In order to successfully complete Lesson 6, please do the following:

Readings

· Read the lesson Notes: Symbols

· Read the stories listed below and consider the symbols in each:

· "A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor (textbook)

· "Cathedral" by Raymond Carver (textbook)

· "Young Goodman Brown" by Nathaniel Hawthorne  (link hereLinks to an external site.)

· "The Thing in the Forest" by A.S. Byatt (textbook)

· "Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden (poem in textbook)

Activities

· Complete discussion: "Good vs. Evil in Literature and Life"

· Complete Module 6 Reflective Writing Assignment

Presentation: The Nature of Good and Evil

The Nature of Good and Evil in Literature and Why It Matters

The conflict between good and evil isn't a new one. It is as old as time itself and accompanies humanity as a shadow, taking many forms and manifesting in as many ways as there are different kinds of conflict. A few things about this concept:

· There are different ways of defining what is "good" and what is "evil."

· The definitions aren't concrete, and never can be, but instead are left up to interpretation by individuals involved or by society as a whole.

· For example, the act of murder is an evil thing. However, we often hear stories of people committing murder to avenge an attack on a loved one and the act is forgiven. Revenge for love changes the game.

· The nature of good and evil follows closely with the common conflicts: man vs nature/self/man/supernatural/fate, etc.

· It is one of the methods authors use to help present conflict in the story line.

· This theme is often represented by foil characters, which are characters that are complete opposites in order to illuminate certain personality traits (Think "Cinderella". The wicked step-mother seems so wicked because Cinderella is so good, and Cinderella seems so good because the wicked step-mother is so wicked). This makes is easier to determine who is good and who is evil in the story. But it's not always that simple (the good guys sometimes make bad decisions and the bad guys sometimes do heroic deeds).

· Sometimes, you really, really want to like the bad guy… this is called the anti-hero. Think, Captain Jack Sparrow from "The Pirates of the Caribbean".  Click here for a quick read about the (awesome) anti-hero.  Links to an external site.

The beauty of literature is that, over time, it has captured the crazy spectrum that is associated with good vs. evil, and been able to tell of it from every angle. Often, this resonates with readers either by speaking to a personal conflict and relating to a current social conflict.

Popular Examples

Shakespeare has plenty. Don't groan, we aren't reading Shakespeare, I promise, but we will look at one example: 

Macbeth- Macbeth was an incredible warrior and very loyal to his king, King Duncan. He is influenced by a trio of witchy sisters that tell him of a prophesy in which he becomes king. Maddened by his new found ambition, he kills the king and assumes the kingship only to meet his demise in the form of a ghastly and gruesome death.

Pretty solid good vs evil, right? But consider:

· Although it appears that Macbeth is evil, it is important to know that Macbeth's wife, Lady Macbeth, had even more ambition than Macbeth and pushed him to commit the murder. He didn't necessarily want to and when he couldn't go through with all of it, she taunted him, doing much of the work herself.

· There were supernatural influences and witches were known to cause trouble, just for the sake of causing trouble. 

· Was Macbeth really evil? or was he just easily influenced by others that forced his hand?

· How is evil defined here?

· As one action/ multiple actions? One person/ multiple people?

(We will stop there with Shakespeare. Whew.) 

Discussion Board: Good vs. Evil in Literature and Life (Assignment).

Assignment Prompt

Thinking about the readings from this Module, write a 300-400 word discussion board post in which you explore one or more of these questions:

· How does the theme of good and evil present itself in the story?

· Is it accurate and truthful (is the "good guy" really good and the "bad guy" really bad)?

· What are some of the topics that seem to be recurring?

· What kinds of social and cultural changes were going on to influence the author?

· Does this reflect some sort of timeless social issue (oppressive government, racial, socioeconomic or gender bias)?

Guidelines

Your original post should be written using academic language (though some use of first person may be appropriate) and be written clearly in complete sentences. Be sure to proofread carefully. 

You are welcome, though, to attach images or links to related items to help your classmates visualize or understand the story. (For example, if you were writing about Harry Potter, you could include an image of Hogwarts.)

Be sure you write in complete sentences.  Remember to stay school appropriate.

