Draft 1

I was very confused about this essay. I didn't really know what was expected of me and how I was suppose to deliver it. I know understand some of the aspects of this paper and what is expected of me.

For my essay topic, I think I want to explore how human behavior gets us into certain situations. When I think of this topic I think of how the grandmother in "A Good Man is Hard to Find" got her whole family killed because she was persistent. She was persistent on them going to Tennessee, she was persistent on them going down the dirt road, which landed them in "The Misfit's" hands.

Another story that reminds me of this is "Once upon a time". In this story the Mother needed to feel secure. So she begged her husband to get this and get that to help her in her false sense of security. While they were doing that, they forgot about their son who was kept in like a prisoner. He fantasied about sleeping beauty and the world outside and then he ended up killing himself. So the parents didn't really keep harm away, they helped harm come into their home.

Cathedral

This story is very interesting. The narrator in this story seems to be a typical person that is ignorant to the real people around him. I first want to tackle his connection with his wife. In this story the narrator, who does not have a name, lives a comfortable life with his wife. They do not express any known love for one another they are just comfortable in there relationship. They don't go to bed at the same time, he doesn't like her poetry and he doesn't seem interested in anything that goes on with his wife. Poetry is frequently mentioned in this story.

I think that Robert shatters the stereotype for his fellow disabled comrades. Robert is a blind man yet he doesn't wear glasses, he smokes weed, he drinks excessively, and he has a beard. Now that shocked me, how many blind people do you know with a beard? When the wife tells her husband the story of how Robert and his deceased wife met, the husband says that he went a whole eight years without even seeing her. That statement let me know that the husband was a shallow man, he carried about looks a lot and did not believe that you could love someone on a deeper level than that. I kinda wish good would have made us all look the same then we could really focus on what was important, personality. The first thing that leaves us is beauty.

The husband in this story experienced one of the greatest Epiphanies yet in all the stories we have read in this chapter. The husband had experience a human handicap that carries a lot of weight and emotion. he didn't want to be left alone with the blind man but them he started to understand him. The blind man became his eyes in drawing and detailing a cathedral. Its funny that he experienced this while drawing a religious monument when he said that he did not believe in anything.

A Good Man is Hard to Find

This story is fascinating. I loved it, it made me think about human behaviors. It sent a bone chilling thrill throughout my body. I love how the arthour made me feel remorse for "The Misfit" instead of the family he killed. The first thing I noticed about this story is that the narrator never named the children's mother. The narrator always refers to her as the children's mother, not wife or daughter-in-law. We saw this story from the grandmothers point of view, she did have a name either. I t seems like this is a comfortable family, living in a comfortable house but they seem spaced out, the family doesn't seem close to one another at all. The whole family seems to see the grandmother as a pest. She is always pressuring them to do things they don't want to do. She pressures them to go down a dirt road to some old plantation that was never there in the first place. She is always talking about what this is and what that is.

The kids are very ill mannered. they are a bunch of smart allics that I would hate to have to watch. There is a funny contrast between the children's mother and the grandmother. The children's mother seems to be passive while the grandmother is bold and robust. The children's mother wears slacks and kerchiefs, while the grandmother wears violets in her straw hat with white organdy trimmed collars and cuffs. When the grandmother said "In case of an accident, anyone seeing her on the highway would know at once that she was a lady" kinda gave a foreshadow of what might happen. I also thought that the grandmother was a very vain person. she always cares about what she looks like no matter if she was riding from Georgia to Florida in a hot sticky car between two feisty children.

The setting of this story seems to be in the prejudice south and this must be a white family. She referred to a black child as a pickaninny. that was a racist term for African-Americans. The grandmother was so obsessed with wanting to take a picture of this child with no pants on. It seemed to me that this made her feel good about herself to know that someone was beneath her. I wonder what Bailey said to his mother to make her so upset when they encountered "The Misfit".

