Greenleaf by Flannery O'Connor Essay

Mrs. May views Mrs. Greenleaf, the wife of her hand around the farm, as one of the lowest members of society. Mrs. May not only sees her as less of a woman than she is, but is resentful of the manner in which she lives her life. From Mrs. May’s first introduction to the woman of the Greenleaf family, when Mrs. Greenleaf and her five daughters pulled up to her farm in a “pieced-together truck” (26), she has resented the mangy manner in that the Greenleaf woman, lead by Mrs. Greenleaf, live their life. Because they do not necessarily care about being the stately woman Mrs. May thinks they should be, Mrs. May views them as less than her and not as true woman. Further, Mrs. May has an incident when she runs into Mrs. Greenleaf observing her religious practices in the woods. This involved Mrs. Greenleaf, after she cut out horrible stories from newspapers digging a hole in the woods, burying them and falling to the group and moaning for an hour or so. Mrs. May describes the experience as Mrs. Greenleaf, “moving her huge arms back and

In her short story, Good Country People, Flannery O’Connor employs all the elements of humor, irony and, paradox intermingled within the system of Christian belief in evil and redemption. This is no more evident than in the character of Joy, the daughter, who had lost a leg in a hunting accident at the age of 12 and who now has a wooden leg in his place. Throughout the story, it becomes increasingly clear that Joy’s physical affliction is closely paralleled by a spiritual one as well. As the narrative unfolds, the great lengths Joy has gone to recreate her inner self, her soul, are revealed in painstaking detail. It appears she has succeeded in fashioning her own soul into a spirit that is as hard and unyielding as the prosthesis that now takes the place of her missing naturally soft and flexible appendage.

In the novel “ Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck, is a fiction book that lets the readers know about two ranch hands who go together everywhere and they end up coming to a ranch to earn money for the dream they have to own some acres but they ended up having to go through some hard times which made it to never happen. Steinbeck wants us to know that dreams aren’t real, because they aren’t achievable, they don’t take actions to make it happen. Steinbeck uses foreshadowing and symbolism to express the theme by creating suspense and emotional connections to the characters and their dreams.

As the story begins, we are first introduced to Mrs. Freeman, a hired hand on the Hopewell farm. At first glance Mrs. Freeman appears to be simple “good country people,” but that is not the case. It is very ironic that Mrs. Hopewell refers to her as a “lady and that she was never ashamed to take her anywhere or introduce her to anybody that they might meet” (452.) In reality Mrs. Freeman is a busybody and harbors secret fascination with the macabre. She has “a special fondness for the details of secret infections, hidden deformities, assaults upon children. Of diseases she preferred the lingering or the uncurable" (455). Her secret fascination and penchant for gossip is quite different from what one would think “good country people” let alone a “lady” would be interested in. Mrs. Freeman never hesitates to share the details of her daughters' lives with Mrs. Hopewell. One gets the impression that Mrs. Freeman will divulge

Mrs. May belongs to a very important group of characters in the works of Flannery O'Connor: the widows. These kinds of characters usually are superficial and proud of their social position. Her widows have an excellent opinion of themselves and they usually feel superior to the people around them. Mrs. May, the protagonist of the "Greenleaf" shows all these features.

The ability for dreams, friendship and attitude to positively influence one’s life is conveyed through the repetition of George and Lennie’s dream about “living off the fatta the land”, and the way in which Candy and Crooks are pulled into the dream, giving them all a sense of hope in the otherwise hopeless context. Penn’s Into The Wild similarly demonstrates the importance and power of dreams and attitude, using Chris’ dream of reaching Alaska to illustrate the drive it can give someone, whilst Chris’ attitude towards freedom and escaping his materialistic society are conveyed through his manifesto and the diction he uses when speaking, demonstrating the power this instils in him. Chris’ eventual epiphany about friendship is mirrored in Of Mice and Men where George and Lennie have “somebody to talk to that gives a damn” and gives them the drive they need to hopefully achieve their dreams. Whilst these themes are comparatively balanced throughout both texts, the fundamental ideal of freedom is however demonstrated as a polar opposite of each other, with George and Lennie striving for material possession and wellbeing whilst Chris longs to get away from societal dependence on materialist and consumerist ideals.