Just in case you need the story.

https://learning.hccs.edu/faculty/selena.anderson/engl2307/readings/a-good-man-is-hard-to-find-by-flannery-oconnor

“A Good Man Is Hard to Find” BY FLANNERY O’CONNOR

The grandmother didn’t want to go to Florida. She wanted to visit some of her connections in east Tennessee and she was seizing at every chance to

change Bailey’s mind. Bailey was the son she lived with, her only boy. He was sitting on the edge of his chair at the table, bent over the orange sports section of the Journal. “Now look here, Bailey,” she said, “see here, read this,” and she stood with one hand on her thin hip and the other rattling the newspaper at his bald head. “Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida and you read here what it says he did to these people. Just you read it. I wouldn’t take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn’t answer to my conscience if I did.” Bailey didn’t look up from his reading so she wheeled around then and faced

the children’s mother, a young woman in slacks, whose face was as broad and innocent as a cabbage and was tied around with a green head-kerchief that had two points on the top like a rabbit’s ears. She was sitting on the sofa, feed-ing the baby his apricots out of a jar. “The children have been to Florida before,” the old lady said. “You all ought to take them somewhere else for a change so they would see different parts of the world and be broad. They never have been to east Tennessee.” The children’s mother didn’t seem to hear her but the eight-year-old boy,

John Wesley, a stocky child with glasses, said, “If you don’t want to go to Flor-ida, why dontcha stay at home?” He and the little girl, June Star, were reading the funny papers on the floor.

“She wouldn’t stay at home to be queen for a day,” June Star said without raising her yellow head.

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“Yes and what would you do if this fellow, The Misfit, caught you?” the grandmother asked.

“I’d smack his face,” John Wesley said.

“She wouldn’t stay at home for a million bucks,” June Star said. “Afraid she’d miss something. She has to go everywhere we go.”

“All right, Miss,” the grandmother said. “Just remember that the next time 10

you want me to curl your hair.” June Star said her hair was naturally curly. The next morning the grandmother was the first one in the car, ready to go.

She had her big black valise that looked like the head of a hippopotamus in one corner, and underneath it she was hiding a basket with Pitty Sing,1

the cat, in it.

She didn’t intend for the cat to be left alone in the house for three days because he would miss her too much and she was afraid he might brush against one of the gas burners and accidentally asphyxiate himself. Her son, Bailey, didn’t like to arrive at a motel with a cat. She sat in the middle of the back seat with John Wesley and June Star on either side of her. Bailey and the children’s mother and the baby sat in front and they left Atlanta at eight forty-five with the mileage on the car at 55890. The grandmother wrote this down because she thought it would be interesting to say how many miles they had been when they got back. It took them twenty minutes to reach the outskirts of the city. The old lady settled herself comfortably, removing her white cotton gloves and putting them up with her purse on the shelf in front of the back window. The children’s mother still had on slacks and still had her head tied up in a green kerchief, but the grandmother had on a navy blue straw sailor hat with a bunch of white violets on the brim and a navy blue dress with a small white dot in the print. Her collars and cuffs were white organdy trimmed with lace and at her neckline she had pinned a purple spray of cloth violets containing a sachet. In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady. She said she thought it was going to be a good day for driving, neither too hot

nor too cold, and she cautioned Bailey that the speed limit was fifty-five miles an hour and that the patrolmen hid themselves behind billboards and small clumps of trees and sped out after you before you had a chance to slow down. She pointed out interesting details of the scenery: Stone Mountain; the blue granite that in some places came up to both sides of the highway; the brilliant red clay banks slightly streaked with purple; and the various crops that made rows of green lace-work on the ground. The trees were full of silver-white sun-light and the meanest of them sparkled. The children were reading comic mag-azines and their mother had gone back to sleep.

Wesley said.

“Let’s go through Georgia fast so we won’t have to look at it much,” John “If I were a little boy,” said the grandmother, “I wouldn’t talk about my native 15 state that way. Tennessee has the mountains and Georgia has the hills.” “Tennessee is just a hillbilly dumping ground,” John Wesley said, “and Geor-gia is a lousy state too.”

“You said it,” June Star said. “In my time,” said the grandmother, folding her thin veined fingers, “children were more respectful of their native states and their parents and everything else. People did right then. Oh look at the cute little pickaninny!” she said and pointed to a Negro child standing in the door of a shack. “Wouldn’t that make a picture, now?” she asked and they all turned and looked at the little Negro out of the back window. He waved. “He didn’t have any britches on,” June Star said.

“He probably didn’t have any,” the grandmother explained. “Little niggers in 20

the country don’t have things like we do. If I could paint, I’d paint that picture,” she said. The children exchanged comic books. The grandmother offered to hold the baby and the children’s mother passed him over the front seat to her. She set him on her knee and bounced him and told him about the things they were passing. She rolled her eyes and screwed up her mouth and stuck her leathery thin face into his smooth bland one. Occa-sionally he gave her a faraway smile. They passed a large cotton field with five or six graves fenced in the middle of it, like a small island. “Look at the graveyard!” the grandmother said, pointing it out. “That was the old family burying ground. That belonged to the plantation.”

