Bastard Out of Carolina, Chapter 3

Hello, Glen Waddell! I knew in chapter three that there was something wrong with you!

At first, the reader is torn between trusting Glen and not being able to peg that certain something that is off about him. Glen and Mama date for two years. He is hard working, or so it seems. On page 34 he is described while loading cases of cola into a truck. Perhaps my mind was in the gutter, but it was at this defining moment at which I decided he was going to be a sexual predator with the way Allison depicts his masculine hands, force, strain, narrow hips, and grunting.

"Glen Waddell turned Mama from a harried, worried mother into a giggling, hopeful girl." Great. We are doomed. Love, or at least imitations of it, is masked in laughter. Mama won't leave him.

Glen gets emotional and forceful when he asks Anney to marry him. She's unsure herself, but it seems like what is best because she thinks that Glen loves Bone and Reese, too. The family knows that something is wrong with him. Uncle Earle isn't very fond of the fact that Glen doesn't defend his own family when Earle gets to joking. The chapter ends with a family photo which I suspect will turn up later in the book. What's more is that we see the contrast between healthy, real love showered on the girls by their Uncle Earle and the coldness of Daddy Glen.

Bastard Out of Carolina, Chapter 2

Chapter two is a classic example of writing coming out of the South. The entire first paragraph is devoted to doting over the countryside's beauty. Interestingly, it is followed up by a grandmother teasing her human grandchildren by telling them how ugly they are. Bone is cuddled up next to her granny, and this may be the only time in the novel in which out narrator both feels safe and is in a literal safe place away from physical harm.

Bone expresses her desire to be a boy. I wonder if all little girls go through this phase? I too wanted to be a boy. I liked to explore outside, play in dirt, find and pet wild animals, and make up stories of adventure. My cousins were my siblings. The boy was three years older, and the girl just two years younger. I was wild with him, and when forced to play "babies" with my female cousin(s), it was me who was toting around the male baby doll indicated by his blue pajamas. Cleaning and cooking were for the birds! My Easy Bake Oven groomed my most advanced culinary skills.

"That Earle's got the magic. Man is just a magnet to women. Breaks their hearts and makes them like it." Oh vomit. These are the men who raised me, and just the kind of men I can spot coming a million miles away. I don't hate men, but when I have my spells of cursing the male species, Earle is who I think of! Moreover, I hate seeing my friends wallop in the addictive heartbreak brought on by these wild types. Uhhh gag. "That's what Earle is, a hurt little boy with just enough meanness in him to keep a woman interested." <---A story as old as time!

Bone pees on her father. Ha!

On page 28, the obsession of women with their hair color is all over the text. Everyone claims to be a natural [insert here] and swears up and down that every family member is headed down the same follicle path.

Like Bone, I feel like I don't resemble anyone in my family. She smiles, not really believing what her Mama and Aunt Alma are saying, but wanting to believe them that she'll be a beauty. I think it is a common habit to believe what you want although you know that it is highly probable that the person flattering you is wrong.

Bone's Mama drags the brush through her hair and is blaming Bone for moving. I can't count how many times my mom's therapy was dragging a hairbrush over my scalp.

Bastard Out of Carolina, Chapter 1

I like how Allison paints Anne's character. She's a hardworking, young, attractive woman who has two babies to take care of...although she could probably use any extra money she could earn, Anne takes pride in herself. She laughs and charms the men, but she firmly declines any opportunities to make money by laying on her back. Shortly after Allison paints this picture, she introduces a lawyer who is an honest man who gives Anne back all of her money when he sees that he cannot possibly help her.

Anne's family is close and is more than willing to help her out in any way they possibly can. She doesn't take handouts and she doesn't slack on personal responsibility. More than anything though, she wants a man who will love her with the same passion she has for her daughters. Who hasn't felt that way before? Who felt that at nineteen after raising two children and losing a man she loved dearly? I believe it is more common that what is generally thought...

Glen reminds me of someone, but I cannot put my finger on it. There something pitiful in the man. He seems nice enough, but I don't think his intentions are products of true love, but perhaps those of mere curiosity and desire to shake people and win the favor of others. I do like that Glen became real man when he ate the collard greens and sipped the iced tea. His mama may have been well-educated, but wasn't she Southern? Maybe she was a Yankee and didn't understand the value of sweet tea and buttermilk buscuits.

