Flannery O’Connor
I remember reading some of Flannery O’Connor’s work before, but I had never read this story. I found “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” to be very dark and depressing. I think the one thing that makes this story so bad is that the grandmother knew they were going to run into the Misfit and she wanted to change the plans for the trip. Her son, Bailey, was too stubborn to change his plans and the grandchildren were too rude to think of going anywhere else for vacation. The mother was not about to say anything to her husband about making different plans because she did not want to start a fight. John Wesley had a good idea when he told his grandmother to stay at home, but everyone knew she would never do this. She tried so hard to get everyone to go to Tennessee instead of Florida, but she never got her way. I felt a little bad for her when she realized that the place she was telling the family about was not in the state that they were in. She had to feel so guilty when the car rolled and they had no way to get anywhere. She also must have felt pretty guilty when she realized that they had run into the Misfit and were probably not going to make it. I thought it was very brave of the grandmother to try to talk the killer out of killing her family. She tried to let him know that he really was not a bad guy but I think that all of her talking hurt the family more than it helped. I was surprised by how long the Misfit let the grandmother live. I guess he wanted her to feel guilty for talking so much and let her know that she was, more than likely, the cause of everyone’s death. I definitely did not see this story going where it did and I was really surprised when everyone was killed.
Tillie Olson
To me, the story “I Stand Here Ironing” is really sad. Emily’s mother is speaking to someone about Emily and she goes on and on about how she never showed Emily the love that she deserved. Her mother was young when she had her and her father left. Emily’s mother had to get many different jobs to make ends meet and she did not get to spend very much time with her daughter for quite a few years. She even had to send Emily to stay with her father’s family and had a really hard time getting her back. When her mother had another baby, Emily was sent away to, what seemed to me, a private school. She could only see her mother when the school would allow it. I felt bad for Emily that she had to stay in such a horrible place. They would not even let her keep the letters her family sent her for some kind of comfort. Someone is talking to Emily’s mother throughout the story and this person seems to want to take Emily with them. Her mother talks about her other children and about how Emily’s sister seemed to have everything Emily wanted. Finally, Emily made something of herself. I felt bad for Emily that she was never truly shown the kind of love that most mothers have for their children. Since her mother was a single parent, I think that she thought that she had no time to show Emily that love. I also think that there is time to show a child love, you just have to either find the time or make it.
Nikki Giovanni
Nikki-Rosa has to be a poem about Nikki Giovanni’s life. She talks about all of the struggles she and her family faced as she grew up. She mentions not having a toilet or a bathtub. She also mentions her family having to sell everything just so she and her sister could “have happy birthdays and very good Christmases.” I like how she ends the poem by saying that nobody would understand but she was happy. I’m Not Lonely is talking about not being lonely after someone important has left you. I think that she is lonely but she does not want to admit it and let the other person be right. She just wants to talk about how happy she is now that this person is gone. I find Poem for Black Boys to be very sad. Giovanni is talking about a lot of the events that many black people had to go through in their life. But she is not talking about them in an informative way. She is telling these things to boys like they are new games that these boys should try to play. I think that this poem show how hard it was for the black people to get all of the other people to take what they were doing seriously. I find it appalling that all of their struggles and pain can just be seen as fun and games.
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