A Good Man is Hard to Find vs Where are You Going Where Have
Connie and the grandmother: a striking resemblance Two characters, one an adolescent and beautiful, the other aged and outdated, are distinguishably parallel and dissimilar in many ways. Connie is a naive, pubescent girl who is portrayed in Joyce Carol Oates' "Where are you going? Where have you been?" In Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find," the grandmother is introduced as a whiny, old-fashioned character. On the outside the characters seem to be living in two different worlds; looking deeper into the works of Oates and O'Conner, one can see the correlations between these separate worlds that they live in. Firstly, the major flaw of Connie and the grandmother is that neither of them lives in reality. Connie sees her life as a movie. She is greatly influenced by pop-culture and repeatedly relies on music as a safe-haven in situations and daydreams of her life being like the movies. For instance, when Connie and her friend go to the diner, a situation in which Connie is somewhat unfamiliar and anxious, Oates writes, "the music was always on in the background . . . it was something to depend on"(Kennedy and Gioia 656). On the other hand, the grandmother lives her life in another time. Stuck in the past, she
When she realizes the house she is remembering is not the same one, she causes the cat to jump on her son's shoulder while he is driving, causing him to wreck the car. What the two find important also plays a major factor in their similarity. " Both narratives present two well-developed, thought-provoking characters the reader is well able to analyze, compare and contrast. Nevertheless, instead of worrying about the whole family, she repeats over and over, "You wouldn't shoot a lady, would you?"(Kennedy and Gioia 438). Both are concerned of their appearance and impressions on other people and both put their wants in front of others. Both use deception on their family members to get what they want. Correspondingly, the grandmother's social face can be seen in her conversation with Red Sammy. If she had not made this proclamation, as the Misfit says, "it would have been better for all of you, lady, if you hadn't of reckernized me"(Kennedy and Gioia 438). This is all due to the fact that she is still caught up in her obsession with the past. Many young girls can identify with her immature actions that caused her death. A critic states, "Connie behaves like a very self-confident young woman who, playing with young guys, is looking for adventure, and knows exactly what she wants; but on the other hand, she is still a child that is crying for her mother"(Heist). She is totally agreeable with everything he says, as he is with her. From the way she wore her clothes to the way she walked, she put on a show for everyone that wasn't in her family. The fact that Connie and the grandmother both put their wants in front of others is another quality found to be prevalent in their selfishness. Connie basically lives two separate lives: home-life and social-life.
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Acceptance Essays
