Literary Analysis Of The Grandmother

Improved Essays
Taking a look at the grandmother, it is important to note her namelessness, because this characteristic signifies a deeper symbolic meaning. The story begins, “The grandmother didn’t want to go to Florida” (1). There are three unnamed characters in the story: the grandmother, the children’s mothers, and The Misfit. Throughout, the grandmother is referred to by her title in place of her name, which allows the reader to see the grandmother as an illustration of the typical person. Because of her namelessness, she comes to represent everyone, and her external and internal conflicts with vanity, control, and egotism represent the collective of humanity’s struggles.

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Grandmother Vs Misfit

    • 532 Words
    • 3 Pages

    “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor has been one of the most interesting stories I have ever come across. The story revolves around a family who decide to go on a vacation to Florida, toting along their grandmother. Along the way, the family encounters ‘The Misfit,’ a runaway criminal. O’Connor writes the characters of the grandmother and The Misfit, who at first glance seem so different from each other, yet throughout the short story, share underlying similarities. The grandmother and The Misfit possess two different views on how they think of themselves.…

    • 532 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the novel The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards Caroline Gills feel alienating, and this brings her to enriching herself by bring a baby into her life. This relates to the work as a whole because Caroline didn't care if the baby wasn’t hers and didn’t care that the baby had down syndrome. Caroline’s feeling of distance enriched her, thus relating to novel as a whole. Since Caroline was a child she was very lonely and isolated “Distantly, silverware clattered voices hummed. Above her, footsteps moved and echo.…

    • 448 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    As the story progressed the reader could almost feel the detachment the family showed towards her, especially the children through perfectly timed insults “She wouldn’t stay at home to be queen for a day.”(137). Throughout the story, the reader is shown the true nature of the grandmother as a manipulative, self-centered, racist. Furthermore, the only unselfish act she performed throughout the entire story was the offer to hold her granddaughter on her lap. Even in the face of death, she was not concerned that her innocent grandchildren and son were being hauled off into the woods to an uncertain…

    • 837 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The main character in the story A Good Man Is Hard to Find, is the grandmother. In the story the grandmother plays the role of a liar, self-centered, coward, and stubborn, manipulative woman. The grandmother lives with her only son, who has a family of his own. She is a typical human being, she voices her own opinions and did not stop at anything when she wanted thing done her way. Though she was a tough nut to crack, she has a soft heart.…

    • 795 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor is about a family that is going on a vacation to Florida however the grandmother does not wish to go. The family leaves with the two older children complaining about Tennessee and Georgia landscaping. The grandmother tells the kids some stories while on the road and convinces them of a secret panel within her old house. This causes the children to kick and scream until their father agrees to see the house, leading to a car accident causing them to end up in the hand of an escaped convict known as the Misfit. The Misfit ends up killing the family one by one.…

    • 1636 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Maybe everything could have happened differently. Whilst on the road, the grandmother shows her ignorant side while talking with the children on the car. She is repeatedly bringing up the past and comparing it to the present saying comments such as “In my time...children were more respectful of their native states and their parents and everything else”. The grandmothers ignorance makes its appears throughout the rest of the short story.…

    • 623 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the poem “The Mother” by Gwendolyn Brooks the poet expresses her feelings, for example, remorse, sadness, and regrets about aborting her children. This poem is mainly about the remembrance of the innocent children that she aborted and the little things children do that the mother will miss. In the whole poem she explicates that there is not greater pain than losing a child. She opens the poem with “Abortions will not let you forget” (1034). This line gives the tone for the poem by letting the readers be able to identify that this is something that she has to deal with for the rest of her life.…

    • 1342 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “The “Carpe Diem” of Time, Love, and Life?” Time is in control of all people's life, because time and death are synonymous with each other. In the two pieces, Andrew Marvell’s poem, “To His Coy Mistress” and the Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poem (sonnet), “I Shall Forget You Presently My Dear”, have similar themes of “carpe diem” and how love needs to be nurture in the here and now. Love can fall into this trap of being lifeless and unsatisfying, which can cause problems in the relationship between lovers.…

    • 739 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The grandmother’s internal conflict of a past long ago is described as she illustrates to John Wesley and June Star of an old plantation mansion with its walls filled with precious silver. This stirs an emotion of adventure within the children at Bailey’s disapproval. Bailey is later convinced by the grandmother to take the wrong turn in search of the mansion, knowingly that she has no self-awareness and harps constantly about the inadequacy of the present and superiority of the past. The disillusioned grandmother soon realizes she isn’t in Tennessee and causes an uproar resulting in an…

    • 477 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Claudia Emerson was a southern girl from Virginia. While in Virginia, she ran a used book store in Danville(Langer).She always had an interest in writing, but didn’t become inspired to write until she read books by Rainer Maria Rilke and May Sarton. The bookstore is where she spent some of her time writing. Later, she perfected her writing by attending the University of Virginia, where she eventually graduated with a bachelor 's degree in English. She later died from colon cancer.…

    • 1778 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Ordinary Grandma

    • 220 Words
    • 1 Pages

    Throughout the story the grandmother expressed a couple different personalities but all basically tied into one. She is a hateful, manipulative and conniving grandmother. The grandmother tries to control what the children do the whole time throughout the story and she even tells the parents what to do, where they go and how to parent their three children, because she doesn’t think they are doing a good job. The grandmother “would not let the children throw the box and the paper napkins out the window.”…

    • 220 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Near the end of the first story, Ántonia states to Jim that “things will be easy for you. But they will be hard for us” (Cather 90). “You” in this instance includes Jim and all other white people of America who have no trouble being accepted into colleges and getting jobs, while the “us” is not only Ántonia but also immigrants to America. Ántonia notices how the dominant ethnicity receives the first opportunity in education and work; while immigrants or people of other ethnicities are secondhand to them. Also apparent to Ántonia is how backgrounds and social status impact one's opportunities both in and out of America.…

    • 577 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Atwood also changes the story’s tenses. The past tense is used to start the story, in discussion of her life with the family. As the story nears the end, she begins to talk in the present tense. One example of this is,” Now they’re marching towards this house…” At the very end of the story, the protagonist begins talking in the future tense.…

    • 95 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The Grandmother is not a good person, by any standards. The story opens with her trying to emotionally manipulate…

    • 1352 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    A parent's acknowledgement to their child is a crucial factor in determining the type of relationship they will have. Without the love and support from the parent, the child will grow up feeling neglected and it can cause conflict within the parent child relationship. This type of scenario is displayed in the short work story titled Only Daughter which is written by Sandra Cisneros, this memoir tells the story of Sandra's struggles growing up as the only daughter in a Mexican American family of six sons. As a result of this, Sandra always feels unwanted by her father in comparison to her other siblings which causes major conflict within the relationship. The sources of the conflict will be discussed further to the overall meaning of the story,…

    • 218 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays