bethanyhegedus

A few years ago when I lived in NYC, on a hot sweltering summer day I went with my writer's group to Radio City Music Hall. But not to hear a concert. To hear a reading. A rock star reading.


Taking the mic that night were John Irving, the King of Horror--Stephen King, and the woman richer than the Queen, J. K. Rowling. It was amazing to be in the gorgeous and packed Radio City to hear great literature read to the masses.

And, while I admit most were there for Rowling, I was there for Irving. He read the Christmas pageant scene from Owen Meany and I was awe struck, but more than my love for Irving I left Radio City a huge fan of Stephen King. Of course, I read his must read On Writing but that is the only book of his I have ever read. I've seen plenty of the movies made from his work, but to pick up a book that might--no positvely--will scare the daylights out of me. No, thanks. But that doesn't change my love for King. In On Writing, he asserts: "So we read to experience the mediocre and the outright rotten; such experience helps us to recognize those things when they begin to creep into our own work, and to steer clear of them. We also read in order to measure ourselves against the good and the great, to get a sense of all that can be done. And we read in order to experience different styles."

Okay, no argument there. I've read from the "mediocre to the outright rotten" and will continue to do so. And this morning, we are going to read from one of the greats. Ms. Flannery O'Connor. And we are going to read to investigate character.

So this is from the opening of “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”

 What do we know about the characters described? We have "the grandmother" and her adult son Bailey.
Now, "the" grandmother is different from a direct address of Grandmother.Why does O'Connor do this?
Maybe O'Connor uses the article to distance the character. What does this distance do?  To me, it elevates the grandmother to mythic proportions. She is now apart of ALL grandmothers and carries that authority with her. Would you want to cross that authority? I sure wouldn't!

And, a part of character is motivation. What does the character want and how is he/she going to get it.
Here, the author makes clear the grandmother's intentions: She wants to visit some of her connections in East Tennessee. And, O'Connor makes it clear what she doesn't want: The grandmother did not want to go to Florida.

Now, while this may be seen as "telling" and not "showing" O'Connor than goes on to show us indeed. She shows the grandmother and her persuasive antics. She shows us in her dialog, in the way she rattles the newspaper over her bald son's head. She uses guilt--a mother's milk.

And, though we have read no further, do we have any doubt that the grandmother is not going to get what she wants? Do we see Bailey as a kind of cuckold? I do.

All of this is drawn quickly and brilliantly in just a few strokes of the writer's pen.

Ah, back I go to my work-in-progress with the music and marching orders of O'Connor's grandmother to keep me company.