In Flannery O’Connor’s, “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” we find characters who exhibit traits of the southern “lady” and “gentleman.” How do the grandmother and the Misfit exhibit these traits?
What is the situation that the narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper” finds herself in at the beginning of the story?
August 3, 2019How does the story engage with this rhetoric? What does the plot suggest about the way the writer has responded to the “rest cures” commonly prescribed by psychiatrists of the era? What messages does the text have for each of Gilman’s audiences?
August 3, 2019In Flannery O’Connor’s, “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” we find characters who exhibit traits of the southern “lady” and “gentleman.” How do the grandmother and the Misfit exhibit these traits?
Question Description
Please write a 2-3 page interpretive essay based on one of the following topics. Papers should be typed and double-spaced with 1 inch margins and size 12 font.
The questions I have provided should be a starting point for your essay, but you may branch out into other areas, depending on where your interpretation takes you. Always support your answers with evidence from the text(s). Use direct quotes where you feel they will support your argument. Do not forget to have a separate introduction, body paragraphs and conclusion to your essay. Your introduction should introduce the story or stories you plan to interpret, and express a thesis statement (a central idea of your argument) about the story/stories. If you are writing about two stories, your thesis should show some connection you are finding between the two of them.
This essay is meant to be your own interpretation of this story or stories based on the questions I ask below. Do not look up summaries of the story or stories online. If you use ideas or words from online sources without citing them, this is plagiarism and will result in an F on the assignment. I would much rather read what you think!
Topic #1
In Flannery O’Connor’s, “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” we find characters who exhibit traits of the southern “lady” and “gentleman.” How do the grandmother and the Misfit exhibit these traits? What is O’Connor saying about the significance of these traits in relation to a person’s moral character? How do these characters measure up to O’Connor’s expectations of a person’s morality? If you wish, you may compare the idea of what makes a “lady” in “A Good Man is Hard to Find” to Faulkner’s “lady,” Emily Grierson, in “A Rose for Emily.” Think about the class issues that are involved in the label of “lady” as used by these southern authors.
Topic #2
Discuss the status of women in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Kate Chopin’s “Story of an Hour,” OR Jamaica Kinkaid’s “Girl.” What options did women have in the story you chose? What were their lives like? What did it take for women to survive and carve out a piece of freedom in a patriarchal society at the time or in the place where the story you chose was written? How does the author critique women’s position in her world?
Topic #3
Write an essay about how the setting (both the physical setting and the social/time period) is crucial to the meaning of one of the following stories: Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” OR John Updike’s “A&P.” This may require some basic research into the time/place the story was written. If you do borrow information, please cite your sources.
