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GEddie
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That, and the almost complete lack of redemption found in the overwhelmingly Protestant society, requiring redemption by facing crisis (think: repentance and penance).
ICXC NIKA
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punisherthunder
Guest
O’Connor?
Two words that sum up her works: Southern tragedies
The South is a staple in all her works and tragedies are found in all her stories. I’m not talking about conflict, or character descriptions, somewhere in a story of hers is a tragedy.
Two words that sum up her works: Southern tragedies
The South is a staple in all her works and tragedies are found in all her stories. I’m not talking about conflict, or character descriptions, somewhere in a story of hers is a tragedy.
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empther
Guest
It seemed to be the style in the 1950s to write and produce dark stories about losers.
This was true of plays, see Tennessee Williams, ( *** ) and movies.
Maybe it was because WW2 was still so well remembered, then we had the Korean War, and there was the bomb to worry about.
Come the sixties, tastes changed. People were tired of gloomy stories. They’re still not popular.
Good riddance to them.
If I want to get depressed, I’ll read history books about wars, or listen to rap music.
Perhaps the real reason O’Connor dismissed *To Kill A Mockingbird *is because she knew she couldn’t write a story like that.
It’s easy to write about losers. Much harder to write about a character who has no significant faults.
Hardest of all is to combine the loveable and heroic in the same character! :banghead:
I know somebody who needed 19 years to write a story like that.
( *** I’ll bet Tennessee Williams’ plays would bomb if they came out today. )
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TRH1292
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You are trying to get me annoyed on purpose, aren’t you?It seemed to be the style in the 1950s to write and produce dark stories about losers.
This was true of plays, see Tennessee Williams, and movies.
Maybe it was because WW2 was still so well remembered, then we had the Korean War, and there was the bomb to worry about.
Come the sixties, tastes changed. People were tired of gloomy stories. They’re still not popular.
Good riddance to them.
If I want to get depressed, I’ll read history books about wars, or listen to rap music.
Perhaps the real reason O’Connor dismissed *To Kill A Mockingbird *is because she knew she couldn’t write a story like that.
It’s easy to write about losers. Much harder to write about a character who has no significant faults.
Hardest of all is to combine the loveable and heroic in the same character! :banghead:
I know somebody who needed 19 years to write a story like that.
I have a great idea. Sense you dislike like Flannery O’Connor so much, why don’t you leave this thread? Perhaps you could go start another thread where you could discuss Harper Lee and To Kill a Mockingbird.
Your behavior is similar to that of a troll at this point, you are simply antagonizing.
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punisherthunder
Guest
Tennessee William’s writing had a bit more drama to it. O’connor’s, I never felt there was in drama, just bleak reality.
For what it’s worth, I can’t stand To Kill A Mockingbird. Pure drivel. How it’s been so heralded like it is, that’s anyones guess.
For what it’s worth, I can’t stand To Kill A Mockingbird. Pure drivel. How it’s been so heralded like it is, that’s anyones guess.
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empther
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In a previous thread you called my comments silly. Now I’m a troll.
Betcha your “who may someday be declared a Saint” favorite author wouldn’t approve.
As for
I wasn’t even conscious of your username until now.
What an ego!
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GEddie
Guest
As someone who has no feelings about FOC one way or the other, can’t we all just cool down???
I think TKAM was more appreciated because it was a story about childhood innocence colliding with social injustice, rather than one about twisted human nature in an atmosphere of social injustice.
We all see twisted human nature in our life and in our beings, there is no need to read about it, but we all miss our innocence.
To an extent, FOC was right that TKAM was a children’s story. Except for Atticus, the main characters are children. This is a formula for a “children’s story.”
And it would seem, despite the deaths that occur, to be too saccharine for someone with a dark turn of mind.
It’s not worth arguing over. IMNAAHO.
ICXC NIKA
I think TKAM was more appreciated because it was a story about childhood innocence colliding with social injustice, rather than one about twisted human nature in an atmosphere of social injustice.
