UM Honors Blog 2021-2022

 I find it interesting that the grandmothers feels as though she must convince Bailey to do what she believes is best for him. In “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” the grandmother very obviously is trying to convince her grandson not to go somewhere he wants to go. As the parental figure in his life with him having lived with her I believe she should not have to convince him but she should be able to tell him they are not going considering the dangerous situation she lays out at the beginning of the reading. This makes me question her sterness as a parental figure. I also must wonder if there are underlying reasons she will not be harsh with Bailey and why she allows him to have his way. I also question if these underlying reasons have something to do with the reason Bailey is being raised by his grandmother. I have to wonder if she feels sorry for Bailey and if so why. We see very obviously that they want two different things. The grandmothers actions make me as the question, “why is B...

Every creation of God is good (1 Timothy 4:4), and so is every creation of man that falls under the category of literature. This at least seems to be many people's opinion. However, I would like to contend for the sake of argument that authors have no business creating some of the content they write about in their novels. O'Connor writing about "the grandmother who half sat and half lay in a puddle of blood" ( A Good Man is Hard to Find ,   second to last page )  and how "[s]he gave a little cry of alarm but he pushed her down and began to kiss her again" ( Good Country People , third page from the end) is no exception. Here are three examples of Scripture that may imply reasons against writing unwholesome literature. First, Philippians 4:8:  “Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things  are  honest, whatsoever things  are  just, whatsoever things  are  pure, whatsoever things   are  lovely, whatsoever things...

      In O'Conner's story Good Country People the thing that stayed on my mind was the word intentions. "Pointer", which we learn was not his real name, had very different intentions with the family than they thought. His true intentions were the farthest from pure and used a ruse to take advantage of the most vulnerable parts of people. He put on such a good show that he even won over Hulga, who was not trusting or vulnerable with anyone. I think this story is really accurate of how people act today, though it is told in an extreme situation of stealing people's glass eyes and prosthetic legs. People today are rarely completely upfront about  their intentions with others and in situations. I think many people can attest to being fooled by someone who they thought had good intentions. Sometimes, even after the person shows their true colors, the people around still see them as pure and simple as Mrs. Hopewell saw "Pointer". I think everyone should start ...

    Words are very difficult right now. The readings honestly bored me. The descriptions did not engage my mind. The most interesting thing was Helga, the woman with the prosthetic leg. She had changed her name and grown up, yet her mother refused to believe or respect either. I relate to this in an aspect. I do not go by my birth name and I have various disorders, mental not physical. My mother does the same, not accepting my chosen name and trying to avoid the fact that I have illnesses that cannot be fixed. It's saddening to see myself in this writing in this way. It doesn't help me see that other people experience similar things, but instead reminds me of the reality that parents are like this everywhere. Parents don't accept the changes their children chose to make. Some do, but there are those who don't. I wish they would. I hope that our generation does better, that we learn and that we remember what it was like to be a child. I want to change the world for the b...

      Southern media seems to continuously have this them around the oddballs of life. Take Forest Gump, for example, or Troop Zero. Forest is different than those around him, with a big ole southern drawl and a love for chocolates. He's not really like anyone else, and the movie simply follows him through life in the mid-twentieth century. Troop Zero depicts rural Georgia in 1977, following Christmas Flint and her friends. Where a bunch of outcast girls spends their summer becoming birdie scouts to hopefully earn a place on NASA's golden record. Christmas has a strange family life and a fixation on space which presents itself in her efforts to be immortalized on the record. Both of these movies take place in the deep south, communicating to all those outside it a tiny bit about life below the Mason-Dixon.      O'Conner does this as well. Her Southern Gothic writing beautifully captures what goes bump down that old dirt road. Our grandma's told us the wives...

     Both of O'Connor's stories were chilling to read. I noticed a common theme of disastrous situations that could have been avoided if the respective characters simply employed the use of common sense and thought of someone other than herself. "Good Country People" is the one that really caught my attention. From the start, Joy/Hulga is a very unlikable character. On one hand, I can understand her frustration over feeling limited and stuck in the same place because her disability holds her back. I can also grasp that she feels misunderstood and that she cannot truly enjoy or relate to the people with whom she is surrounded as she has had new and exciting experiences through higher education. She has been exposed to and has developed viewpoints that do not align with the country people in her circle, especially evidenced by her mother's reaction to the content in the science book as "some evil incantation in gibberish" (p. 277). It is clear that Hulga w...

   SPOILERS AND ICKY DARKNESS AHEAD       I love Tumblr posts about symbolism in movies. One that really stuck with me was about the movie Maleficent. In a scene where the Faerie is reunited with her childhood love, something is stolen from her. The man, Stefan, comes to his childhood love in a way that gains her trust. Though she hasn't seen him in a while, he manipulates her to believe he is trying to help her. She believes him, because, well, she hasn't a reason not to trust him. Maleficent was not blind to the cruelty of the humans against her people, but she had seen a different side through Stefan. He gives her a drink with a sleeping syrup in it to disarm her physically, as he has already disarmed her mentally. While she sleeps, he cuts her wings from her back. This is all out of greed, as he grew up poor. Maleficent wakes up disoriented, in pain, and with a feeling of betrayal deep enough to turn her from her good nature. The Tumblr post I read comp...