I don't have a child, but I can imagine that when a single person has a child that he or she is keenly aware of the parenting quality of those the he or she dates. What I don't like is that Allison has pushed Anne into the sterotype of the hardworking single mom who is looking for a daddy. Maybe I am being too harsh on Allison. It may be that in the back of every single mother's mind that she wouldn't mind having a stable male figure in the life of her children.

Glen is determined to have Anne. In the following paragraph, the audience is made aware that Anne may not try to resist if only because she wants/needs financial and emotional stability.

Anne smells her own sweat (eww, but I'm guilty too!) and she's mnot sure if she's scared or turned on by the idea of having a working husband.

The preacher says, "Your shame is between you and God, Sister Anne. No need to let it mark the child." Isn't that the truth? Yet, I love the magnitude in which the lioness defends her family by saying, "I go no shame and I don't need no man to tell me jackshit about my child." You go girl.

There is a lingering sadness in Anne's demeanor as she copes and grieves for Lyle. Easy banter rises from the deepest place inside her. Isn't that the loneliest place to be? When you can pretend to be happy all day long, but you are never really saying anything that you care about?

Anne is trying to convince herself that Earle will be a good daddy, and if anything that's enough for her.

The courthouse burns down, and so does any record belonging to or never existing for Ruth Anne :)

Bastard Out of Mississippi...I mean Carolina, Chapter One

Okay...as if Dorothy Allison's title didn't excite me enough...I was not prepared to fall in love with a new text this semester. Let's get one thing straight: I don't throw the word "love" around like the liberal, free spirit, tree hugging self that I am! We all have a weakness, and the more something tugs at the core of who we are, the harder is it to resist falling. Why can't this happen with men rather than books? Oh well, within the latter is where I rustle my most pleasure!

Ruth Anne is Michaela Jester...but Ruth probably has breasts. What has gotten in to me today I'll never know :)

Let's lis the parallels between the narrator and me, shall we?

I was named by my oldest aunt. My momma didn't stress out about my middle name. As long as it was fluid with Michaela, she didn't mind letting my aunt live vicariously through me by dubbing me "Danielle."

Like Ruth, I was raised with a handful of tight-knit aunts, uncles, and cousins. Ruth does have a sister, but she runs with the adults. As an only child who's mamma couldn't afford preschool, I bonded with and learned from the adults who were key in my life before I even knew that other children existed outside of the Discovery Channel.

My mom wasn't sixteen when she became pregnant, but a twenty year old girl is still a child in my opinion.

My father's name is absent from my birth certificate, mainly because my mom didn't think he deserved to be on it. Hmmm...similarities between Anne and Dee? Perhaps. "and there I was-certified an air force brat bastard by the state of Mississippi." However, neither my mother nor I have actually felt like I am illegitimate or that one of us should be walking around Hester Primm style with a big letter A on the breast.

However, I think my mom may have been defensive for my sake in regard to what other people would wisper or scream about her having a child out of wedlock. If she did she didn't talk about it in front of me. A couple of times, though, I heard a conversation between her and her parents that was similar to the bickering between Granny and Anne.

My mom was also a hard working woman (and still is!) As a young girl I remember her taking on three jobs just so I could have the best of what she could offer.

My mom has also been married more than once.

"Family is family, but even love can't keep people from eating at eachother. Mama's pride, Granny's resentment that there should even be anything to consider shameful, my aunts' fear and bitter humor, my uncles' hard mouthed contempt for anything that could not be handled with a shotgun or a two-by-four- all combined to grow my mama up fast and painfully." This family is a carbon copy of my own.

My uncles also have a gift for charming any creature.

Wise Blood, Chapter 4

At the beginning of chapter four there are a few things that we know about Hazel. He is always looking for signs. Much of the problem with his youth appears to be the disconnect between his own world and the changing world. He is looking for a home, somewhere to belong. His father was a sinner, grandfather a fervent self-loathing revivalist, mother was strict, and his brothers have both passed away at different times. To him, Jesus is a “gotcha” God who swings around in the tress of your mind much like Tarzan. In the chapter specifically, there are images of metal, tin, shining things, machinery, and sharp light. The colors mentioned are ones that convey dullness or filth: rat-colored, dust-colored, yellow, black, and green. There are references to the devil as well as a set of chameleon’s eyes. In contrast to the devil there are number drops, such as the Biblical reference to the book of Numbers. Hazel is still looking for signs.

