What In Tarnation Was This-Josh Naqvi

 What in tarnation was "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" by O'Connor? I read this thing two times just to make sure I did not miss some extravagant detail. There was no detail that I could find. This reading was so dark and depressing, that it made even Freud look happy. I took it to mean old world meets new world. Granny who is talking about old days and uses the N word gets shot in the face and dies from a thug in the new world. Yes, I am over exaggerating a little, but tell me I am wrong! The story changed directions so many times that I could hardly keep up with the dialogue. From what I could pick up, the story is basically the old world vs the new. By using the term "world" I am referring to eras. As in the time before the modern era vs the modern era. A time when "good men" existed. A time when people had respect for each other and there were somethings even a criminal would not do, e.g. murder granny. Granny's pleas were chilling. She held on to the belief that somehow the man would not kill her.

    Granny believed in the sliver of goodness known as human morals. This was shown to not exist anymore. The kids died as well along with everyone else. They all die. Is that not the modern era at its finest? Innocents killed in cold blood, morality a dissolved ash heap, nobleness a dead virtue, and other lovely ideals seem to coat the modern era. This story was depressing and incredibly negative. I wish I could argue that it is not true, but in many ways it is. I honestly have seen too many stories of crimes back home in Louisiana that mimic this one. Innocents die all the time. Why someone would want to make a book about it, I do not know. However after finishing this story at 12:35 am all I can say is what in tarnation was that? This truly was a tragic story. 

I commented on Abigale Bell and Braylan Stringfellow

 

Comments

  1. Emmett BryantMarch 28, 2022 at 7:55 PM

    I think the biggest thing O'Connor was trying to point out was that loosely held morals are not even really morals worth holding at all. Take the grandmother for example. She claimed to believe and hold many things as good morals and yet in the face of danger and even in daily life she never lived those out. It was just talk. If O'Connor was trying to say anything about the old and new, I would 'put it to you' that she was trying to show the hypocrisy we always seem to see in the generation before us. So much of our generation is beginning to realize things are not the way they're supposed to be. --Emmett Bryant

    ReplyDelete
  2. Haylee LyndMarch 28, 2022 at 9:24 PM

    I agree with Emmett. My takeaway that the grandmother is not truly good although in her head she is. She wants to be seen as a lady if she hypothetically dies, but she is selfish in the story. Josh, your interpretation of it is not one I've heard before though and it is extremely interesting.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Bug OlsenMarch 28, 2022 at 9:57 PM

    I enjoyed your post, and I agree that there is a lot to learn about these writings. I thought they were very interesting and have layers of meaning that I am missing out on. However, I thought that the grandmother's ignorance and O'Connor's attack on an older generation was very fitting, and thus in both stories they got what was coming to them.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Samantha TMarch 28, 2022 at 11:50 PM

    I think the stories darkness have a purpose. The shockingness of them makes you ponder and reread them more than a happy tale with some moral point to it. (I mean, LOTR??? It can be SO dark but it holds so many lessons) The use of irony and stereotyped characters achieve this well alongside the grimness.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A House Divided//Emily Otts

The words Jesus spoke in Matthew 12 remind me so much of this play: "Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and no city or house divided against itself will stand." (Matthew 12:25) King Lear, at the end of the day, is about a family being divided multiple ways. These divisions arise over greed and hatred for one another and cause the whole family to be ruined because of it. King Lear first divides the kingdom after his daughter Cordelia does not proclaim her love to him, so he banishes her. Later, his daughters go against him for not doing as they asked, believing he is unfit and unworthy to be king, secretly plotting against him. But all of this comes to a head in Act 5. After capturing King Lear and Cordelia, Edmund plans to have them killed. You would believe the sisters would be able to work together because their plan is working, but an even greater division has risen between them. Both of them wish to have Edmund for themselves, and they plot against each o...
Read more

The Plague in Everyone// Emily Otts

     In part 4 of the Plague , Tarrou tells Rieux about how he has had the plague forever. Except, this is not the same plague as the one ravaging the town. Tarrou speaks of how his father was a lawyer who believed in the death penalty, how he saw so many people support it and be comfortable about it, and how he had to witness the executions of prisoners. He explains how this sort of mindset is a plague itself, one Tarrou had been fighting for a long time. " That's why everybody in the world looks so tired; everyone is more or less sick of plague. But that is also why some of us, those who want to get the plague out of their systems, feel such desperate weariness, a weariness from which nothing remains to set us free except death" (Camus, part 4, chapter 6). Tarrou wants to desperately not submit to such awful ways of thinking.      Tarrou does not realize it, but the plague he is talking about is sin. Everyone has it, some people give in to it and let...
Read more

The Thirst for Knowledge

     With Book Seven of Milton's Paradise Lost, Raphael is continuing his exposition on Satan's apostasy. The plan is to expose Adam and Eve to the wretched fate of those who cross God's will. The more he shed's light on the subject, however, the more Adam is inclined to ask for more information. He wants to know everything about the subject, as well as God and His creation.      However, while the taste of such knowledge leaves Adam yearning for more, there are boundaries. It is like a toddler eating a cookie... and eventually begging her mother for the rest of the jar. Is it a coincidence that the one thing Adam and Eve are not to touch is the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil? Most readers know how the story ends: these toddlers are never going to be content with a few cookies. They're going in for the jar.   There is a statement in the Bible that is constantly being repeated throughout the Old Testament: "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of ...
Read more