O'Connor, Olson, and Giovanni Blog

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.

The Help Kathryn Stockett

I cannot say that I truly had just one favorite character. The three main women, Minny, Aibileen, and Miss Skeeter, were all favorites of mine. I liked Minny because she reminds me a lot of my grandmothers. She is storng and tries to be strong for everyone, but you can tell she is just trying to hide the fear she has deep inside. She wants to make sure everyone is alright and she takes care of herself last. She let Skeeter put the story in the book about the pie so she could protect the rest of the maids who had put their stories in the book. She also takes extremely good care of not only her own family, but also the people she works for. She will put up with a lot but you know when she has had enough. Both of my grandmothers are exactly like this. They are strong and very caring. They always put themselves after their families and they are both very protective. I liked Aibileen because she was like a mother figure to everyone. She cared about the people that she should probably not care a lot about to begin with. I loved how she would tell Mae Mobley everyday that she was kind, smart, and important. This was something she would have never heard from her own mother and I think that is just downright sad. I liked Skeeter because she was so brave. She stood up for what she thought was right and she would not let anyone change her mind. I liked how she took the risk of writing the book knowing she could be in a lot of trouble if it came out she was the author. She did not even care; she just did not want the people who had helped her to get into any trouble. All of these women were brave, kind, and strong and that is what ultimately made them my favorites.

I think that Skeeter’s mother is a little more sympathetic near the end of the novel than she was in the beginning. All she could do in the beginning was criticize Skeeter and tell her what she needed to fix instead of what made her beautiful. I do not think I could have ever lived with that woman because it seems to me like nothing I did would ever be good enough. Towards the end of the story, when she started criticizing Hilly, I thought she was a little more sympathetic toward Skeeter. For once she was not commenting on something Skeeter was wearing or the way her hair was fixed, she was doing to someone else instead. She also did not seem to criticize her as much when she was with Stuart.

It bothered me a lot that Skeeter was willing to overlook Stuart’s faults so she could get married. I do not think she was truly in love with him; she just wanted to marry him to make her mother happy. All her mother could talk about was her meeting a guy and getting married. I could not believe the way Stuart treated her on their first date. I understand that he was not ready to date yet, but I think the way he acted was foolish. I know if a guy were to treat me like that on a date, I would never go out with him again. I also did not think it was fair that she had to overlook the way he treated her, but he could not overlook the book. She was open and honest with him, and the truth about the book would probably have never gotten out in town because Hilly did not want it to.

I think that Mae Mobley would not have grown up to be racist had Aibileen stayed. Aibileen was teaching her that black and white people were the same and I believe that Mae mobley understood that. She was young when she was taught that, but I have always been told that you should teach children when they are young. She loved Aibileen, and I think she would have known it would hurt Aibileen if she turned out like her mother. I liked how Mae Mobley also tried to teach her brother the thing Aibileen taught her. I also thought it was very brave of Mae Mobley to cover for Aibileen and blame it on her teacher. This showed how much love Mae Mobley had for Aibileen.

I thought that what Minny did to Hilly’s pie was hilarious. I t was nasty but I laughed when I read that. I think the thing that made it funniest for me was the fact that Minny practically warned Hilly the day before. I also thought it was funny that Hilly’s mother won the pie for Hilly at the Benefit. I know that I would have never gone as far a Minny did though. I would have never been brave enough to do anything like that. I was shocked that she even did that. She was already known around town for stealing. If this pie incident happened to get out, she would have never been able to get another job anywhere.

When I first saw this book and how long it was, I thought I would hate having to read this book. Reading is definitely not one of my favorite things to do unless I find a book I like. The Help has now officially been added to my list of books I enjoy reading. I was dreading reading this novel, but once I started reading; I did not want to stop. The ending was a little disappointing to me though. I am really hoping that Kathryn Stockett decides to write another book telling what happens to everyone after this book ended. I want to know if Minny got back at her husband and finally moved on, or if Skeeter did well in New York, or if Aibileen got another job or just retired!

A Raisin in the Sun

I truly enjoyed watching Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun”. When I saw how long the movie was, I was happy we did not have to read this story. It would have taken me FOREVER to read that much. I like how this movie portrays a typical family from this time period. Everyone lives together whether it is in a huge mansion, or in a small apartment.