We all see twisted human nature in our life and in our beings, there is no need to read about it, but we all miss our innocence.
To an extent, FOC was right that TKAM was a children’s story. Except for Atticus, the main characters are children. This is a formula for a “children’s story.”
And it would seem, despite the deaths that occur, to be too saccharine for someone with a dark turn of mind.
It’s not worth arguing over. IMNAAHO.
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empther
Guest
Hmmm! Interesting phrases in that quote. Can we get it all together?
What was the story about?
Forget about what Scout does. What does she see and hear?
Throughout the book, on nearly every page, we see Scout being exposed to racial prejudice from nearly everybody in town.
“Other” people are labelled even by the ladies who have tea parties in Scout’s house. “The Robinsons are like this…” “Wilsons are all like that…” Even Scout is labelling other students according to the families they come from, explaining these labels to her new teacher.
Can she resist all these influences and remain in fair-minded innocence like her father Atticus Finch?
Or will she succumb and become prejudiced too? That would be killing the mockingbird.
**Scout is the mockingbird! ** :bigyikes:
The book is about how racial prejudice and other evils are passed down from one generation to the next. Consider how Bob Ewell’s evil is passed down to his daughter.
That’s a brilliant book.
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GEddie
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Well, yeah.
TKAM is not about her (or Jem’s) actions, but what they experience. That is where the collision takes place, between innocence and injustice.
I don’t know that Atticus can be described as innocent. The large eyes of innocent childhood don’t fit in the wise head of adulthood, except in the head of our LORD.
The children are about the age of lost innocence, and the trial is the beginning of that loss.
Whereas in the writings of FOC, even for children there is really no innocence.
ICXC NIKA
TKAM is not about her (or Jem’s) actions, but what they experience. That is where the collision takes place, between innocence and injustice.
I don’t know that Atticus can be described as innocent. The large eyes of innocent childhood don’t fit in the wise head of adulthood, except in the head of our LORD.
The children are about the age of lost innocence, and the trial is the beginning of that loss.
Whereas in the writings of FOC, even for children there is really no innocence.
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empther
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:ehh:
:dts:That makes it sound like innocence is ignorance of evil.
In that case, we all lose our innocence as we grow older and learn more. Who can be saved? :crying:
But the whole point of the book is about whether or not Scout will keep her innocence.
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alexandratm
Guest
Well, Broadway did a revival of The Glass Menagerie last year, and it did quite well, so I hope you didn’t bet money on it!It seemed to be the style in the 1950s to write and produce dark stories about losers.
This was true of plays, see Tennessee Williams, ( *** ) and movies.
Maybe it was because WW2 was still so well remembered, then we had the Korean War, and there was the bomb to worry about.
Come the sixties, tastes changed. People were tired of gloomy stories. They’re still not popular.
Good riddance to them.
If I want to get depressed, I’ll read history books about wars, or listen to rap music.
Perhaps the real reason O’Connor dismissed *To Kill A Mockingbird *is because she knew she couldn’t write a story like that.
It’s easy to write about losers. Much harder to write about a character who has no significant faults.
Hardest of all is to combine the loveable and heroic in the same character! :banghead:
I know somebody who needed 19 years to write a story like that.
( *** I’ll bet Tennessee Williams’ plays would bomb if they came out today. )
Respectfully, emphther, this is the second thread in which you’ve denigrated works of literature because you don’t understand them. As someone who dabbles in writing, I can tell you it’s much easier to write a character without flaws, than to craft a nuanced, realistic portrayal of a flawed human being. Tragedies may not appeal to you, but that does not mean that they are without value.
Do I like To Kill a Mockingbird more than Flannery O’Connor? Yes. Does that mean Flannery O’Connor’s work is without value? No, not at all. Flannery O’Connor is much in the Southern Gothic tradition, like William Faulkner. Not all stories must have a happy ending or be popular to have value. I urge you to look at literature with a more critical eye, to look past superficial enjoyment to see the underlying meaning of the work.
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empther
Guest
I do see the underlying meaning.