In most of Flannery O’Connor’s short stories a number of characters have a hard time seeing an ultimate reality in their life. They tend to have a distorted grasp on reality but not all in the same way. In the story “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” the Misfit and the Grandmother are prime examples. The actions and the way of life of the Misfit and Grandmother are mostly due to the fact that they are living in an false reality where they are in their own little world, where in the Misfit’s world everything goes with no worry of repercussion in the Grandmother’s case she can do no wrong because she has a false perception of what is right.

It was already hard enough to earn money through farming, but the whole problem with the gas companies made it even worse. With, agriculture is no longer a feasible career for the family, this cause Molly’s brother is look into other options. He later became a chef for a restaurant in town. Her parents, decided to retire instead of changing careers since they already saved up a good amount of money from all those years of hard work, before and after they moved back to Dimock. Molly became a clerk at the local general store, while it does not pay well enough for her to live in luxury, it was enough to get by with paying all the bills.

Flannery O’Connor was fond of saying, “When in Rome, do as you done in Milledgeville.” O’Connor was born in Savannah, Georgia, but spent the bulk of her life in Milledgeville, and it is her Southern heritage that influenced her and made her writing extremely distinctive in the history that is American literature. As a Roman Catholic in the Protestant-majority South, she was often confronted with the differences between the surroundings and herself, a theme that often comes up in her writing. O’Connor was diagnosed with Lupus, an inherited disease that also killed her father, so she was constantly aware of her own impending death. It is because of this that so many of her fiction short stories have to do with death and the grace that

Feminism and Historicism play a major part in Flannery O’Connor’s short story, “Good Country People”, first published in 1955. The story focuses on the importance of identity and the parallels between truth and deception. In “Good Country People”, the Hopewell family, maintain a small farm in rural Georgia with the help of tenants the Freemans. The pious Mrs. Hopewell’s mottos ‘nothing is perfect’ and ‘it takes all kinds to make the world’ are manifested in her unmarried thirty-two year old daughter, Joy who later changes her name to Hulga, wears a prosthetic wooden leg because of a childhood accident. Hulga who has a Ph.D. in Philosophy, cannot advance her academic aspirations because of a weak heart; because of this she must live in her

Flannery O’Conner, the author of “Good County People,” looks at the perceptional ways that others identify themselves in this story. The title of this story draws from Mrs. Hopewell. This character sees people in general, including her hardworking employees, as either “good county people” or trash. Mrs. Hopewell views herself at a much higher social hierarchy status than the others. There are several symbolisms in this tale as Flannery has the reader engaged and perplexed. The smooth talking character Manley Pointer, a supreme con artist and fake Bible Salesman, uses his clever witty words to put Mrs. Hopewell at ease and earn her trust. Mrs. Hopewell is naïve, yet a true optimist of her impression and interpretation of “good county people.” She would be enchanted and deceived by his words, letting her guard down allowing herself and daughter to placing them in an uncompromising situation, only to be “good county people,” deceived by the trashy Manley Pointer.

Flannery O’Connor was born Mary Flannery O’Connor on March 25, 1925 in Savannah, Georgia, as the only child to Edward F. O’Connor, Jr., and Regina (Cline) O’Connor. Later in 1941, Flannery O’Connor’s father dies of lupus while O’Connor is in Milledgeville, Ga. After her father’s death, O’Connor rarely speaks of him and continues to be active in school projects such as drawing, reading, writing, and playing instraments. Further, in the summer of 1942, O’Connor graduates and enters Georgia State College for Women as a sociology and English major. Moreover, O’Connor took on the name Flannery O’Connor, dropping Mary from her signature.

Good Country People'; by Flannery O’Connor is an excellent example of irony in literature. From beginning to end it has a steady procession of irony, much of it based on the title of the story: “Good Country People.';

Flannery O’ Connor’s skillfully webs subtle ironic instances throughout the story that, later, helps readers see the bigger picture. After much debate about not traveling to

     In John Steinbeck’s “The Leader of the People,” a theme that is portrayed throughout the story is that of the contrast between dream and reality. In the story, Grandfather cannot come to grasp that his dreams of the West and moving across the plains are over and that reality has set in. Another story that contrasts dream and reality is Ambrose Pierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.” In this story, Farquhar cannot tell the difference between dream and reality until the very last second, when he is hanged.