This story was about Walter Lee, his wife Ruth, his mother Lena, his sister Beneatha, his son Travis, and an insurance check. This family worked very hard for everything they had. They did not really complain about the way their lives were. Walter had a normal job for a colored person at the time as a chauffeur. His mother and wife did odd jobs for people like housework and laundry. Beneatha was a college student looking to become a doctor. They needed money more than anything, and when Lena’s husband died, they got the money they needed.

Walter had a wild dream about owning a liquor store some day with two of his friends. That was all he could ever talk about. I thought it was great that he was so passionate about dream and he never let it go. All he had to do was convince his mother to give him some money. That was going to be hard for him to do though, because his sister needed money for school and it was no secret the family needed a bigger place to live. Ruth had just found out she was expecting another child and there was no way six people could live comfortably in the small place they were living in. Ultimately it was Lena’s decision what to do with the money.

The check finally came and so did Walter’s begging. He wanted a liquor store so bad he could taste it. Lena did with the money what she thought was fair. She had bought a house that was large enough for the whole family. When she told the family her decision, Walter got mad and ran away. He was upset because he had not gotten his way. Lena found him and told him she had only spent $3500 of the $10000 on the house. $3000 of the remaining money was for Beneatha’s school and the rest was for Walter to spend as he saw fit. Personally I think she made the right decision in buying the house but she should not have left Walter to put the rest of the money in the bank.

Walter put all of the remaining $6500 into his liquor store dream and the man that was supposed to make everything happen for him bailed and took all of the money he and his friend Bobo had put into it. I felt so bad for him but I was also a little upset. How could he have been so selfish as to take all of the money for himself? He knew how important being a doctor was for Beneatha and without tuition money; her dream could not come true. He was extremely upset when he found out, but not as upset as his family. Beneatha still had to go to school. The only logical explanation anyone could find was to sell the house but Walter had other plans. He had to find some way for their dream of living in their new house to come true and let Beneatha still go to school.

The house Lena had bought was really nice. It was large and had a great backyard. The only problem was that it was located in a neighborhood where only white people lived at the time. They went to check out the house and were so excited about getting to move. As they were getting things ready to go, a man from the neighborhood came by to tell them that the people already living there did not want their family to move in and they were willing to buy the house back from them. Walter was going to take the deal and then he realized everything was not all about him and getting money fast. He knew how much the family wanted to live in the house and he told the man who was going to buy it back that it was not going to happen. The family was going to move into the house whether the neighbors liked it or not! I was so happy that Walter stood up for the family and not just himself. I really enjoyed watching this movie and I was so happy the family got to live in the house after all!

Steinbeck, Welty, and Wright

John Steinbeck

As I read Steinbeck’s introduction and bio, I was amazed. I thought it was really cool that most of the stories he wrote were set in the place he was born. I also thought it was great that he could sympathize with migrant workers. I found it sad, though, that he had to do so many different jobs but I guess those jobs just gave him more experience and more to write about. I thought Steinbeck’s story “Flight” was really good and I definitely enjoyed reading it. I think this story was a great way to show how there are some decisions that people have to make that can change them from a child to an adult. Pepe was lazy and never really seemed to do anything, but it seemed as if his mother loved him the most of all of her children. Pepe just wanted to fool around and play all day. His mother gave him a simple task and told him exactly what to do. Of course Pepe is like almost every other child in the world and decides to do what he wants. He got into a fight with another man at a family friend’s house and the way I took it, Pepe killed the other man with his father’s knife. He had come home to tell his mother and get her help so he could run from the people who had seen him kill this man. His mother helped him and sent him off to the mountains. Pepe was doing well for a while it seemed. He had managed to hide from people and then everything took a turn for the worst. Pepe’s horse was shot and could no longer take him anywhere so Pepe had to leave th horse on the trail and go alone with his gun. He got shot in the hand and it ended up getting infected. He was so weak and could not go very far before he had to rest. He was finally found and killed. I felt a little ad for Pepe. He was just a boy running and errand for his mother and one bad decision led to a mistake that forced him to become a man really fast. He was only trying to defend himself from the other man who was provoking him. He could not just stand there and take it. In the end, Pepe was suffering from many different things. He was wounded, tired, and dehydrated. I think it was awful how the story ended, but Pepe was suffering and I think death was his only way to escape the suffering.

