Short Paper #2 – Flannery OConnor

          Flannery OConnor was one of the most provocative fiction writers of the mid-twentieth-century years. Her remarkable New England (i.e., Yankee) predecessor Emily Dickinson once described herself in a letter to fellow writer Thomas Wentworth Higginsonas the only Kangaroo among the Beauty and in a different letter requested of Higginson,tell me what is true.     

          OConnor, a keeper of peacocks on the grounds of her rural Georgia home, might analogously be described as an exotic bird living among the seemingly conventional good country people and Ph. D. holders of her time — and also as a person engaged in an unyielding search for truth. OConnors stories typically involve cat and mouse contestations for power, knowledge, and truth played by a range of unconventionally drawn characters. Two of the classic examples of this recurrent pattern are Good Country People and “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” stories in which the interplay of truth and falsehood is central to the storys workings and meaning.

          For your second written assignment, I would like you to compose an analysis of this theme in either of these stories. Your analysis should address the following questions: how are the characters engaged in this interplay of truth and falsehood, on what terms do they engage in it, and with what outcome? I will be reading primarily for the coherence and persuasiveness of your argument rather than for its specific content or interpretation. Be sure to devise a thesis that responds directly to this topic and to support it in a well formulated and clearly organized essay. Be sure to devise a title that captures the gist of your thesis and its argument. And be sure to use the language, characters, plot, symbols, and anything else you find relevant in the story you are writing about to substantiate your argument.

          Citations drawn from the edition of the story posted on Canvas should be given by page number parenthetically at the end of the sentence in which the citation appears. Full notes need to be given for any other textual edition of the story.No outside research is necessary, but if you do consult and quote from outside sources, full attribution in the form of footnotes or endnotes is required. Note well: use of ideas or language taken from outside sources, whether in print or on the Internet, requires formal documentation. Failure to do so constitutes plagiarism, which will be treated strictly in accordance with the policy stated on the course syllabus.

          Your essay is to be approximately 6-8 double-spaced pages and to be submitted via the course website in docx format by 2:00, Thursday, Oct. 22.