I thought you did a nice job with your presentation. I like how each familial example will deal with a different focus (ie. diease or religion). I think that you can also incorporate religion into the "Good Country People" example. We cannot assume that Hulga does not believe in God simply because of her disability, therefore her belief stands outside of the discussion of her artificial leg.
I think it would be interesting for you to consider how both the mother and daughter characters' views on religion pan out in their relationships to others. For example, the mother is an extremely distrusting person. She is anxious about Mrs. Freeman coming to work for her and lies about her Bible being in her bedroom.
I agree I also love how you're dividing your topic into "influences" on the families. I know you're not doing any psychoanalysis, but it really is getting close there because so many things affect real-life families that are similar to the stories.
On that note, I also loved the long quote you read. I cannot remember the exact line, but it said something along the lines that OC's families are not any more real than a real life familiy just because they are disjointed, but actually they seem more constructed. I love this because OC is all about pointing out the dragon and shocking people and therefore I think she tends to exaggerate and her constructions then just turn into something that looks like one of my mother's "cautionary tale" stories.
Yes, I know I'm a sentimentalist and romanticist so I have a bias... but either way that quote is an awesome contradiction to OC's beliefs.
I thought your idea about family construction was really interesting, especially within O'Conner stories. The family seems to play a huge role within her stories. I thought that the stories you chose to use also had a huge emphasis on family, "A Good Man is Hard to Find", "Good Country People",and "The Enduring Chill". I also liked the different topics that define each story, I thought that was a clever way of organizing your paper. I also thought that O'Conner's disease influenced the way she wrote her stories at leaast from the diseased or disfigured point of view. It just allows her to actually understand how one would feel under certain situation because she is in a similar situation. Altogether I really enjoyed hearing about your paper and I think that you have a lot of information to work with and that you have carefully organized the information in an understandable way.
I knew you would have a great reading voice! Your topic on families is very interesting, and I like all the different dynamics you will be talking about in relation to O'Connors nuclear family. Some thoughts: -I loved the quote you used, but make sure you have your own voice, your own opinions as the primary rescource; other articles should just be the base to spring your own argument, or they should be support-- or you could prove them wrong. I would have loved to hear more your interpretation of those quotes because they were a great rescource it seems -I know you said you had a hard time finding an overarching thread within the O'Connor stories, but I feel it may make your thesis stronger and more argumentative...what about the idea of family as a source of betrayal? -Your notion of "the higher the education, the worse the manners" seems SO interesting to me. I think you'll do a great job of breaking that down -I also really like the idea of delving into religion within the family...
4 comments:
I thought you did a nice job with your presentation. I like how each familial example will deal with a different focus (ie. diease or religion). I think that you can also incorporate religion into the "Good Country People" example. We cannot assume that Hulga does not believe in God simply because of her disability, therefore her belief stands outside of the discussion of her artificial leg.
I think it would be interesting for you to consider how both the mother and daughter characters' views on religion pan out in their relationships to others. For example, the mother is an extremely distrusting person. She is anxious about Mrs. Freeman coming to work for her and lies about her Bible being in her bedroom.
I agree I also love how you're dividing your topic into "influences" on the families. I know you're not doing any psychoanalysis, but it really is getting close there because so many things affect real-life families that are similar to the stories.
On that note, I also loved the long quote you read. I cannot remember the exact line, but it said something along the lines that OC's families are not any more real than a real life familiy just because they are disjointed, but actually they seem more constructed. I love this because OC is all about pointing out the dragon and shocking people and therefore I think she tends to exaggerate and her constructions then just turn into something that looks like one of my mother's "cautionary tale" stories.
Yes, I know I'm a sentimentalist and romanticist so I have a bias... but either way that quote is an awesome contradiction to OC's beliefs.
I thought your idea about family construction was really interesting, especially within O'Conner stories. The family seems to play a huge role within her stories. I thought that the stories you chose to use also had a huge emphasis on family, "A Good Man is Hard to Find", "Good Country People",and "The Enduring Chill". I also liked the different topics that define each story, I thought that was a clever way of organizing your paper. I also thought that O'Conner's disease influenced the way she wrote her stories at leaast from the diseased or disfigured point of view. It just allows her to actually understand how one would feel under certain situation because she is in a similar situation. Altogether I really enjoyed hearing about your paper and I think that you have a lot of information to work with and that you have carefully organized the information in an understandable way.
Michelle-
I knew you would have a great reading voice! Your topic on families is very interesting, and I like all the different dynamics you will be talking about in relation to O'Connors nuclear family. Some thoughts:
-I loved the quote you used, but make sure you have your own voice, your own opinions as the primary rescource; other articles should just be the base to spring your own argument, or they should be support-- or you could prove them wrong. I would have loved to hear more your interpretation of those quotes because they were a great rescource it seems
-I know you said you had a hard time finding an overarching thread within the O'Connor stories, but I feel it may make your thesis stronger and more argumentative...what about the idea of family as a source of betrayal?
-Your notion of "the higher the education, the worse the manners" seems SO interesting to me. I think you'll do a great job of breaking that down
-I also really like the idea of delving into religion within the family...
Great job, Michelle! You rock.
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