Questions 2

“Sonny’s Blues”

1. The story is told by Sonny’s brother. By having his brother, and not Sonny tell the story, it leaves information out as to what he’s really up to and see a worried brother’s point of view.
2. He’s a teacher, showing responsibility and somewhat boring. He went for a safe job that would offer him security.
3. The story would be more exciting if it were told by Sonny. We could hear about the interesting characters he was mixed up with and the exciting places he got to see. His brother makes the story seem sober.
4. His daughter dies, inspiring him to write his brother.
5. His mother asks him to look after Sonny. He doesn’t always keep his word, but he kept it at the end.
6. Not naming all the characters adds more emphasis on Sonny. It shows how much “Daddy” is thinking about him.
7. He has taken his life’s woes and experiences and incorporated it into his music.

“A Worn Path”
1. It was written with an objective point of view. The narrator tells the story without telling what a person’s thoughts were.
2. It’s ironic her name is Phoenix because a phoenix is a type of mythical bird that doesn’t exist. Throughout the story, she has visions of things that really aren’t there.
3. It adds a trippy effect. Every time I would encounter a moment when Phoenix was having a vision, I felt like I skipped a paragraph and had to go back to reread the page.
4. She is belittled. They treat her with courtesy, but talk to her like she’s a kid. It shows she was probably in a more northern state by a smaller town by how nicely they treated her.
5. The dog has energy. She wishes she were young and had the energy to get through the forest like him.
6. The saying has a larger relevance. It shows she’s beginning to get old and helpless in her old age. It is the onset of despair that she soon can’t help her grandson.

Word count- 350

Questions

“A Rose for Emily”

1. The iron gray strand shows she was lying with him after his death for a long time. It shows how desperate she was for company.
2. The town is the narrator. He professes to be speaking for the people of the town.
3. The narrator’s point of view adds mystery to the story. If we had Emily’s point of view, we would know what’s going on.
4. The foreshadowing did add interest to the story. Emily buying the poison and saying craziness ran in the family foreshadowed Homer’s death. Killing him sounded so crazy it made it hard to believe the foreshadowing.
5. Emily is not capable of accepting change. She wouldn’t give up her dead father’s body and she killed a man to keep his company forever.
6. She was a southerner with money- Homer was a blue collar Yankee.
7. I find it shocking dark humor. The end of the story left me speechless.
8. The author is sympathetic toward Emily. He doesn’t place her in a bad light even though she does insane things. She is not murderous; she’s just suffered a lonely life that has in the end deranged her. The author calls the story “A Rose…” because her character blooms through the story. Her insanity slowly unfolds as the story progresses.

“Teenage Wasteland”

1. The story is told by an outside character. The narrator uses limited omniscience. The story seems to be through the mother’s eyes even though she isn’t the actually person telling the story.
2. The significance of the opening paragraph is to show Donny’s innocence. He had a bright future, and somewhere along the way he lost it.
3. Daisy wants her children to look good. She is always listening to what other people do instead of making up her own mind. She just listens to Donny’s teachers or to Cal.
4. She doesn’t blame him for messing Donny up even more, however, it may be because she knows it’s truly her fault.
5. Daisy puts off her daughter for Donny. She won’t even talk to her when her daughter reaches out to her.
6. His presentation of Daisy is Satirical. He shows her as a woman without a strong sense of self, and she pays for it by losing her son.

Word Count- 385

"Parker's Back".... again.

After reading "Parker's Back" several times, I seem to have never-ending thoughts about it. It's not just "Parker's Back" that got me thinking, but it was the rest of Flannery O'Connor's short stories that our class has read, as well. Each of her stories are strongly composed of its characters and not so much its setting or plot. After carefully dissecting each main character, it seems that at some point they have a certain thing in common- trying to discover themselves.
I believe it's one of the most important qualities a person can possess- knowing what kind of person you are. Being a college student, it seems that this is the prime time for me to make this discovery. I feel as if I already have, but who knows, I may find something different down the road. People always change, but no matter what, there's always a person's true core, holding the qualities they, as a human being, possess.

"12 Angry Jurors"

Last week, I went to see "12 Angry Jurors" on campus. My favorite thing about the play was the stage. When you walked in and sat down, you were a part of the setting. A table was in the middle with raised seats surrounding the center in a circle, making the audience feel like the jurors in court. It was a small stage which made it feel very personal, unlike any other play I've seen. The Hatiloo was a small theater, however, the audience was not made to feel like an actual part of the play. It made the play much more captivating, with the actors so close to you that they could be touched.

"Parker's Back"

Out of the three stories we had to read by O'Connor, "Parker's Back" seems to be the odd ball out. The other two stories, "Revealtion" and "A Good Man is Hard to Find" each reveal the physical prejudices people can have against other people who are different from them. However, the characters of "Parker's Back" do not focus on this. The characters focus more on religion, beliefs, and personality. Also, the short story does not have a character that directly represents O'Connor. Her mother is represented by the nagging wife who is extremely religious. O'Connor slightly represents herself in Parker, who is trying to please his wife, but never quite makes it to the degree he wanted to.

"Revelation"...

Flannery O'Connor's short stories show how much the world has changed in the last 50 years or so. The main character in her piece of literature, "Revelation," is a perfect example of this. The main character, a farmer's wife, is a nasty piece of work. As the story progressed the less I liked her. Her comments were obnoxious and completely prejudice against anybody but herself and anyone else like her. It hit me after reading the story, however, that this was written decades ago when it was more acceptable to talk this way. If the wife were living in present times, she never would have made it out of her doctor's office alive before being attacked by all the patients, instead of one girl.

Peer Review

When sitting in class, there were a few people who said they did not enjoy peer editing. I understand it can sometimes be a bit embarrassing to show someone a crappy paper you may have hastily written the night before, but peer editing is one of the most helpful tools when writing. I get sick of looking at my papers and can't catch half of my own mistakes by the time I'm done writing them. Even if I go back at a later time, I still can't properly edit my papers. If something is unclear to other people reading it, it will help me reword sentences to make my point more obvious. Peer editing can do no wrong to your papers, unless the person editing your work doesn't know what they're doing.