In the short fictions “What You Pawn I Will Redeem” by Sherman Alexie and “A Good Men is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor both stories show the differences about how men can be. In “What You Pawn I Will Redeem” the main character Jackson needs helps to get money to get back a “powwow regalia” that was from his grandmother. In “A Good Men is Hard to Find” a man called “The Misfit” encounters a family that later on he decides to kill. The characters in both stories are very different. In “What You Pawn I Will Redeem” the characters are nicer than the characters from “A Good Men is Hard to Find.” The reader can see the differences while reading both stories on how men are.
Certainly, in “What You Pawn I Will Redeem” Jackson the main character
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For example, when he explains why he calls himself “The Misfit”, “…because I can’t make what all I done wrong fit what all I gone through in punishment” (366). He claims that he did not kill his father. If he truly did not kill his father why would he kills innocent people? He acts like a victim in the whole conversation with the grandma. He says that “..if I had of been there I would of known and I wouldn’t be like I am now” (367). Basically, what he is saying is that he is a cruel person for being punished for something he claims he did not do. If he truly did not commit the crime, then he shouldn’t be killing an entire family. In this story, the author puts the men as cruel persons that do not sympathize with others. The family had an accident and The Misfit choose to kill them all, instead of helping them. Incomparable with the story “What You Pawn I Will Redeem” that almost everyone helped Jackson. However, The Misfit never changes his mind about killing the family. “She reached out and touched him on the shoulder. The Misfit sprang back as if snake had bitten him and shot her three times through the chest” (367). Besides everything the grandmother tells him, he decided to kill her. Also, you can see how the author compares the grandmother to a snake as if The Misfit did not want her help. He never showed compassion for
Familial heritage, an entity that is passed from generation to generation, is the essence behind Sherman Alexie’s “What You Pawn I Will Redeem”, as well as Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use.” Throughout each, the main characters are pitted with a struggle to acquire family relics that are, in their own way, meaningful and unique to their culture. In “What You Pawn I Will Redeem,” Jackson Jackson is presented a long lost powwow regalia that belonged to his grandmother, while in “Everyday Use” the narrator is tasked with making the decision to give or withhold a set of generation old quilts. Each author, then, attempts to convey the importance of cultural heritage. Through a side by side analysis of the major characters, one can see the motivation to acquire such heirlooms and why one represents Alexie’s view that culture can be preserved through
Violence is something of a common occurrence nowadays -- bombs in the Middle East to shootings in schools. Those are reckless acts driven by impulse but the opposite it true for literature. In some works it appears to be one of those random or wild act but there is a hidden meaning to all the violence; there is a story behind those hostile words. In Flannery O'Conner’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” she finds a way to present a quadruple homicide into a mindless act, with heartless diction and torpid tone to illustrate the theme of conflicting definitions of what makes a good man.
“A Good Man is Hard to Find” is a short story written by Flannery O’Connor. The story is delivered in third person limited omniscient with the grandmother being the central character. Throughout the story the grandmother sees herself as a trustworthy lady with superior morals, although the reader examines her as a selfish and sneaky manipulator. Because the grandmother views herself one way but the reader understands her true nature, the result is dramatic irony.
The grotesque psychopathic nature of the characters in Flannery O’Connor’s, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” ironically shows how a good man does not truly exist through the revelation and proclamation of what characteristics a good man possess. In the story The Misfit shows characteristics of a psychopath by escaping prison and killing an innocent family. However, The Misfit isn’t the only character in the short story to show psychopathic tendencies. The grandma also shows some characteristics of a psychopath because she does not care or show remorse for her family who was brutally murdered
In the story, the grandmother is promptly filled with practically otherworldly love and comprehension that are from God. She treats The Misfit as a kindred enduring person whom she is committed to love because of that moment of grace that God gives her at a sudden. (Every individual should have compassion to others and love his kindred people like himself, even his foes. As Jesus instructs all of us to. )
In the short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, the author, Flannery O'Connor, demonstrates how a family vacation can quickly face a violent end, caused by a criminal known as “The Misfit.” Looking at the short story through a feminist point of view, one can quickly gather that O’Connor uses the traditional gender roles right from the beginning of the story. As reading the title, it automatically suggests the men in this short story are untrustworthy, not prevalent, and dangerous. With that being said, the female characters in this story are viewed in the eyes of how a woman should act.
