T.+Bickel

livebinger Catcher

Flannery O’Connor, “A Late Encounter with the Enemy” A sixty-two year old woman named Sally Poker Sash, a teacher as well as a summer student, is soon to graduate from college and is living with her one hundred and four year old father, General Sash, an old war hero from the Civil War. She considers General Sash as somewhat of an equalizer between her and the rest of the world, she considers nothing about herself very important or meaningful, but considers General Sash to be very important and influential not only to her but to everyone the General met; he is the pride of Sally's life. General Sash didn’t care one bit about his daughter’s graduation, but Sally’s one desire was for the General to live to see her graduate from college. General Sash was very arrogant and sharp minded, he had a very high opinion of himself, he believed himself nearly invincible after surviving the Civil War as well as exceeding one hundred years of age. The General believed himself to be unchanged by time and that he looked just as good as he always had. When the day of graduation comes around, Sally has her father scheduled to sit on stage in his wheel chair accompanied by her nephew John Wesley who was a ten year old Boy Scout. As Sally walks towards stage with the rest of the graduates, she sees Wesley not taking care of the General as he should, the General was sitting in the hot sun, bald headed, without Wesley’s care, seeing this, Sally breaks from the procession to scold Wesley and insure that General Sash makes it on stage in time. Once Sally is on stage and General Sash is in position, the General cannot stop thinking about this “hole” on the top of his head. This hole was letting everything in without any choice by the General. As the procession came to a close General Sash could not rid himself of this dark mass he believed was blocking his vision, and by the time he was rolled outside, General Sash was no more. First, both stories are told in **third person.** The first story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is similar to the second story “A Late Encounter with the Enemy” because in both stories there is a character or multiple characters that die. In “A Good Man is Hard to Find” the whole family dies towards the end of the story. In the other story the elderly man that used to be a soldier dies in the end of the story. In both stories there is a plan to start off with. To start off in the first story the plan was for the whole family to go on a vacation. The grandmother did not want to go but reluctantly agrees to when the rest of family says they are. This is similar to the second story because there was an initial plan in it too; it was for the daughter to go to graduation and bring her father with her and get him to be acknowledged. The father did not want to go but just like the grandmother in the first story he reluctantly agrees to. Both stories have problems that cause the whole thing to go wrong and make people suffer consequences. In “A Good Man is Hard to Find” the grandmother’s cat jumps on the dad that is driving and it causes the car wreck. That leads to the misfit finding them and killing everyone in the family. The consequences of bringing the cat and going on an unplanned route on the way to Florida caused everyone to die. The grandmother was the one that suggested taking the route. In the second book the problem is the General doesn’t want to go to the graduation. He agrees to go and the nephew has to be responsible for him on the day of graduation. On that day the nephew leaves the general out in the sun to long causing the general to slowly fade away throughout the ceremony. He ends up dying on the stage towards the end and the nephew never notices. The original plan never happened in this story just like the first one. Only part of it got finished. Throughout the two stories the same types of consequences happened for the events that took place. There was just different kinds of events taking place. Image Representation In both “A late Encounter with the Enemy” and “A Good Man is Hard to Find” an elderly individual plays the **protagonist** that influences the plot of the **short story** greatly. In the first story General Sash is a veteran of the Civil War that is the pride of his daughter. He is over one hundred years of age and is becoming rather irritable and hard to get along with, he is cannot conceive a thought beyond the life he lives, considering himself nearly invincible, he views himself as a good looking, honorable, strong man. In the second story the Grandmother is joining the rest of her family on a vacation; she is somewhat of a burden to the family and makes life more troublesome for those around her. The grandmother thinks she is somewhat above those she is surrounded by and tries to set herself apart from others on standards of “purity” and “goodness.”
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