Eudora Welty

I found the story “Powerhouse” to be a little confusing. I was not sure if Powerhouse was singing or telling a story. I am guessing he was telling a story as he and his and were playing music. I found his story to be quite interesting though. I liked how Eudora Welty described every possible thing she could. I could imagine all of the sounds and the setting of this story. I could imagine the way that powerhouse looked and acted while he was performing. She was very descriptive and that is the only way I can read and comprehend stories. Powerhouse was playing for these people and taking their requests. They were playing a waltz and he started telling a story. He was talking about his wife who had killed herself. He had received the news in a telegram from a man named Uranus Knockwood. He went on and on with this story telling how his wife had jumped put the window at a hotel. She thought Powerhouse was coming to her and he never showed up so she killed herself. Uranus Knockwood found her and took her away. The band and all of the people watching them had taken an intermission and went to a local bar where he began telling the story to people there. He met with a real town hero who had saved quite a few people. He also had a waitress listening to his story. The way I took it she felt bad for him. Powerhouse must not like to think about this story because once they returned from the bar they started playing something completely different and the story never came back up. I felt bad that Powerhouse lost his wife while he was touring and playing for people but he did not seem very upset about it. I guess this shows that different people have different ways of dealing with things.

Richard Wright

I enjoyed reading “Native Son” very much. It was an intriguing story and I was surprised how it ended. Bigger was only going to get a job so he could help his family. This was what many people had to do back then. They would quit school and get jobs or help out around their house. Bigger was so worried about what the white people who lived near the Dalton’s would think of him. He was also afraid of what the family would think of him. He wanted the job so bad and he was so nervous. He thought of himself as a fool because he had not come completely prepared with the paper already out and ready to hand to Mr. Dalton. He was happy when he got the job and then he thought he had lost it because of the Dalton’s daughter. He was relieved to know that he got to keep his job. He had to take the daughter to “the university” the first night he was on the job. She led him to a completely different place and I do not think Bigger was very comfortable about taking her to a different place. They got her boyfriend and went out for a good time. Bigger was not at all thrilled about taking them to a black restaurant and he definitely did not want to go in with them. He did anyways and his girlfriend just laughed in his face. The two talked to Bigger about helping him and his people because that was what they wanted to do. After they left the restaurant, they drove around for a while and Mary and Jan got drunk. Bigger dropped off Jan and took Mary home. Mary was too drunk to get herself up to her room so Bigger had to help her. When they got to her room, she was practically asleep, so Bigger was going to take advantage of her. Of course, Mary did kiss him first, but she was drunk and did not know what she was doing. Bigger was buzzed and knew exactly what he was doing. He did not want to get caught by Mary’s mother, so he suffocated her. He did not do it on purpose, but he should have known that she could not breathe under the pillow. By the time he realized what he had done, it was too late. Mary was dead and the only thing Bigger could do now was run for his life.

Hemingway, Faulkner, and Hughes

Ernest Hemingway

I enjoyed reading “The Short, Happy Life of Francis Macomber” by Ernest Hemingway but I was confused. The story began in the middle of an event and I had no clue what the characters were talking about. When they all started talking about the lion, I was lost. As I read on, I gathered that Macomber had been hunting lions, he found one, and he ran from it. I also gathered that Macomber and his wife were on a safari with a man who loved to hunt animals. Macomber seemed excited to get to go hunt for a different animal the next day. He just wanted his wife to know that he could kill an animal. I guess he wanted to seem strong and not like a coward. He had another chance to kill a lion the next day. He blew that. He shot at it and got it down, but when he had to get close and shoot it to make sure it was dead, he panicked and ran. His wife showed him on the way back to camp that she wanted a brave man who would stand in the face of terror and not run away with his tail between his legs. She showed him even more so that night that the hunter was the type of guy she wanted. The next day Macomber was so upset and I think this had something to do with him doing so well hunting that day. He killed two of the three buffalo and was on his way to kill the last one when his wife shot him. The way I took the end of the story, Macomber’s wife and Mr. Wilson had planned to kill Macomber the night before. I think she saw this as her only way to get away from him with his money. I kind of felt bad for Macomber because he was shot from behind. He had no way of knowing what was coming and he could not protect himself from the deadly shot.

