Temptation In The Drunkard By Frank O Connor

Scott Russell Sanders’ “Under the Influence” is about a family growing up with alcoholism, mental and physical abuse. When Sanders was very young, he didn’t recognize that his father was an alcoholic, but as he grew older, he saw the bloodshot eyes, hiding alcohol, the deceptions, and the dual personalities of an alcoholic. “My father drank. He drank as a gut-punched boxer gasps for breath, as a starving dog gobbles food—compulsively, secretly, in pain and trembling.” (215). Sanders story starts at the end, where his father dies from alcoholism. The turmoil and fear this family suffered because of their father’s alcoholism, is a story a lot of families are familiar with.

McMurtry creates a story about his family, based on their accounts left to him in memoirs and letters throughout the years. McMurtry’s ultimate purpose is to narrate an expressive literary essay that uses humor and drama to attract the attention of the reader. While discussing cowboys and their straightforward wisdom, he concludes that cowboys’ observations turn into aphorisms. One such aphorism he finds particularly appealing is as follows: “A woman’s love is like the morning dew, it’s just as likely to fall on a horseturd as on a rose” (149). McMurtry also includes a great deal of drama and suspense as well. At one point, he recalls his grandfather’s troublesome drinking; one day his grandmother issued an ultimatum, sober up or she would leave him. “The threat was undoubtedly made in earnest, and he took it so immediately to heart that he stopped drinking then and there, with a jug half full of whiskey hanging in the saddle room of the barn” (143).

It is hard to have a healthy relationship with someone when they are controlled by alcohol. The relationship between John Purcell and his son had drifted apart more and more by his actions and his choice of being alcoholic. As inconsiderate as John he says to a curate "Three dollars! Why, I could have taken Johnny to a burlesque show for less than that." There is a little boy present and their parents do not want their children exposed to such inappropriate jokes like John often expressed. John is inconsiderate therefore he does things without thinking. His recklessness continued when he met another untrustworthy father at the meeting. At that point when the outsider offered him a drink, he expected it happily expressing “You’re a lifesaver,” because of his dependence on alcohol he humiliated his child much further; and had not taken his wife’s oath of being on his best conduct into thought. When he went up the stairs to receive Johnny’s reward, on the way he trips and falls making his son embarrassed and

Roiphe begins her essay with a personal anecdote describing the “horrifying” realization that she married a man exactly like her father. This technique immediately establishes the essay as informal and personal. It is a great way to capture the reader’s interest. Also, this particular anecdote is used as background information for the first point Roiphe makes in the following paragraph—that “. . . people . . . have at one time or another been fouled up by their childhood experiences.” Another anecdote in the essay explains how Roiphe’s mother used to give Roiphe “mad money” before going on dates. “My mother and I knew young men were apt to drink too much . . .” and “mad money was for getting home on your own, no matter what form of insanity your date happened to evidence.” Anecdotes such as this are entertaining and tend to lighten the mood of the essay. Also, it is quite easy for readers to relate to personal experience. Another function of anecdotes in this essay is to substantiate and support main ideas. At the end of one paragraph Roiphe

    “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” one of O’Connor’s best works, describes a family on a trip to Florida and their encounter with an escaped prisoner, The Misfit. Although “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” is an early work in O’Connor’s career, it contains many of the elements which are used in the majority of her short stories. The grandmother, a selfish and deceitful woman, is a recipient of a moment of grace, despite her many flaws and sins. A moment of grace is a revelation of truth. When the grandmother calls The Misfit her child and reaches out to touch him, the grandmother has a moment of grace that enabled her to see The Misfit as a suffering human being who she is obligated to love. The grandmother realizes that nothing will stop The Misfit from killing her but she reaches out to him despite this. The Misfit rejects her love and kills her anyway. This moment of grace is very important

The first incident that Francis is responsible for is dropping his 13-day old infant Gerald. Francis is solely responsible for this because should have been aware that as a father of a young child he should not have been drinking since he was taking care of the child. Francis had the opportunity to control alcohol intake which could have prevented the incident, but he chose to continue to drink for his selfish pleasure. This lack of judgment shows that Francis was at fault for this accident. To avoid responsibility, Francis claims that the three beers he had drunk that day were not enough to make him drunk enough to drop Gerald. However, the reader knows that consuming any alcohol can make an individual not aware of their surroundings. Even his friend Rudy thinks that it is odd that Gerald died from just a fall. Rudy tells Francis,