“Where’s the plantation?” John Wesley asked. “Gone with the Wind,”2

25 said the grandmother. “Ha. Ha.” When the children finished all the comic books they had brought, they opened the lunch and ate it. The grandmother ate a peanut butter sandwich and an olive and would not let the children throw the box and the paper nap-kins out the window. When there was nothing else to do they played a game by choosing a cloud and making the other two guess what shape it suggested. John Wesley took one the shape of a cow and June Star guessed a cow and John Wes-ley said, no, an automobile, and June Star said he didn’t play fair, and they began to slap each other over the grandmother. The grandmother said she would tell them a story if they would keep quiet.

When she told a story, she rolled her eyes and waved her head and was very dramatic. She said once when she was a maiden lady she had been courted by a Mr. Edgar Atkins Teagarden from Jasper, Georgia. She said he was a very good-looking man and a gentleman and that he brought her a watermelon every Sat-urday afternoon with his initials cut in it, E. A. T. Well, one Saturday, she said, Mr. Teagarden brought the watermelon and there was nobody at home and he left it on the front porch and returned in his buggy to Jasper, but she never got the watermelon, she said, because a nigger boy ate it when he saw the initials, E. A. T.! This story tickled John Wesley’s funny bone and he giggled and giggled but June Star didn’t think it was any good. She said she wouldn’t marry a man that just brought her a watermelon on Saturday. The grandmother said she would have done well to marry Mr. Teagarden because he was a gentleman and had bought Coca-Cola stock when it first came out and that he had died only a few years ago, a very wealthy man. They stopped at The Tower for barbecued sandwiches. The Tower was a part

stucco and part wood filling station and dance hall set in a clearing outside of Timothy. A fat man named Red Sammy Butts ran it and there were signs stuck here and there on the building and for miles up and down the highway saying, TRY RED SAMMY’S FAMOUS BARBECUE. NONE LIKE FAMOUS RED SAMMY’S! RED SAM! THE FAT BOY WITH THE HAPPY LAUGH! A VETERAN! RED SAMMY’S YOUR MAN! Red Sammy was lying on the bare ground outside The Tower with his head under a truck while a gray monkey about a foot high, chained to a small china-berry tree, chattered nearby. The monkey sprang back into the tree and got on the highest limb as soon as he saw the children jump out of the car and run toward him. Inside, The Tower was a long dark room with a counter at one end and tables at the other and dancing space in the middle. They all sat down at a board table next to the nickelodeon3 and Red Sam’s wife, a tall burnt-brown woman with hair and eyes lighter than her skin, came and took their order. The children’s mother put a dime in the machine and played “The Tennessee Waltz,” and the grandmother said that tune always made her want to dance. She asked Bailey if he would like to dance but he only glared at her. He didn’t have a naturally sunny disposition like she did and trips made him ner vous. The grandmother’s brown eyes were very bright. She swayed her head from side to side and pre-tended she was dancing in her chair. June Star said play something she could tap to so the children’s mother put in another dime and played a fast number and June Star stepped out onto the dance floor and did her tap routine. “Ain’t she cute?” Red Sam’s wife said, leaning over the counter. “Would you 30 like to come be my little girl?”

“No I certainly wouldn’t,” June Star said. “I wouldn’t live in a broken-down place like this for a million bucks!” and she ran back to the table. “Ain’t she cute?” the woman repeated, stretching her mouth politely.

“Aren’t you ashamed?” hissed the grandmother. Red Sam came in and told his wife to quit lounging on the counter and hurry up with these people’s order. His khaki trousers reached just to his hip bones and his stomach hung over them like a sack of meal swaying under his shirt. He came over and sat down at a table nearby and let out a combination sigh and yodel. “You can’t win,” he said. “You can’t win,” and he wiped his sweating red face off with a gray handkerchief. “These days you don’t know who to trust,” he said. “Ain’t that the truth?” “People are certainly not nice like they used to be,” said the grandmother.

“Two fellers come in here last week,” Red Sammy said, “driving a Chrysler. It

was a old beat-up car but it was a good one and these boys looked all right to me. Said they worked at the mill and you know I let them fellers charge the gas they bought? Now why did I do that?”

