only a minute fiercely burning particle of being that knew itself alone, that relied upon nothing beyond itself for its strength; not susceptible to any appeal or inducement, being itself composed entirely of one single motive, the stubborn will to live (311)."

When Miranda wakes to find that she has survived, while Adam has died, she asks him "what do you think I came back for, Adam, to be deceived like this?" (317). She is making the claim that she fought it out for him, when we know that she was too delirious to consciously do such a thing; she was simply saved because of the value she places on the human life, however abhorrent it may be to her.

I recently read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and found that, although they both find their lives to be absolutely detestable, both the monster and Victor cling to life at any onset of danger. It is a natural reaction of the human species to strive for survival, even in the worst of all possible circumstances. When Miranda wakes to find that, although the war has ended, her Adam is dead, undoubtedly along with many other of her friends and family, she realizes that life is no better than it was before she fell ill. She claims that she has been deceived, but the only one she had deceived is herself because she clung to the unreasonable hope that Adam would survive the war and life would have some glorious ending.