I was also extremely confused by "Judgment Day". I was having a lot of trouble telling the past from the present-- maybe this was a technique that was supposed to imitate an old person's trouble with separating memory and reality (or the beginning phases of Alzheimer’s).
I almost feel as though O'Conner thought the template of this story could lend itself well to both stories. However, I felt as though there might have been a creativity problem. There were undeniable similarities down to the detail of the daughters' husbands being gone multiple days of the week. I did feel slightly let down by the fact that I had to read two almost identical stories that dealt with similar themes. I wonder which story worked better or provoked more feelings in the reader. I think O’Conner could have chosen one of the stories. What do you guys think? I personally liked “The Geranium” better because I was less confused and I loved the reaction of the man in the window when he tells the father to mind his own business and that he would not ask twice—adding insult to injury after all that has happened to him. Also, I like that the beginning does not start from the father’s most desperate moment, which is the case in “Judgment Day”. The father in “The Geranium” does not cry until the end, and his crying is mixed with the conversation about the flower with the man across the alley, whereas the father in “Judgment Day” is crying from the outset and has also written a suicide note.
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The stories were so similar that I felt like O'Connor did a rewrite, though I don't know which one came first. I assumed "The Geranium" did. It was like reading the same story but I think O'Connor is saying two different things with the stories. In "The Geranium," since it ends with the smashed flower pot and Old Dudley still in New York, I felt like it was telling me that you can't hang on to the past. You have to change with time to be able to survive. Old Dudley is trapped in this place that he feels alienated because he is resisting changing his beliefs as time goes on. So he's frozen and uprooted, like the smashed flower. It can't grow anymore and it is no longer rooted in it's past.
In "Judgment Day," the old man is unable to break free of his associations about black people. He calls the man who helps him "Preacher" just like he did in the South. He's not in the South anymore and so that's not acceptable and the black man gets angry. The old man dies and is sent back to the South for burial. He was so unwilling to change that he couldn't exist in life as he was living it and so it ended and he was sent back to be trapped in the past.
I read them that O'Connor is saying that you have to change in your life or else there is no life to live. I too liked "The Geranium" better because I feel like Old Dudley can still learn to change and life in the present world, whereas the old man in "Judgment Day" failed miserably.
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