“Because you’re a good man!” the grandmother said at once.

“Yes’m, I suppose so,” Red Sam said as if he were struck with this answer. His wife brought the orders, carrying the five plates all at once without a

tray, two in each hand and one balanced on her arm. “It isn’t a soul in this green world of God’s that you can trust,” she said. “And I don’t count nobody out of that, not nobody,” she repeated, looking at Red Sammy.

grandmother.

“Did you read about that criminal, The Misfit, that’s escaped?” asked the 40 “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if he didn’t attact this place right here,” said the

woman. “If he hears about it being here, I wouldn’t be none surprised to see him. If he hears it’s two cent in the cash register, I wouldn’t be a tall surprised if he . . .” “That’ll do,” Red Sam said. “Go bring these people their Co’-Colas,” and the woman went off to get the rest of the order.

“A good man is hard to find,” Red Sammy said. “Everything is getting terrible.

I remember the day you could go off and leave your screen door unlatched. Not no more.” He and the grandmother discussed better times. The old lady said that in her opinion Europe was entirely to blame for the way things were now. She said the way Europe acted you would think we were made of money and Red Sam said it was no use talking about it, she was exactly right. The children ran outside into the white sunlight and looked at the monkey in the lacy chinaberry tree. He was busy catching fleas on himself and biting each one carefully between his teeth as if it were a delicacy. They drove off again into the hot afternoon. The grandmother took cat naps

and woke up every few minutes with her own snoring. Outside of Toombsboro she woke up and recalled an old plantation that she had visited in this neighbor-hood once when she was a young lady. She said the house had six white col-umns across the front and that there was an avenue of oaks leading up to it and two little wooden trellis arbors on either side in front where you sat down with your suitor after a stroll in the garden. She recalled exactly which road to turn off to get to it. She knew that Bailey would not be willing to lose any time look-ing at an old house, but the more she talked about it, the more she wanted to see it once again and find out if the little twin arbors were still standing. “There was a secret panel in this house,” she said craftily, not telling the truth but wish-ing that she were, “and the story went that all the family silver was hidden in it when Sherman came through but it was never found . . .”

“Hey!” John Wesley said. “Let’s go see it! We’ll find it! We’ll poke all the woodwork and find it! Who lives there? Where do you turn off at? Hey Pop,

can’t we turn off there?” “We never have seen a house with a secret panel!” June Star shrieked. “Let’s

go to the house with the secret panel! Hey Pop, can’t we go see the house with the secret panel!”

“It’s not far from here, I know,” the grandmother said. “It wouldn’t take over

twenty minutes.” Bailey was looking straight ahead. His jaw was as rigid as a horseshoe. “No,”

50

he said. The children began to yell and scream that they wanted to see the house

with the secret panel. John Wesley kicked the back of the front seat and June Star hung over her mother’s shoulder and whined desperately into her ear that they never had any fun even on their vacation, that they could never do what THEY wanted to do. The baby began to scream and John Wesley kicked the back of the seat so hard that his father could feel the blows in his kidney. “All right!” he shouted and drew the car to a stop at the side of the road. “Will

you all shut up? Will you all just shut up for one second? If you don’t shut up, we won’t go anywhere.”

“It would be very educational for them,” the grandmother murmured. “All right,” Bailey said, “but get this: this is the only time we’re going to stop for anything like this. This is the one and only time.”

“The dirt road that you have to turn down is about a mile back,” the grand-mother directed. “I marked it when we passed.”

55

“A dirt road,” Bailey groaned. After they had turned around and were headed toward the dirt road, the

grandmother recalled other points about the house, the beautiful glass over the front doorway and the candle-lamp in the hall. John Wesley said that the secret panel was probably in the fireplace.

“You can’t go inside this house,” Bailey said. “You don’t know who lives there.” “While you all talk to the people in front, I’ll run around behind and get in a

window,” John Wesley suggested. We’ll all stay in the car,” his mother said. They turned onto the dirt road and the car raced roughly along in a swirl of

pink dust. The grandmother recalled the times when there were no paved roads and thirty miles was a day’s journey. The dirt road was hilly and there were sud-den washes in it and sharp curves on dangerous embankments. All at once they would be on a hill, looking down over the blue tops of trees for miles around, then the next minute, they would be in a red depression with the dust-coated trees looking down on them.

“This place had better turn up in a minute,” Bailey said, “or I’m going to turn around.”

