A Good Man is Hard to Find

A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor started out as a tough read. Starting with the first paragraph, I was confused to who the characters were, what their intentions were and who the narrartor was. After reading a little further I started to identify with the characters, and the story line became more clear. WIth talk of the crazy misfit, I knew something was going to go wrong.
THe grandmother was over talkative, which lead her to her horrible fate, and the fate of her family. Her over talkative ways got her into trouble with her sone Bailey, who was not at all the type of person I would want to have a conversation with. The grandmother was the type of perosn to over do things, embelish the truth, her outfit for the car ride, was a good beginning to the rest of her story.
It interested me when the car crashed and no one was greatly harmed. Once again, with the grandmother over doing everything, she flagged down a car in the distance, that had seen everything. The misfit had arrived, and the story got better. Killing the family off one by one, leaving the grandmother for last. The grandmother was pushing how the misfit had good blood and all he had to do was pray. Pray pray pray. Pray to jesus and his life will get better. Pray that he could be saved, and she would be to.
THe grandmothers last words confused me, I did not know if when she refered to the misfit as her child, if she was talking as herself, or if someone, something was talking for her. It did not seem like something she would say, or that she would touch his face, which seemed to be what had done her in.
The chapter we are on is about heros, yet there have been no heroic endings where all ends well. I guess in a real story with a hero, all does not end well, there is a hero, but he/ she might die as well, or get harmed trying to help others.

Once Upon a Time

Once Upon a Time by Nadine Gordimer was a fascinating twist on fairy tales and childrens books. A man, his wife and their son. They all loved eachother very much. Nadine starts with the obvious dislike of writing a childrens book or a fairy tale, but tricks herself into it when she is paraniod into believing someone is walking through her house, when in fact, I am lead to believe she may jsut have some old floor boards.
This is not the story I would have told myself.
The man, his wife, or his possession, and their son. They loved eachother very much, they loved their cat and their dog, they loved their house and their neighborhood very very much. They had a gardener and a housemaid, they probably shared in on some of the love as well. THe story started off "happily ever after." So obviously ending in a horribly twisted version of a happily ever after story. There were references to different fairy tales, the biggest one I noticed being the "old witch." She warned her family to not let in any outsiders, that they would do much harm. The family did everything they could to protect their lovely home, soon turning it into a prision, not something to be admired and thoguht beautiful, but a gated house, with a horrible barbed wire fence. The one thing that had meant to keep them safe, ended up destroying them in the end. They let in the outsider, being the fence, and the little boy, who they loved very much, crawled through to his fate.
Every fairy tale has a moral. I believe that this one deals with paranoia, and how the most innocent, the one who lives life simplisticly, gets harmed in the end.

A and P

A and P by John Updike was an interesting read. I had to read it twice to really understand some level of significance the story had. I think a huge part oof the story was the time period it was set in, and things would be largely different, were it set at a more recent time. My guess is that it is set around the mid 50's. It was a scandoulus thoguht for three teenage girls dressed in bathing suits, without shoes to be walking threw a family grocery store. Out of the girls, there is an obvious leader of the bunch, a queen bee, walking around sporting a beige ruffled suit, with the straps off, exposing her white skin. She walked around the store, strutting her long white "primadonna legs."
The cashier narrorating the story had an obsession with these girls, and followed their every move, the way they walked, the way they strutted throguh the store picking up different items and then placing them down. The way that the leader walked hard on her feet, as if not used to walking without shoes. The queen bee dissapointed me when confronted with the store owner, I had expected her to stand up for herself and her follwers. Instead, she decided to shyly respond in a quiet voice, and get rather embarassed, blushing at the act of being caught. When Sammy quit I thought it was slight over kill. He quit to impress the three girls, when in fact they hadnt even noticed him or his actions. They were set in a world of their own.

"Where are you going where have you been"

I really enjoyed this story, and enjoyed the discussion we had on Friday about the first few pages we read. Alice lead a good discussion and gave us some ideas to think about while we read the last bit of the story. Connie lead a simple lifestlye, she hung out with her friends and joked around. What she thought was simple flirting turned out to lead her to a creepy older man, thought to be a 17 year old boy. Her witty personality and better than thou mentality lead her to a scary and uncomfortable situation. I like the way it ended, i wanted to know more, but it left me with questions and thinknig about the story. Im excited to see what everyone will see about the story, and everyones opinion on Arnald Friend.

Ps- hes going to be a a freaking astronaut when he grows up!

Ian

I love ian hes so hot. Take that clary!

Power of Myth

The Power of Myth with Joesph Campbell was interesting at first, the idea behind it was interesting and in a better setting it would have been great. THe idea of talking about his heros and who he had modeled himself after was intriguing but his tone was a little boring. When he was talking I couldn't figure out how excited he was to be discussing something that in words he was so interested in, there just didnt seem to be anything to really pull me in. I liked when he was talking about the different books and referencing them to real life, and talking about famous religous leaders and their obsticales and temptations.

Ok, so it's number 2

Uh, hey guys. This is the question blog. If you have any questions at all, which you may not, go ahead ask. And i might answer.

Numero Uno

Hey, I'm Jordan. So this is the first post on my 112 blog. My goal for my blog is to make it look cool and then figure out what I want to write about, mostly assignments. Hopefully I will get into it and write freely whenever I want.