Wise Blood, Chapter 3

Chapter three’s theme is faces. I counted at least five different faces that are descibed throughout this section. Here we are symbolism of a potato (brown, dirty) being peeled (white, pure) but one must question if that potato is really clean or if it is the same darn vegetable. Religion, Jesus, is the actual potato peeler. The soul is the potato. This is also the first time that Enoch Emery is introduced in the text. Looking back at the book after having read it in its entirety, I now see that Sabbith Hawks makes her debut simultaniously with Enoch. The way she is handing out leaftlets and accompying her father, the way she is dressed, her facial features…it all reminds me of how I envision the early days of French singer Edith Piaf…the Little Sparrow. It is interesting to me that the crowd gathers just like Jesus attracted crowds although the potato peeler is anything but a Jesus lover. Here we get a description of Enoch, were he came from, and what happened to him as a boy. At first I thought he was an African-American boy because his father traded him, but I was wrong. It seems odd to me that white children were being traded to keep middle aged women happy…perhaps the woman he was staying with was trying to do good in the world. Her being so strick on Enoch was her equivalent of Haze’s desired to wear rocks in his shoes for all the sinning he had done. Enoch is obsees with dirt and disorder, yet he is dirty and disorderly himself. His attire is offwhite. He describes the woman he lived with as, “This woman was hard to get along with-she wasn’t old. I reckon she was forty year old-but she so was ugly. She had theseyer brown glasses and her hair was so thin it looke dlike gravy trickling iver her skull.” Obviously, this character is walks slightly on the rude side…although I love the gravy imagery. We also meet Asa Hawks. There is symbolism in his name, for hawks are keen hunters due to their outstanding sight. He is supposed to be a blind preacher, but as we find out later, he is not blind at all. In this chapter he says, “I can see more than you! You got eyes and see not, ears and hear not, but you’ll have to see some time.” Knowing what I know now, this is a case of double irony. Later the crowd leaves and it is writen as, “ It was like a large spread raveling and the separate threads disappeared down the dark streets,” which to me was symbolic of souls and their unravelings. Enoch, like Hazel, only wants a friend and makes every effort to hang out with Haze. Haze, however, doesn’t genuinely like Enoch and is much more obessed with the Hawkes. Haze has a flashback of when he was ten and saw his first naked woman and the shame he felt. His mother could sense what was happening, and young Haze was a smartass by remarking that he never asked Jesus to die for his sins. The woman he saw reminds me of Marilyn Monroe with O’Connor’s inclusion of the mole on her lip. Furthermore, we are now well aware the Haze looks for signs although he tried hard not to have spiritual beliefs.

Wise Blood, Chapter 2

“Peanuts, Western Union, Ajax, Taxi, Hotel, Candy” gives the time period is which Hazel is living with away. When I read across these lines, I immediately thought of a bustling economy. Our main character is a lonely man and he’s reaching out there to connect with someone, anyone but Jesus. If Hazel Motes had facebook I would suspect that he would be someone with a sad and lonely facebook status. He has seen the horroes of war, although they are not talked about, yet he is naïve. When he sees Mrs. Watts’ name written on the bathroom wall (a sense of defilement already) he is eager to meet the woman with the friendliest bed in town. When Hazel rides in the taxi cab to her house he is trying to assure the driver that he isn’t a preacher. The driver thinks that Hazel is a preacher, but that all men sin, that Hazel would understand what he was lecturing on if he knew the sin himself. Hazel gets out and searches for Mrs. Watts’ room. “ The door to the left bwas cracked and let out a narrow shaft of light. He moved into the light and looked through the crack.” To me this is symbolic of a choice that is dark being disguished by light. Mrs. Watt’s is a prostitute although O’Connor never includes exchange of money. Perhaps as suggested in class she is a bad business woman. She’s described with words such as “white” and “pink” so I know something is up with the reversal of light and dark, good and evil. I think she smokes. Everything around he is yellowed, which leads me to think of aging and cigarette smoke. She’s too cheap to buy a piar of propper toenail clippers. There is a lack of hygene for she keeps cutting her nails when Hazel comes in and O’Connor fails to mention where Mrs. Watts is placing her clippings. “He drew a long draught of air through one side of his nose and began to run his hand carefully along the sheet.” This brings to mind images of cocaine and drug use. Mrs. Watt’s licks her lips in slow motion with her pink tounge. Her tounge is pink background set behind her pointed and speckled teeth. Mrs. Watts must not brush her teeth…or she is a crack whore. It is evident at the end of the chapter that Mrs. Watts reprsents temptation in the flesh. She is seductive and is very skilled at the game. I am not sure how old she is, but she’s seducing a young man. Something about the comment, “ That’s okay son, Momma don’t mind if you ain’t a preacher” makes me a little sick to my stomach.