The road looked as if no one had traveled on it in months. “It’s not much farther,” the grandmother said and just as she said it, a horrible thought came to her. The thought was so embarrassing that she turned red in the face and her eyes dilated and her feet jumped up, upsetting her valise in the corner. The instant the valise moved, the newspaper top she had over the basket under it rose with a snarl and Pitty Sing, the cat, sprang onto Bailey’s shoulder. The children were thrown to the floor and their mother, clutching the baby, out the door onto the ground; the old lady was thrown into the front seat. The car turned over once and landed right-side-up in a gulch off the side of the road. Bailey remained in the driver’s seat with the cat—gray-striped with a broad white face and an orange nose—clinging to his neck like a caterpillar. As soon as the children saw they could move their arms and legs, they scram-bled out of the car, shouting, “We’ve had an ACCIDENT!” The grandmother was curled up under the dashboard, hoping she was injured so that Bailey’s wrath would not come down on her all at once. The horrible thought she had had before the accident was that the house she had remembered so vividly was not in Georgia but in Tennessee. Bailey removed the cat from his neck with both hands and flung it out the

window against the side of a pine tree. Then he got out of the car and started looking for the children’s mother. She was sitting against the side of the red gut-ted ditch, holding the screaming baby, but she only had a cut down her face and a broken shoulder. “We’ve had an ACCIDENT!” the children screamed in a frenzy of delight.

“But nobody’s killed,” June Star said with disappointment as the grandmother

limped out of the car, her hat still pinned to her head but the broken front brim standing up at a jaunty angle and the violet spray hanging off the side. They all sat down in the ditch, except the children, to recover from the shock. They were all shaking.

“Maybe a car will come along,” said the children’s mother hoarsely. “I believe I have injured an organ,” said the grandmother, pressing her side,

but no one answered her. Bailey’s teeth were clattering. He had on a yellow sport shirt with bright blue parrots designed in it and his face was as yellow as the shirt. The grandmother decided that she would not mention that the house was in Tennessee. The road was about ten feet above and they could see only the tops of the

trees on the other side of it. Behind the ditch they were sitting in there were more woods, tall and dark and deep. In a few minutes they saw a car some dis-tance away on top of a hill, coming slowly as if the occupants were watch- ing them. The grandmother stood up and waved both arms dramatically to attract their attention. The car continued to come on slowly, disappeared around a bend and appeared again, moving even slower, on top of the hill they had gone over. It was a big black battered hearselike automobile. There were three men in it. It came to a stop just over them and for some minutes, the driver looked down with a steady expressionless gaze to where they were sitting, and didn’t speak. Then he turned his head and muttered something to the other two and they got out. One was a fat boy in black trousers and a red sweat shirt with a silver stallion embossed on the front of it. He moved around on the right side of them and stood staring, his mouth partly open in a kind of loose grin. The other had on khaki pants and a blue striped coat and a gray hat pulled down very low, hiding most of his face. He came around slowly on the left side. Nei-ther spoke. The driver got out of the car and stood by the side of it, looking down at

them. He was an older man than the other two. His hair was just beginning to gray and he wore silver-rimmed spectacles that gave him a scholarly look. He had a long creased face and didn’t have on any shirt or undershirt. He had on blue jeans that were too tight for him and was holding a black hat and a gun. The two boys also had guns.

“We’ve had an ACCIDENT!” the children screamed. The grandmother had the peculiar feeling that the bespectacled man was

75

someone she knew. His face was as familiar to her as if she had known him all her life but she could not recall who he was. He moved away from the car and began to come down the embankment, placing his feet carefully so that he wouldn’t slip. He had on tan and white shoes and no socks, and his ankles were red and thin. “Good afternoon,” he said. “I see you all had you a little spill.” “We turned over twice!” said the grandmother.

“Oncet,” he corrected. “We seen it happen. Try their car and see will it run, Hiram,” he said quietly to the boy with the gray hat.

that gun?”

“What you got that gun for?” John Wesley asked. “Whatcha gonna do with “Lady,” the man said to the children’s mother, “would you mind calling them children to sit down by you? Children make me nervous. I want all you all to sit down right together there where you’re at.”

80

“What are you telling US what to do for?” June Star asked. Behind them the line of woods gaped like a dark open mouth. “Come here,”

said their mother. “Look here now,” Bailey began suddenly, “we’re in a predicament! We’re in . . .” The grandmother shrieked. She scrambled to her feet and stood staring.

“You’re The Misfit!” she said. “I recognized you at once!” “Yes’m,” the man said, smiling slightly as if he were pleased in spite of him-85 self to be known, &#x201C

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