William Faulkner

I found “That Evening Sun” to be a very confusing and quite frightening story. I was confused because I did not understand why Nancy though Jesus was going to kill her. I know she had slept with some other man while I am guessing she was with Jesus, but he left which shows me that he tried to move on. I will have to admit that while I was reading this story I was a little scared. The narrator was talking about Nancy making weird noises and they seemed to do everything in the dark. I thought it was a little weird when Nancy wanted the children to go back to her house with her. I know she was scared, but she had other people who offered to let her stay with them and she refused. I found the ditch to be a little sketchy. I know I would have hated to have had to cross through a ditch in the dark. I kind of feel a little bad for Nancy though. She had let the thought of Jesus being so mad at her take over her whole life. All she could think about day and night was him coming back to kill her. I think she was losing her mind. I was confused by how the story ended. One minute they were talking about Nancy and the next minute the two youngest children were fighting with each other. They seemed to fight a lot throughout the story now that I think about it. Caddy seemed a little nosey to me. She always asked questions. I think the mom was a little jealous that the father was walking Nancy to her house at night. He just wanted to make sure she was alright because she was one of their workers. If they lost her they would have to find someone else to do the work that she did. I think the mom took into consideration what all Nancy had done in her life, and she really did not want her close to her family.

Langston Hughes

I enjoyed reading Langston Hughes’ poetry. He found a way to make his poetry not only personal to him, but also to whomever may read it. I think my favorite out of all of these poems would have to be “Young Gal’s Blues”. I think he is talking about how some people see getting old as worse than dying. There are some people who cannot stand the fact that they will someday grow old and gray. This poem is also talking about love which is something a person wants all throughout their life. Even when there is no more love to be given, everyone wants more. I also liked “Theme For English B”. I felt that Hughes had made this poem into something more personal for himself. He talked about his life in a way that it related to the professor. I liked how he said that he may be learning from the professor, but the professor is also learning for him and they are a part of each other. As much as people do not want to admit it, everyone leaves a lasting impression on the people they meet. Everyone also learns new things from different people as they teach new things to those people. I enjoyed reading “On the Road” as well. This story is very good. I felt bad for Sargeant because all he wanted was a place to sleep. I am pretty sure a jail cell was not what he had in mind though. I thought that everything he was thinking had actually happened. That he was actually strong enough to bring down the church and then have Christ walking with him. I thought he was just imagining the last part. I thought it was sad that he thought he was stronger than he actually was. I am pretty sure he did not like the cops beating him not once but twice. That had to be just a little embarrassing to him. Another thing that shocked me was the fact that the Reverend just blatantly said NO!

Cather, Glaspell, and Hurston

Willa Cather

I felt a little sorry for the narrator’s Aunt Georgiana in “A Wagner Matinée”. She was coming back to a town she had left long ago to settle the estate of a male relative of hers. This woman was tired because of all the work she had done since she moved from Boston. She met a man and they ran off and got married. She did not want to hear her family’s comments, so they moved to Nebraska. I feel bad for them because they barely had anything. They had to build their own house and work really hard to make things work. The one thing that took the aunt's mind off of her hard work was opera music. Her nephew took her to the opera and she enjoyed it so much. For a little while she did not have to think about working and taking care of everything. She could just relax and listen to the music. I also felt bad when the show was over because it was back to reality for Aunt Georgiana. I found “Paul’s Case” to be a very sad story. It seemed to me like the only happiness this boy could find was when he was in a theater. He did not like school, he did not like being at home, he only enjoyed being at the theater. When he was at the theater, he could let his mind run wild and have no regrets. His imagination ran into his real life and he began confusing the two. It seemed to me like he was sent away as a young boy and the story picked up later in his life. The theater was yet again his place of utter happiness. He had stolen and lied as much as he could in his life and I feel that the guilt finally caught up to him. I thought it was sad that he felt the only way he could solve his problems was to jump in front of a train and be killed.

