Week 5 Discussion Questions

***These are also posted in document form under "Course Blog" in BB.


“A Good Man is Hard to Find” and “Good Country People”


1.Having reviewed the lecture on O’Connor, explain why you think recognizing and understanding the concept of the grotesque is important to understand and more fully appreciate the texts.

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?

3.Discuss the characters names in “Good Country People”. Clearly, they are representative of something -- what is it?
4.Discuss the title of “A Good Man is Hard to Find” – how does it relate to the story? Does this title provide a particular kind of insight into the text?

5.Given the general thematic identifier within which both O’Connor stories are filed in your text, consider the concept of “justice” in one or both stories. Is justice served? In what way? For whom? Against whom?

6.Another major thematic element at work in much of O’Connor’s fiction is “grace”, the concept of undeserved forgiveness and/or acceptance. Consider her own statement about her characters: “Our age not only does not have a very sharp eye for the almost imperceptible intrusions of grace, it no longer has much feeling for the nature of the violences which precede and follow them . . . I have found that violence is strangely capable of returning my characters to reality and preparing them to accept their moment of grace. Their heads are so hard that almost nothing else will do the work. This idea, that reality is something to which we must be returned at considerable cost, is one which is seldom understood by the casual reader, but it is one which is implicit in the Christian view of the world” (1392-1393).

7.How did/does Martha Stevens’s reading of “A Good Man is Hard to Find” (From The Question of Flannery O’Connor influence your own reading and understanding of the story? What did you make of/presume about the story before reading any criticism?

8.Use the above question but base it on Stephen Bandy’s “From “One of My Babies: The Misfit and the Grandmother”.

“Heritage”

9.“The last sentence seems to contain a contradiction. “From my family I have learned the secrets” might lead you to expect something positive. But maybe the last phrase is not meant to be positive. What is your reading of Hogan’s conclusion?” (492)

10.Hogan’s poem is heavy-handed in terms of figurative images; she relies on similes and metaphors. Explain how these concrete, often visual representations explain more abstract ideas.

“Commitments”

11.Essex Hemphill’s poem “Commitments” is rather straightforward in terms of its diction and structure. As such, we can easily ascertain that he is speaking of his place in the equation of his family. Hemphill uses a major paradox to communicate his feelings about his familial identity: he spends much of the poem reiterating his presence (as represented in family photographs) but also suggests he is “invisible” (Line 32). This major tension, or conflict, is something a New Critic would focus upon in an analysis, and certainly, it drives this verse. Such tensions are ultimately resolved by the conclusion of the poem: ultimately, is Hemphill visible or invisible, and in what sense?

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?

“A Chinese Banquet”

13.Kitty Tsui’s poem is dedicated is “for the one who was not invited”, which we take to be the narrator’s same-sex lover. In the end, the narrator wishes to tell her family that [her] back is healing/she dream[s] of dragons and water/my home is in her arms/our bedroom ceiling the wide open sky” (Lines 49-52). Analyze these metaphors as they relate to the space between her relationship with her lover and her relationship with her family, two relationships that appear will not cross over one another.

14.What is the purpose and the effect of the preservation of “small talk” throughout the poem? Why, for example, do we need to know that one is “sitting down for shark fin soup” (Line 12) or that “they talk about buying a house/taking a two-week vacation in beijing” (Lines 13 and 14). Consider the contrast between these anecdotal moments and the internal conflict the narrator seems to be experiencing as she participates in the banquet.