A Tale Of Glass Menagerie And The Grandmother From A Good Man

Amanda belittles Laura’s self-ownership which makes Laura immature and helpless as an adult. When the subject of gentleman callers comes up, Amanda addresses Laura, saying, “How many do you suppose we’re going to entertain this afternoon? [...] [reappearing, airily] What? No one — not one? You must be joking! [Laura nervously echoes her laugh]” (Williams 18). Amanda is caught up in her dreams of marriage for Laura, made clear by her enthusiastic tone and body language, but Laura’s uncomfortable laugh shows how she is not amused by her mother’s aspirations. Amanda is only focused on what she wants for Laura, but she should really be concerned with what Laura wants for herself. In addition, Amanda cannot accept the fact that her daughter is not going to have any suitors; she denies reality and tries to bring Laura into her world of illusions. This irresponsible parenting causes Laura to become the childish adult that she is. When Amanda questions where Laura was going instead of business college, Laura explains that, “I went in the art museum and the bird houses at the Zoo. I visited the penguins every day! [...] Lately I’ve been spending most of my afternoons in the Jewel Box, that big glass house where they raise the tropical flowers” (21). Laura is twenty-three years old and she is getting excited about visiting attractions meant for kids. She would rather explore the Zoo, an art museum, or a greenhouse than attend college, exhibiting her immature and irresponsible mindset. This juvenile behavior is what leads to Laura’s helplessness. While on the fire escape, Amanda tells Laura to make a

In the short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” written by Flannery O’Connor is a short story about a family who is taking a trip to Florida and is killed by the Misfit and his crew after an accident. As the short story begins, the grandmother is seen by the reader as the hero/protagonist but as the story progresses, the grandmother shows he true colors and is seen as the monster/antagonist. The grandmother is a manipulative, dishonest and selfish person who leads herself and her family to their death. This is a woman who is willing to use manipulation to get what she wants, shows her self-interest and her little concern for anyone else but herself throughout the short story. The grandmother is the cause of the accident that lead to

Walter Mitty for example hates his life and constantly is trying to escape from his wife and other responsibilities. Mitty knew his wife would want to wait for her in the hotel lobby so he took a seat in a leather chair and started to daydream when suddenly he was snapped out of it by his wife. “Something struck his shoulder. I’ve been looking all over this hotel for you, said Mrs. Mitty. Why do you have to hide in this old chair? How did you expect me to find you” (Thurber 4). Here the reader can see not only how Mitty never gets time to be alone but also how his wife believes the world revolves around her. She makes herself seem like such a big deal that Mitty feels worthless. So, he daydreams that he is more masculine, brave, and adventurous. The only time Mitty seems at peace is when he is daydreaming and he is always interrupted by his needy wife. Laura in, The Glass Menagerie, is very similar to Mitty in this way. Laura loves her glass collection more than anything and only wants to spend time with it. As strange as that hobby is her brother Tom respects and understands her privacy unlike her mother Amanda. Amanda makes Laura do things that make her uncomfortable and never stops judging her. Amanda ordered Tom to bring home a gentleman caller for Laura in hope that she would get a husband. She doesn’t care that Laura prefers to be alone and is only thinking of herself because if Laura doesn’t get a husband that means Laura is Amanda’s responsibility. While preparing for the gentleman caller to arrive Amanda is helping Laura get ready. “Amanda puts two powder puffs into Laura’s bosom. Laura says to her mother, Mother what are you doing? Amanda says, They call them Gay Deceivers! Laura refuses by saying, I won’t wear them! Amanda responds with, You will!

“A Good Man Is Hard To Find ”, is a short story about a man and his family. The story focuses on what happens the family when they are challenged by fate. The grandmother plays the biggest role in the story. She is responsible for the family’s fate because she intervened with their original plans. Had she not persisted on having her way, the story’s outcome would be different. In the story the grandmother has a controlling personality, the family cannot avoid their fate, and the ending provides a sense of closure.

The grandmother who was not named in the Story “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” by Flannery O’Connor, had a larger than life personality and she likes to pass judgement on to others. This character lived with her son Bailey, her daughter in-law and her two grandchildren in the state of Georgia. The grandmother is the main character in this story, she is smart, ladylike, judgmental, and the whole story revolves around her.

One of the many self-righteous characters portrayed in “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, is the grandmother. She truly believed that she had the absolute best of values. Via the quote, “navy straw hat and collars and cuffs, so that if there was an accident, people would know she was a lady”, we can immediately tell that she thinks quite highly of herself since she completely overdresses. Her inflated ego leads her to look down upon others as she believed that she was superior to them. One such passage in the story, she critiqued the parenting of another mother because the mother was “not taking the children to different parts of the world and being more broad”. She even told John Weasley to show more respect to his native state and of course to