Just a few minutes before reading this, I was looking at the wikipedia article about TKAM. It said reviewers thought either the unfortunate black man Tom Robinson or the misunderstood Boo Radley was the “mockingbird”.
Really?
Not Scout, who was on scene throughout the story, on whom 95% of the book was focused?
I agree. In high school, our English and literature teacher, introduced us to O’Connor this way: “O’Connor is not a fun, happy read. Many of you won’t understand her work. Many of you won’t like her work. But some of you, maybe only one of you, will. That’s for whom she wrote it.”
Not every writer’s work will touch every person. I personally prefer “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” over “TKAM”, but not everyone will agree with me. That’s okay. I appreciate the work, the art that goes into great writing, even if I don’t understand or even like it (I had a hard time with O’Connor’s work.) I love Poe, I don’t like Austen, I like Agatha Christie, I struggled with Dickens, I enjoyed Capote (even though I still cry whenever I read “A Christmas Memory”), never cared for either Bronte sister. I read them all in junior high and high school, among many others, and learned something from all of them, even if I didn’t enjoy them all. Each writer wrote what they wanted to write, what was in them to write, and each work found its audience.
It’s what I learned a long time ago when I first started to write: Write what you love and prepare to disappoint some people.
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JimG
Guest
My brother was telling me about the first time he read Flannery O’Conner. He said he started reading, and thought, “wow, she’s got the characters and the dialect just perfect. I kept reading, and before long everybody is dead!”
I do like Flannery O’Conner. But I like children’s books too.
I do like Flannery O’Conner. But I like children’s books too.
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empther
Guest
Which book was being assigned to a high school class? I want to read it.
I agree.
My story will be hated by Protestants, Moslems, Hindus, Buddhists, deists, agnostics, atheists, and most of all by the secular media.
( But there are 1,150,000,000 Catholics.
)This was a Catholic high school in 1984… it was a textbook that had several excerpts from many works and hers might have been from “Everything that Rises Must Converge”, but the title of the actual work itself escapes me (it’s been thirty years since I’ve read it and I remember thinking, “You’re right, Mrs. H., I’m in the majority here!” and I haven’t felt the urge to read her work further, although this discussion might push me to check it out.) I also remember it had an excerpt from “The Member of the Wedding” by Carson McCullers. Why I remember that I have no idea.
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empther
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So it must have been a short story, and a complete short story since you wouldn’t give only a piece of a writing.
Never mind.
Not necessarily… our textbooks often had excerpts or even a partial chapter from complete books that emphasized or demonstrated what we were studying: dialogue, use of dialect, setting, characterization, etc.So it must have been a short story, and a complete short story since you wouldn’t give only a piece of a writing.
Never mind.
Like I said, I may have learned something from the piece, but it wasn’t to appreciate O’Connor!
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empther
Guest
To be fair,
it’s not right to judge a book from a partial chapter. I know from my own writing that people could not begin to understand the hidden meanings until two thirds through the story ( when Theresa goes out of her way to help people whose problem is none of her business “Aren’t politicians supposed to take care of these things?” ) That’s why I wanted to read an entire book.
Having said that, to keep the FOC fans from :slapfight: 'ing,
since nobody on the thread has explained exactly what happens to these losers FOC writes about and exactly what the hidden meanings are,
I must say writing about bad people and just having them die or something without a positive resolution of some kind ( never revealed yet here
),is not something I’d consider writing for one second.
Somebody said it’s easy to write about a good character.
What about making the story grab the reader’s attention?
No, not by having the good character survive an ordeal. Boring, boring!
Not by only responding to challenges.
Not by having the good character fight battles for which he’s prepared like James Bond.
Write a good character who is in no way prepared for extreme challenges, but goes out of her way to add to her challenges to help people, succeeding only because of her faith in God and herself. Combine the good and loveable with the heroic. Now there’s a challenge!
True. Which is why now, 30 years later, I’ve decided to revisit Flannery O’Connor and see what I missed when I was 16!
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