Course Guidelines Path one Calender Writing Assignments Class discussion


Significant World Writers
Grp 3: Self-Deception

ornamental line

"They'd have to knock her in the head before
they'd get her near a hospital . . ." (187).
"A Stroke of Good Fortune" (1949)

 

Flannery O'Connor's "A Stroke of Good Fortune" (1949), 184-96

  1. what does Ruby’s distaste for collard greens—requested by her 20-year-old brother for a special meal—signal about our protagonist (184-85), and how does O’Connor develop this facet of Ruby’s character over the course of the story?
  2. Ruby categorizes Rufus, recently returned from war overseas, as “good for absolutely nothing” because constitutionally indolent; her husband concurs (185).  Ruby considers herself the only one of her parents’ kids to have actually made something of herself, to have taken hold of her own destiny.  How has she gone about doing this, and does her life differ as dramatically from her brother's as she asserts?
  3. Madam Zoleeda (palm reader), Bill Hill (husband), and Laverne (friend) all appear aware of what truth which Ruby fights hard to reject?  Why is Ruby so intent on rejecting this possibility?
  4. why does Ruby so dislike doctors and hospitals?
  5. what do the various residents of the apartment complex where Ruby and Bill Hill reside suggest about the socioeconomic status of the building’s inhabitants?
  6. why might O’Connor insert the encounter with Mr. Jerger in her tale, specifically the bit about Ponce de Leon’s search for the fountain of youth (189-90)?  What thematic role does this anecdote play in the larger story?
  7. to what is Ruby alluding when she says, “‘Bill Hill takes care of that!’” (193), and why, really, is it so important to Ruby that her husband continue to do this?
  8. consider the image of Ruby sitting down on the stairwell with her head stuck between poles in the banister (195), and the symbolic function it serves.
  9. are Ruby’s repeated attempts at self-deception ultimately successful, or does she admit the truth at some point within this story’s limited, temporal parameters?


A brightly colored impressionistic painting of a road with trees on either side going towards a house
Winter Landscape (1909)
Wassily Kandinsky

 


Dr. Paul Marchbanks
pmarchba@calpoly.edu