The character grandmother in O’Connor’s story has grounds the reality of the events and drives the family into tragedy. She is a central character in O’Connor’s story and is depicted to be a dynamic character stuck in the old ways. Through her actions and the idea of being stuck in the old ways of thinking, she leads her family into tragedy. Being the main character in the story, Grandmother significantly adds to the development of the plot. The author manages to win the attention of the reader from this character owing to the manner in which she shapes the storyline. Grandmother’s reminiscing of the old ways claims a distinctive curiosity from the reader and helps in

Throughout the story many bad decisions were being made because they couldn't handle themselves whether they were drunk or sober and it caused a lot of trouble and problems for these young men. We sometimes forget to make the right decision and sometimes is hard to make the right decision when you are hanging out with the wrong people and wrong set of minds of wanting to be "bad" or "revel" because other people are doing so.

An ardent Catholic as she was, Flannery O’Connor astonishes and puzzles the readers of her most frequently compiled work, A Good Man Is Hard to Find. It is the violence, carnage, injustice and dark nooks of Christian beliefs of the characters that they consider so interesting yet shocking at the same time. The story abounds in Christian motifs, both easy and complicated to decipher. We do not find it conclusive that the world is governed by inevitable predestination or evil incorporated, though. A deeper meaning needs to be discovered in the text. The most astonishing passages in the story are those when the Grandmother is left face to face with the Misfit and they both discuss serious religious matters. But at the same time it is the

Problems with his parents, he would drink. Disagreement with his girlfriend, he would drink. Bad day at work, he would drink. No matter what difficulty he encountered or strain life would throw at him alcohol was always the answer. This, on top of the good times. Favorite sports team won, he would drink. Concert at the coliseum, he would drink. Fishing with friends, he would drink. The problem, he stated, was that his problems only got worse when he drank. So, he figured the answer was to drink more.

Flannery O’Connor was a short story author from Savannah, Georgia. She has produced many critically acclaimed pieces and has won several awards for them. Two distinct pieces she wrote are titled The Life You Save May Be Your Own and Good Country People. While both of her stories are unique, the underlying storyboard and character creation process that O’Connor used is the same throughout her stories. Her stories usually involve one or more self-centered woman, a younger person who become the victim of egregious crime, and a conniving male driven by his own motives. Good Country People and The Life You Save May Be Your Own do not stray from this rule. In either story, the narrative is driven around a shocking tragedy that is very unexpected. Even though in the tragedies committed in the book always have a belligerent and a victim, it is not easy to discern who amongst the two are the antagonist and the protagonist. In either of these narratives, the tragedy that occurred within the stories blurs the line between antagonist and protagonist.

Exploring the idea that all men are born sinners, O’Connor demonstrates immoral indulgences entertained by various characters. Readers are introduced to grandmother, an elderly woman whose consistent unscrupulous behavior exhibits her inner motives. Grandmother uses subtle, indirect confrontation to get her way until she is faced with The Misfit, a runaway criminal who believes that crime is a justifiable. In “A Good Man Is Hard To Find,” Flannery O’Connor uses characterization to display a loss of morals, imagery to portray evil in society, and symbolism to emphasize the struggle of obtaining grace to prove how life is nihilistic without religion.

Flannery O'Connor remained a devout Catholic throughout, and this fact, coupled with the constant awareness of her own impending death, both filtered through an acute literary sensibility, gives us valuable insight into just what went into those thirty-two short stories and the two novels: cathartic bitterness, a belief in grace as something devastating to the recipient, a gelid concept of salvation, and violence as a force for good. At first it might seem that these aspects of her writing would detract from,

O'Connor's typical use of violence and humor in her literary work broadens the characterization of the grandmother and the misfit throughout her story. She uses these elements in an effort to establish the characterization of her two main characters through the many

O’Connor employs the grandmother’s selfish and manipulative character to reveal the true definition of justice. In the very beginning of the short story, the grandmother’s real nature evinces through her actions. The