Susan Glaspell

I remember reading “Trifles” in my English 113 class. I did not really understand the story, even after the teacher tried to explain it to us. This time when I read it, I understood it. The ladies were worried about all of the things the men saw a being unimportant. While the men went around looking for any evidence they could find, the women solved the whole case. They knew who did it, why they did it, and how. Mrs. Hale knew Mrs. Wright. She had known her for a while. She knew how much Mrs. Wright loved to sing and once she married Mr. Wright, the singing stopped. She got the canary so she could hear the singing once again, but Mr. Wright ended that too. He took away everything she loved and she did not know how to deal with it. I think the reason she had sewed some bad stitches was because she was nervous. She had killed her husband and her adrenaline levels were probably up. She could not get her nervous energy out of her body before she started stitching. The ladies found the bird Mr. Wright had obviously killed by breaking its neck. I am guessing that Mrs. Wright only saw it fit that she kill him the way he killed her, in a sense. He took away everything that had ever made her the least bit happy and she felt she should do the same to him. She was probably just waiting for someone to come find her and him and take her away. Mrs. Wright would probably have been a little happier in jail because she could sing there. The men may have found it to be funny that the women were worrying about “trifles” but in the end the joke was on the men. The women solved the murder and it seemed to me like they tried their hardest to hide the evidence so they were the only ones who could solve it with all of the evidence.

Zora Neale Hurston

It seems to me like “How It Feels to be Colored Me” is about Hurston’s life. The girl in the story moved around like she did and experienced the same things she had experienced. I thought it was really neat how she tied her life story into this story without making it sound like she was just talking about herself. I enjoyed reading this story because it was very interesting. After reading Hurston’s background story, I feel a little bad for her. She was shipped off to live with other family members until her dad could no longer afford it. She turned around her life for the better. She worked hard, but her hard work did not pay off in the end. She was accused of something she had not done and that led to her reputation going down the drain. I felt bad when I read she died broke after she had been so popular in her prime. I thought “The Gilded Six-Bits” was a pretty good story. Missie May and Joe were so in love. He thought the world of her and would do anything for her and she felt the same about him, or so I thought. I was surprised that Missie May had cheated on Joe. I thought that she loved him and I thought it was wrong for her to sleep with Otis Slemmons. I know she wanted the gold that he had, but there had to have been a better way to get it. I was also surprised that Joe stayed with Missie May after all this had occurred. I guess once he realized the gold was not real, he felt bad that his wife had been fooled by the other man. The fact that Joe stayed around showed that he was a true gentleman. I was happy that Joe got a son in the end. I thought it might have been Slemmons, but I guess not. I was happy when the story ended with Joe going back to his old ways and treating his wife with the silver coins and candy kisses.

Robert Frost

I think, by far, “The Road Not Taken” has to be my favorite poem of all time. I see this poem as a wonderful story of the way decisions can impact a person’s life. The narrator had a choice that had to be made when he had come to these two roads in the woods. He looked down one but ultimately chose the other because it looked as if it had not been travelled. I think this choice shows the narrator is a risk taker. They could have taken the path that other people had already gone down, but they wanted to be different and go their own way. The choice the narrator made changed their life forever. This poem can be applied to anyone’s life and the decisions they have to make. Who know what would have happened had the narrator chosen to go the other way? This is like many decisions people have to make each day. No matter what a person decides to do, their choice will impact their life in some way just like the narrator’s choice impacted his life.

“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” is another great poem. It is about a person who is riding their horse and just stops to look at the woods. They take in all of the beauty surrounding them. I think the horse shaking his bells is like a reminder to the rider of what they were doing before they stopped. To me, this poem signifies that no matter how busy we can get sometimes, we all just need to stop every once in a while and look around at all of the beauty that surrounds us. I think it also shows that we can get a little distracted from time to time and we need little reminders to keep us on track.

“Acquainted with the Night” is a great poem as well. The narrator talks about walking to the city limits and back and in rain. They also talk about passing a guard and not wanting to explain their situation. The narrator says that there is nobody looking for him and people will not walk toward him. All of this leads me to believe this poem is talking about a homeless person who roams the streets at night.