An Ounce of Cure
Eating breakfast and reading the paper, a southern family is preparing to depart for their vacation to Florida. Set in northern Georgia in the mid 1950's, on a summer day (the children are at home, so it is a good possibility they are out of school for their summer break) when conflict begins to set in over the planned final destination of a vacation. The setting eventually progresses to a dirt road outside a town ironically named "Toomesboro". O'Connor begins to foreshadow the story's irony by having the grandmother attempt to the use the news story of the Misfit to support her argument to not go to Florida. She explains that he is in Florida and says "I wouldn't take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it." O'Connor has set the stage for the essence of the conflict in this story. This family is not typical. From the outside, they could be seen as an ordinarily happy family, but in contrast, they are rather dysfunctional. O'Connor provides the reader with a vivid description of the main characters, especially to the two women, the grandmother and the daughter-in-law. Their physical descriptions are given as polar opposites; the protagonist (the grandmother) is described as an unusually we
The main character (the grandmother) lives a life of manipulation. O'Connor gives subtle examples of this characteristic throughout this story. For example, the following morning, after the family's discussion about going to Florida, the grandmother prepares for the trip. She craftily hides her cat, Pitty Sing, in a basket contradicting what her son wishes were. To me, this illustrates her devious nature. Bailey would otherwise not allow the cat to come along; he disapproves of taking cats into motels. The grandmother states that she does not want to leave Pitty Sing at home because she believes he would miss her and he might accidentally turn on a gas burner and asphyxiate himself. Regardless of Bailey's honest opinion, his mother finds a way to manipulate him by using what she perceives he would really want. She does this with total disregard of what he requested (kind of like holding him hostage with manners towards his own mother). I view this as the ultimate form of deceit and forcefulness. This can also explain why the family has grown to ignore and disrespect the elderly woman. The opening words of this story both introduce and foreshadow the end of this family by focusing on the grandmother's less than accommodating personality: trying to get her own way, she inadvertently seals her family's fate. The daughter-in-law is described as a painted as a simple southern mother with a face "that is broad and innocent as a cabbage". Using O'Connor's initial descriptions, I see simplicity (the daughter-in-law) in contrast to the complexities of an older, southern woman, fixated on the superficiality of image. She has most likely been conditioned to ignore most of what the grandmother discusses. Bailey, the father and the son of the grandmother, is an impatient man that has apparently grown weary of his mother's habits of manipulation and deceit. By his children's blatant disrespect for their grandmo
Some common words found in the essay are:
Coca Colas, Using O'Connor's, Toomesboro O'Connor, Regardless Bailey's, Florida Set, Pitty Sing, African American, Red Sammy's, , Misfit Butts, family grown, pitty sing, story family, destination vacation,
Approximate Word count = 1299
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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