Once upon a time

This was a great story. In this story, its funny how at first she says that she does not write children's stories. She says that she does not accept that she "ought" to write anything but, when she wakes up from a nightmare, she comforts herself with a fairytale. When I think of a fairytale I think of Hanzel and Gretel, or Sleeping Beeuty, or Cinderella, these are stories geered at children. I wonder if the message of this story is that we never really grow-up, we still tell stories and dream of fairtales, just the content and the deapth of these stories change. she uses the basic and world-known fairytale words in telling her story. she uses "happliy ever after," "a wise old witch," "theives," and "entanglement." She does not use them in the traditional setting, she already tells us about their happly every after life, they already had a son, a maid, and a gardner. The most interesting thing about this story is that they were trying to keep people from getting in. In most fairytales the prince is trying to save someone(getting someone out). I wonder where this story is set and what time period? I'm thinking its in Africa because of the word Tsotsis and Baas which is relevant to Africa. The story seems to have many other small fairytales in ti, the boy that cried wolf in is this story when the alarms are being tripped over and over again, "everyone soon became accustomed to, so that the din aroused the inhabitants of the suburb no more than the croak of frogs and musical grating of cicadas' legs." The setting of the story seems like it could be in a rural place that just recieved a suburb. I'm wondering does the author wants us to see the fairytale that is irregular to our previous beliefs of what a fairytale is, or does she wants us to she the shortstory as a whole?

A&P

This Story is very interesting. I have to say that I like it better that "where are you going, where have you been?" I love how he accurately tells of the female hierarchy. We all know that one pretty girl that everyone envies and we don't want to really succeed is going to be on top. While we have the less attractive on bottom. Well who is to say who is attractive or not? He gives great details of the girls he describes the pretty on as having a chin that was too long, he tells about her white primadonna legs. At first I thought that he was being to critical but this is how he felt. He is a great observer. I can picture him sitting on the porch looking at everyone and telling on everyone. He calls the leader Queenie which I though was interesting. Without knowing her at all he just assumes that she is the leader, without knowing any of the girls he just assumes that they are followers. I just love how he describes everyone as sheep, like the customers are part of a flock driven and rounded-up into these corrals(cashier lines). I love how the Author paints this picture. I want to know what Lengal thought was decent. Is what is decent what is posted on the television? Would we even know what decent was without this invention? The only reason why those girls caused so much unrest it because they upset the natural order of their little world. This is a small town with a church in the middle, the girls resisted the status quo and released the unfamiliar. The Cashier decided to quit because he thought there was going to be a parade and the girls were going to serenade their selves to him. It was a humbling experience and a wake up call to him to see that the world is not all that it has cracked up to be.

"Where are you going, Where have you been?"

This short story left me on the edge of my seat. It left me wanting more, I was not fulfilled. I think that was Joyce Carol Oats choice, she wanted to leave us wondering what happened to this vain girl in "where are you going, Where have you been?" The protagonist in this story is a dynamic character. She goes from a selfish, giggling high school girl to someone that is faced with a serious decision. She must decide whether she wants to save her family or herself. The doorway is a problem for me. Arnold Friend uses that to his advantage, we all know the doorway as being a portal to another world, to a new world; But on this doorway there was a screen. A net of entanglement that strangled her and clouded her mind. I hate the color of the car. I hate that its flashy and has to be seen. Ellie is an interesting character also, he seems to like music a lot. Or maybe he is trying to lure Connie to him. Another thing that strike my attention was that Arnold Friend has trouble walking, I think he was trying to hide something from Connie. I personally think that his feet were clubbed, or hoofed. He makes me feel uncomfortable with knowing everything about Connie. How did he know where her family was and what they were wearing? Connie has a strange relationship with her mother. Why would she wish her mother dead? Well, it was apparent that she could have had her wish fulfilled if she did not walk outside. In the end, she called to her mother and started to wine like a baby. This story seemed like a rite of passage or a coming of age story more than anything else. Connie grew up tremendously, with sacrificing herself for the lives of others. How Gallant of her?

Hero Movie

That movie was the most boring movie ever. The delivary of the movie was the most upsetting. However, with a great attention span you can appreciate the content value. The movie compared reality heros with mythological heros. The host was well informed about the topic and opened my eyes to a world of symbolisim in the media and our every day life.