Discussion Questions

2. Do you think the grotesque elements present in either or both stories makes the characters more or less sympathetic? Do you find them alienating, or do they help render the characters more fully human and understandable?

At first, all characters in both these stories are presented in a way to make the reader uncomfortable and therefore, causes the reader to dislike them. But, time goes on and the reader is given more time to get to know these characters, and because of that, it is easy to sympathize with characters that in the beginning, the reader would've been set up to dislike. O'Connor does this really well, and both stories sort of knock the reader out, for lack of a better term. In both stories, the elements that are grotesque make the characters fully human. There's no questions about that. In the beginning, Hulga is made out to be a cold, Atheistic philosopher. But after the Bible salesmen turns his back on her, the reader is forced to sympathize, because she went from being on top, to being as low as possible, just like the Grandmother in "A Good Man is Hard to Find."

12.Consider the poem’s title – Do you think it references his commitments to his family … or theirs to whom? What is the substance of these commitments?

In this poem, it is clear the Hemphill's commitments are to his family, because there is no explanation of his family having an commitments to anything. He spells it out plainly for the reader when he says, "I am always there / for critical emergencies, / graduations, / the middle of the night." But the tone of and other aspects of the poem put the audience under the impression that he is not appreciated, meaning that his commitments don't really seem to phase his family because they are blinded by his homosexuality, either that, or they just don't bother to notice.