In “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” the grandmother dies loving and somehow forgives the Misfit. In the course of “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” the grandmother grows changing her character attitude from the beginning of the story, which makes her a dynamic character. The beginning the grandmother is a small-minded and selfish, capable of foolish remarks like, “Oh look at the cute little pickaninny!” (18) referring to an African American child, “People are certainly not nice like they used to be” (36), accusing Europe for “the way things were now” (45), wishing that she had married Mr. Teagarden “because he was a gentleman and had bought Coca-Cola stock when it first came out” (27) in my opinion this quote shows that she valued materialistic thing

Amanda is always living in the past. She wants to escape her reality with her daughter, that’s not married, and a son that’s always coming home late and drunk. Also mentioned in the play, the author explains how in her past, Amanda was a young and popular southern belle. In the play, she brags about how she once had “17 gentlemen callers” (Williams 680) one night in her past. Amanda also keeps a “larger-than-life-size photograph over the mantel” (Williams 679) of Tom and Laura’s father who “gave up his job with the telephone company and skipped the light fantastic out of town…” (Williams 679). To keep a huge, framed photographed of an ex-husband can only mean that she is either still hung up on him after he left, or she wants her children to know what their father looked like. Either way, this is still an excellent example as to how Amanda is living in the past. Another way Amanda is always living in the past is how she reacts when she finds how there is a gentlemen caller for her daughter Laura. She wants to make a good first impression on Laura’s first gentlemen caller, as she sees it as a ticket for Laura to be successful, so she puts on an old dress that she has and mentions how she “had it on the day (she) met her father” (Williams 699). She basically saves that out of date dress for special occasions. But it is very old considering she wore it when she first met her ex-husband. If she was not

Questioning the world as observers and contemplating what constitutes a moral code versus following the norm play a major role in self growth. The frustrating contradictions of one’s self-aware mind begin to unwind into its own understanding of what’s real and the illusion. Illusions can be underlined with beliefs, faith and perception of someone’s own experiences and mistakes. The Mistakes that are made throughout a lifetime are essential to understanding between right and wrong. They give Justice and the injustice actions the unclear and incoherent meaning of good from evil. Revelations made through learning from mistakes sometimes can come in the most inopportune times. Reading the story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” Flannery O’Conner gives a taste of the hypocrisy and selfishness of what the subconscious part of humanity can be. The lifeless taste of evil “The Misfit” twisted with the rudimentary philosophical good of the “grandmother” foreshadows humanity as a whole and independently. The story shows us the problematic mechanics in belief and faith with the blunt truth being as evil as it can be, due to lack of understanding of ones’ self. The grandmother is projected as a symbol of conscious good with the intentional norm humanity strives to be. Making her position throughout the story full of wisdom and righteousness through her illusion of what it means to be a lady. Only through a life threatening experience with the misfit

From the beginning to the end, Amanda is a character that is "clinging frantically to another time and place" (Williams 18). She prefers to hide behind the illusion of how she used to be in the past instead of realizing what's in her present day reality; for example, "Nonsense, Laura, I've told you never, never to use that word. Why, you're not crippled, you just have a little defect – hardly noticeable, even!" (Williams 17). This quote explains how Amanda has not come to realize the disability that Laura has, and instead she hides the reality with the illusion of making herself think that Laura is not different and has a perfect appearance just like society says a person needs to have. Amanda has the idea that living in the past is a better way of living than in the present with reality, which is represented in her dress that she wore when she was younger and still wears to this day. however, Amanda has not come to the realization that the dress compared to the past, can't be repeated and isn't suitable for the present. Amanda expresses the theme of illusion versus reality since she uses the illusion of the gay deceivers that enhance your appearance and her past to mask the reality that is her life and not allow her to come face to face to what the real problem is at hand. The quote, "Women come in lots of

Nancy, Grandmother, and Jennie are three female characters that are key figures into the development of the short stories which they fall in. In O’Conner’s “ A Good Man is Hard to Find,” Bontemps’s “ A Summer Tragedy,” and Faulkner’s “That Evening Sun” these three characters are known to be inattentive, fearful, and weary.

The grandmother in “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, considers herself to be a remarkable human being, above everyone else. This leads to the family she has to getting into the situation with The Misfit and thus developing the story.

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams shows me an example of an unreliable narrator. The main character, Tom, shows how an unreliable character it is created. I believed while reading this book is about the bias and undependable narration from the narrator. The Glass Menagerie shows the example of an unreliable narrator in a format of play. Tom in the play has many conflicts and problems that he can't solve.

How she was so popular, so beautiful, and so charming. She tells her not so popular daughter how she had so many gentleman callers. Also, how she had many wealthy gentleman callers that could have been her husband and how she could have a much better life, but instead she chose their not so wealthy father. By always talking about her younger glory days, she starts to live in her fantasy life. Initially it did not seem harsh that Amanda was telling about her glory days, it was like any other mother telling her daughter about her past life.

The use of the device of the narrator and the narrating stance is termed by Genette as narrative voice. A narrative cannot influence the reader consciously or unconsciously if there is not the fascination of story and story- telling. According to Kenon there are three basic aspects of narrative fiction: story, text and narration. Todorov holds that each different way the fabula is told presents a different sjuzet. Thus it becomes clear that the act of narrating is important rather than the story.