Bastard Out Of Carolina Essay

Taylor Greer has lived in Kentucky all her life. Yet, the life available to her in Kentucky is not what she always dreamed of: "none of these sights had so far inspired me to get hogtied to a future as a tobacco farmer's wife" (3). Living with her mother, Taylor becomes more independent and striven to find a better life. Taylor's father disappeared before she could even remember

The first hidden truth in Bastard out of Carolina came when Anney, Bone’s mother, married Daddy Glenn. The first sexual abuse encounter occurred while Anney was in labor with Reese. Because

While most authors would shy away from the topic of sex, Smith does not. Smith builds a theme of judgment on someone’s choice of partner and sexual encounter. Francie begins to question more and more about sex as she grows older. Francie was born out of the strong attraction her mother felt for her father (Zonana). Aunt Sissy, Katie’s sister, hung around the kids a lot as Francie grew up. Aunt Sissy held the attention of many men who were attracted to her and she loved the attention. Aunt Sissy was very inconsistent with who she stayed with and for how long. Aunt Sissy was judged many times from other women for her inconsistency. Wives of the husbands Aunt Sissy caught attention of were jealous of her for their husbands had a stronger attraction to Aunt Sissy than their own wives. Francie was introduced to men having an attraction to women by Aunt Sissy. As Francie grows older, she notices more things like women getting jealous over other women for their love life and the “good women” of the neighborhood judging people who are not ashamed. Francie meets a girl named Joanna who lives in her neighborhood. Joanna had a child out of wedlock and she was not ashamed of it. She loved her baby with all her heart, but the “good women” got jealous of Joanna for she was not ashamed. Joanna and the father of her child were still close after she was pregnant. They had a good relationship and most of the women

Barbara Kingsolver introduces us with the character Taylor Greer. Taylor starts off in a small town called Pittman county in Kentucky, which she'll later start to want more than what Pittman can offer; she decides to go as far as her car will take her. This decision has led Taylor through various situations that she’s not used to. Kingsolver illustrates throughout this novel that Taylor will learn about real agony,until she meets Estevan and Esperanza , she’ll experience love for the first time when she meets Estevan, and will learn that pain comes in all shapes and sizes.

“A Good Man is Hard to Find,” by Flannery O’Connor begins with a family planning a trip to Florida, but the grandmother of the family complains. While the family is getting ready she tries to manipulate her son, Bailey, into going to Tennessee, but she fails. The grandmother comes across an article about a man that is called the Misfit, a man who has escaped prison and is now heading to Florida. Once the family leaves the grandmother still goes although she would much rather the family do what she wants and she has her cat hidden in the car. The family stops at a bar-b-que place owned by a black man named, Red Sammy Butts. Red complains to the grandmother for letting two men buy gas on credit and how he does not trust all that well anymore. The grandmother uses her loose definition of a good man to tell Red that he was one. Red tells the grandmother,”A good man is hard to find… Everything is getting terrible. I remember the day you could go off and leave your screen door unlatched. Not no more.” After the food the grandmother woke up from one of her many cat naps and recalled a plantation she had visited nearby and begged her son to stop, which he angrily agreed to do. Once they begin down the dirt road towards the alleged house the grandmother jumps, kicking the cat’s cage when she realizes the plantation she remembered was not even in

During the early 17th century, North America used slavery for labor purposes. Throughout the country, slavery was used but slowly the use of slaves started diminishing in the North, and was only used in the South. Slavery in the South was more commonly used because of the abundance of cotton being grown on plantations. Although many plantations used slaves for labor, slave owners were a minority, and by the mid 1800’s only one fourth of white southerners owned slaves. Throughout centuries, slaves influenced their masters economically by producing cheap labor, by increasing a master’s slave population, and by being dependent on their master.

Bone endured maternal neglect from Anney as Anney ignored the long-term abuse and ultimately ran away with the abuser to continue a relationship. Even after several witnessed beatings, Anney would allow her “love” for Glen overpowers her need to protect and love Bone. Bone was also a victim of physical, psychological and sexual abuse. After a couple of years into the relationship with

To illustrate the sudden shift in the grandmother’s outlook on good and evil sparked by violence, O’Connor first establishes the grandmother’s general attitude in her actions, words, and thoughts. O’Connor describes the grandmother’s desire to sway the family into pursuing a trip to east Tennessee as opposed to the family’s original plan to visit Florida and includes her deceitful tactics to manipulate her son, Bailey. The grandmother continues to talk about how lucky she would be to have married a “very wealth man,” exposing her shallow values. She goes on to spout off racist comments concerning a small black child. Setting up the grandmother’s

In Bastard Out of Carolina, the setting in which the characters reside in is a small town of

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The characterization of the female roles in the text is used to assert that the narrator not only possesses a compliant behavior toward her father, but also engages in defiant acts to analyze the similarities between her and her speculated aunt. In the piece, Kingston describes how the aunt was oppressed by social obligations of being a woman, where as

O’ Conner uses the grandmother and the Misift to illustrate society’s attitudes towards family relationships (Fite). The senseless violence is used to create an emotional shock to the reader. With the shock in place, the author utilizes irony to make it clear to the reader that Southern societal views are illogical to any competent person. Furthermore, O’Conner uses the development of the characters to support her critical view of the South. Through the use of macabre and irony, the author clearly employs the elements of Southern Gothic literature to emphasizes the moral blindness of the grandmother.

In this mysterious novel, Daniel and his sister, Erica, didn’t want to move to West Virginia, but they had to and their new home was a decrepit farm secluded in the woods. What they didn’t know was that a witch, Old Auntie, takes a kid for fifty years, then lets them go and snatches a new one. They heard stories about Old Auntie and her man-eating, razorback hog, Bloody Bones, but they didn’t want to be convinced that they were true.

A tough sixteen-year old girl from the Ozarks, Ree Dolly finds her life thrown into a desperate frenzy when the law comes to announce that she will lose her home and family if her missing father does not show for court next week. The ensuing search has Ree going through great physical and mental lengths to overcome “bad blood” between members of the Dolly clan to save her mother and brothers. In this “country noir” novel by Daniel Woodrell, loyalty in this rough, tight knit community, run on illegal drugs, is what fundamentally determines Ree’s success. Ultimately, familial loyalty becomes the positive force that gradually pulls Ree through this time in her life, allowing her to find pride and reward in her name, recognize the value of her immediate family, and forge a new beneficial relationship with uncle Teardrop.

What emerges from the novel is a narrow-minded society, in which issues are present but not faced. The narrator-protagonist's father is an alcoholic and is violent due to drinking, "Hasn't he always to hit someone when he's drunk?" (Country Girls 31), however, Caithleen and her mother cannot really do anything but dread him. Caithleen's friend's parents are unhappy together, "She and Mr Brennan slept in separate beds" (Country Girls 119), but there is no possibility to question their marriage. The protagonist has a secret relationship with a middle-aged man, Mr Gentleman, but it eventually does not turn up well, showing that a good reputation and social status are more valued than feelings and truth. The two girls move to Dublin in search of a more exciting life, far from the oppressions of their small village, "I was not sorry to be leaving the old village, it was dead and tired and old and crumbling and falling down" (Country Girls 155), but the end of the story does not seem to suggest that they have been able to free themselves from their origins, from who they are. And so many other examples of stuck situations could be