In “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” Flannery O’Connor creates a story where the roles of good and evil blend together. In the short story, a family in the rural South gets caught up with a criminal named the Misfit after their wreck and they end up getting murdered. The clash between the grandmother and the Misfit highlights the religious aspects of the story and also O’Connor’s beliefs. Her stylistic traits of violence, distortion, and religion are used to convey a corrupt world that needs salvation. O’Connor’s trait of violence is used throughout to reveal the corrupt and criminal world that emanates the need for salvation.
No one would have thought that the idyllic Southern life style could be turned into a Southern nightmare. In O 'Connors "A Good Man is Hard to Find" that is precisely what happens. " A Good Man is Hard to Find" is set in Southern America. This story has many tenets comparable to that of Southern Gothic fiction. Southern Gothic writing emphasizes on abnormal character and unusual events to create an unsettling portray of life in Southern America.
In Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” she uses writing skills such as symbolism and imagery to get across her different themes to the reader’s with plenty of room for self-interpretation. Though O’Connor’s work could be defined as cynical, she does an excellent job of writing in the third person with her uncomplicated structure of sentences leaving plenty of room for her character 's thoughts, feelings, and actions to get across the realism of our world. "A Good Man is Hard to Find" is a battle between a grandmother with a rather artificial sense of goodness, and a criminal who symbolizes evil. The grandmother treats goodness as having good manners, and coming from a family of higher class, but at the end of the story comes to
The balance of what is good and what is bad is a rather controversial topic in the story "A Good Man is Hard to Find". Most notably, the characteristics of both the Grandmother and the Misfit. The Misfit portrays an immoral personality and seems to be the evil in the story while the grandmother is the innocent lady seeking to be the good in this story. However, the religious virtues effect both personas and in itself draws the line around them mutually as sinners. Both characters have a particular relationship with Jesus, a physical crisis crossed with a spiritual crisis and different conceptions of reality; thus, revealing how the portrayal of these characters are not what may seem.
Before the Misfit had decided to kill everyone in the family, he had told them why he was doing it all. In the writing, it’s talking about why the Misfit was in Prison and why he was trying to escape from there. The Misfit had told the Grandma that he wasn’t guilty and that the Justice System had cheated him out on it. “Because they have the papers on me; of course, they wouldn’t show it to me,” ( O’Connor 151). He didn’t want to kill anyone; because all he wanted
The narrator is quite the character, being cold hearted and killing an innocent man. One reason that the narrator shows his insane side is the fact he is accusing the readers that they say he is “mad” for no apparent reason. The narrator begins the story with saying “but why will you say that I am mad?” (line 2).
In the short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, the author, Flannery O 'Connor, demonstrates how a short story can contain many aspects of feminism without one even noticing. Looking at the short story through a feminist point of view, one can quickly gather that O’Connor uses the old school gender roles from the very beginning of the short story. As reading the title, it automatically suggests the male characters in this short story are untrustworthy, not prevalent, and dangerous. With that being said, the female characters in this story are viewed in the eyes of how a woman should act.
In Sherman Alexies’ short story, What You Pawn I Will Redeem, the protagonist Jackson Jackson narrates his journey to redeem himself. Jackson is a homeless Spokane Indian living in Seattle, Washington, that struggles with alcoholism. The objective of his journey is to win back his grandmother’s long stolen regalia from a pawnshop owner by raising one thousand dollars in just one day (Alexie 7). However, he struggles with spending money as soon as he can get it, and this makes it hard for him to achieve his goal. Throughout the story Jackson manages to make some money by the generosity of others, but he does not manage to earn the amount he needed to.
In her short story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”, Flannery O’Connor introduces the reader to a world of family issues, danger, and murder. The story was written in 1955 during a period of social and racial unrest in the southern United States. Mostly, the story follows O 'Connor 's basic Southern Gothic writing style. A work that is "cold and dispassionate, as well as almost absurdly stark and violent" (Galloway). While the quote gives major insight into the theme of the story, it does not offer a glimpse into O 'Connor 's real message of the story.