Writing Homework Help

Read and annotate:

• “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor, pp.516-526
• “Good Country People” by Flannery O’Connor, pp.527-540

Use these supplementary readings in your response:

• Chapter 8 – “The Author’s Work As Context: Flannery O’Connor,” pp,512-515
• “Passages from Flannery O’Connor’s Essays and Letters,” pp.550 – 554
• Mary Gordon, “From Flannery’s Kiss,” pp.554 – 557
• Ann E. Reuman “From Revolting Fictions,” pp.557-560
• Eileen Pollack “From Flannery O’Connor and the New Criticism: A Response to Mark McGurl,” pp.560 – 563
• Remarks by Flannery O’Connor (some of this is similar to the passages from her Essays and Letters, but it goes into more detail about “A Good Man is Hard to Find”)Actions

In your first post – Complete the following exercise:

Read the two stories (“A Good Man is Hard to Find” and “Good Country People”) at least once, underlining passages that seem significant. As you read, work to not only understand the individual stories but also to look for patterns across these stories, similarities that link them into a coherent whole, make them part of a O’Connor’s unified body of work. In addition, read some of the supplementary texts and consider what insights those texts provide into O’Connor’s work. Once you have finished , think more about these similarities, answering the following questions as if you were trying to capture for someone who hadn’t read this author, the essence of this author’s work (as represented by these two stories). You may also want to make notes about which passages illustrate or support your claims. (You are not going to be posting these answers, so you don’t have to worry about writing in complete sentences or what this part looks like. Complete this however it makes sense to you.).

• How would you describe the author’s typical heroes or heroines? What makes them alike? What (internal and external) characteristics do they tend to share?
• How would you describe and categorize the other characters whom the heroes or heroines encounter, or interact with, in the stories? Are there similar types? Do the stories tend to present characters who are foils to the main character or clear antagonists?
• Which characters seem the most typical? Least typical? Why? How would you describe the problems or conflicts that the heroes or heroines of these stories typically face?
• How would you describe the typical plot of your author’s stories
• How would you describe the narrative structure of the stories—that is, the way the plots, conflicts, and so on, are narrated?
• How would you describe the setting of these stories? What is the significance and role of the setting or environment (social, cultural, and/or physical) in the stories?
• How would you describe the style of your author’s diction, syntax, and so on? What quotations might illustrate this author’s style or the range of the author’s styles?
• What’s the overall tone or mood of these stories—the feelings they tend to evoke? How do they do so?
• What themes, concerns, problems, or issues are articulated or tackled in these stories?

Taking all these factors into account and without referring to any particular story, narrate, outline, script out, or draw a map or flowchart that captures the basic features, actions, elements, and so on, of Flannery O’Connor’s stories (as represented by the two we read). Post this response. You can post a drawing, a video, an audio clip, a written response (you can record video or audio right into the response or post something you’ve made – if you are not sure how to do this, let me know). There is no one right way to do this and I am not expecting this to look a certain way. It would be great if there was variety in the form of the responses. Respond in the way that is most comfortable for you. If you use information from the supplementary texts in your response (which is not required), please include a citation for that text (in-text somewhere and then a works cited entry).