O Connor and Oates Short Stories

Date with Death in O’Connor and Oates
Flannery O'Connor in "A Good Man is Hard to Find" discusses the outcome and truth about life, death and religion. When I first read the story, I didn’t think much of it and was just surprised how it ended with the family being murdered. The story begins with the illustration of the family's relationship towards one another, their lack of respect for one another. The grandmother is portrayed as a manipulative and self-centered person. For example, the grandmother’s warning about the Misfit was not to help the family but to manipulate the family into doing what she wanted. She did not want to go to Florida: she wanted to go see her ancestral home somewhere else. She also brought the cat along, even though she was told not to—but it is understandable: the cat seems to be the only thing she cares about outside herself. Ironically, it is the cat that ends up on Bailey’s head, which causes him to flip the car.
Sadly, I felt the family didn’t seem like a happy family and wanted to exclude the grandmother out of the family vacation—mainly because they were all just as self-centered, each person focusing on himself—or, as in the case of the mother, hardly even there at all. I felt sorry for the grandmother mainly though, because I thought the reason they ignored was that she was old. But then June Star said, "She wouldn't stay at home for a million bucks…Afraid she'd miss something. She has to go everywhere we go." This gave me the impression that the grandmother must complain a lot, was probably judgmental and probably tried to tell everyone what to do all the time. I figured that could get old, and I understood the children’s attitude toward her.
With the family coming face to face with the Misfit, you see the actions and reactions of this family. I believe that Flannery O'Connor ended the story with a violent scene to awaken the reader by showing how a self-absorbed person reveals their true nature when they are faced with death. At the moment of death the grandmother finally empathized with another human being—the Misfit. She understood his pain, stopped thinking about her own self and suffering and reached out to touch him. But of course her empathy makes him recoil as though she were a snake. It is funny the way O’Connor describes the scene through the eyes of the characters as you are reading it—but I particularly like this ending: there is so much going on in it.
"A Good Man is hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor and "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been" by Joyce Carol Oates both deliver a comparable message about the shocking nature of violence and internal conflicts of the characters within themselves. Both stories had male characters who proved to be effective in persuading their victims to follow them to their deaths and/or abduction. The actions of these predators taught the grandmother and Connie about their own errors at the end of the stories. That was what I really liked: you can be so horrible your whole life and then all at once it catches up with you and the ache you feel for these characters is so strong. It is certainly painful—it is so easy to see yourself in their shoes.
Connie from "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” realized that her actions and behavior towards the people around her and the guys in her life was wrong. Being faced with the tragic circumstances of the situation—feeling powerless with the man on the other side of the screen door issuing threats against her family if she did not come out—she seemed so young, so sad, so pathetic in that moment, I could not help but feel sorry for her. She finally came to the conclusion that because of her careless behavior, she was about to face death and there was nothing she could do to avoid it. It is really a heartbreaking scene that makes you wish you could crawl into the story and fight the man off and somehow save her. In a way it is a similar conclusion to the grandmother’s end from “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” There is a sense of resignation in the characters and a sense of awareness of there being something out there beyond themselves, beyond the here and now, the present, their own willful desires—something watching over all things—God perhaps—out there on the horizon, seeing and waiting for everyone to look up and understand the distance, the separation. When the grandmother was faced with death, it finally dawned on her how self-centered she had been for most of her life, how misguided she had been with her own willfulness. You can see that when she tells the Misfit, “Why, you’re one of my babies. You’re one of my own children!” The grandmother had an epiphany when she was faced with reality and could not force her will upon it to change it: her mind cleared in an instant—she saw another human being’s pain and realized that this human being came from her, that she came from another, and that they all came from the same place of exile—all of them sons of Adam and in need of saving.
Of course, the grandmother’s revelation just at the point of death is different from Connie’s in the degree to which it is religious. The grandmother tells the Misfit to pray—she is truly, for once, concerned about the soul and salvation of someone else, and shockingly enough it is the Misfit. This is what makes the story so good: it takes a stone cold killer to move her in such a way that grace can get through. The grandmother in has been so selfish, deceitful and manipulative that this is what it takes—a gun in her face and her family being hauled off to the woods to be killed—for her to see and say truth for once. She finally makes up for her willfulness, known since the first two lines of the story: "The grandmother didn't want to go to Florida. She wanted to visit some of her connections in east Tennessee and she was seizing at every chance to change Bailey's mind." The trip to Florida was supposed to be a family vacation, of course, but she wanted to make it about her. She tried to persuade them to go to Tennessee by mentioning the Misfit and that he was loose from the Federal Pen: she wanted to try to scare her son Bailey into changing his mind. She used a guilt trip with Bailey about taking the children in that direction by saying, “I wouldn't take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn't answer to my conscience if I did." Of course she is lying the whole time, not thinking at all about their safety but really only thinking about going to Tennessee. Yet, hilariously, even though she didn’t want to go on this trip, she was the first one in the car and snuck her cat knowingly in spite of her son’s disapproval.
To answer the question, is the grandmother innocent? I would have to say no. How could she not have any remorse when her family is getting murdered one by one? Throughout the story she had judged everyone and everything around in her surroundings. At the end, only when a gun is pointed at her she wants to pretend that she is a good woman and begins to only plea for her life. She had considered herself as a lady and thought the Misfit wouldn’t kill her because of her morals. She tried to talk to the Misfit by mentioning he was a good man, "I just know you’re a good man, "..."You're not a bit common!” She attempted to utilize religion to save her life. This aggravated the Misfit even more, that is why he shot her three times in the chest. He even said, "She would have been a good woman, if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life."
In comparison to the grandmother, Connie in "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been" is a naive 15 year old girl who is constantly getting criticized by a jealous mother and is getting compared to her simple and dull older sister. As far as her father goes, he is never around. I think in order to fill that void of emptiness she needed to fill it with something else—so she tried to fill it with boys. She wears provocative clothing and tries to act more mature in order to get the attention from the older boys. She is rushing into adulthood before she is mature enough to even understand her actions and consequences.
Since Connie doesn’t fully understand her actions and is struggling with her adolescence, I think she is innocent. She caught attention of the wrong man that led to a horrible ordeal. When Arnold Friend showed up to Connie's house, he put her in a situation that she knew that there was no way out. She sacrificed herself and walked out with Arnold Friend, rather than risk the lives of her family.
Both of the characters from "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been" and "A Good Man is Hard to Find" come to face with death due to unfortunate events. The writers end both stories with the realization of internal conflict of the characters within themselves. The grandmother realized that she was selfish and a bad person, only when she was face to face with death. Connie realized that she was selfish with her behavior and when she came to face with evil, she needed her family. She risked herself just to make sure that her family was left unharmed. In O’Connor’s story the grandmother reaches out to touch the Misfit to try to save him, no longer even thinking of herself or her own life. In Oates’ story, Connie reaches out to Friend in a moment of self-sacrifice, giving herself up so that her family is not tortured by him.