Wise Blood, Chapter 1

The first thing I noticed about Flannery O’Connor in chapter one is that this author loves to use color. Each page is peppered with different words of colors. This is the first time that we meet the main character, Hazel Motes. I ask “What does his name mean?” Apparently most scholars associate his name with his hazy religious perspective. I, however, associate his name with the color we describe as “hazel.” What is hazel? It is a color in between colors. It isn’t white, black, brown, green, or blue, but rather a mixture. I guess it leads back to what the scholars were saying! The introductory paragraph leads me to think that Hazel Motes is a desperate man-child. When the train is rolling by I questioned if O’Connor was intentionally dropping the idea of suicide or not. Mrs. Wally B Hitchcock is annoying, and I hope that her physical description is not a mirroring of my own in the years to come. I hope my legs are not short and pudgy and dangle to reach the ground when sitting on a seat. I hope my face is not flushed and pink. I pray that I do not annoy the hell out of people by my nosy nature! She uses the price tag of Hazel’s blazer to try to identify him…which lends support to the idea that impressions and the way one is dressed is significant in placing a person when one undergoes natural assessment by another individual. Writing this long after I have finished the book, I have noticed that O’Connor has themes in each chapter. Chapter one I believe to be about eyes; Hazel’s, Mrs. Hitchcock’s, the porter’s. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to like Hazel or not right off the bat. He most certainly annoys the heck out of the porter. If the porter doesn’t want to claim Eastrod, don’t make him! Who cares? Moreover, was Hazel or the porter correct? Where was the porter really from? O’Connor has no problem using the word “nigger” in her literature, but then again it is literature! The three women that he meets in the dining hall seem to annoy Hazel. O’Connor mentions their “poisonous” Eastern accents and compares them to parrots. I simply think that Hazel is easily upset and angered. He is constantly losing his cool. What are spotted eggs? Was a plate with spotted eggs washed down with coffee and expensive meal?
We learn about Hazel’s upbringing. He has been gone in the army for four years now and is going back to his hometown. The town and the inhabitants that he left are long gone by the time he arrives home. He left when he was eighteen years old so that must put him around twenty-two years old at this point. It is hard to imagine that he’s just a year older than I am in this book. He seems so old, yet so naïve! It’s the saddest forecast if I have ever seen one! He was raised in a family who’s patriarch was a brimstone and fire preacher who despised young Hazel for he was a spitting image of him, the grandfather. He preached and used Hazel as an example. If God can love that boy, anybody is worthy of God’s love. I find it interetsing that the only thing that Hazel has read is the Bible. Knowing that Hazel rebels against the religious state-of-mind into which he was involuntarily ploped down into, I ask myself “Isn’t this common? Usually don’t people who were forced into a particular believ rebel with a vengence?” Hazel’s behavior thus far is not shocking to me.
It is obvious that he didn’t bond well with his comrades in the army. They attended brothels while he clinged to his Bible and his mother’s silver-rimmed glasses. He was lonely in the service, but he brought the loneliness from home. The isolation is compounded when he arrives back to his home town and nobody he knew was there. He finds his mother’s chifforobe and is surprise to see that nobody has stolen it. He leaves a note in the event that anyone has thoughts about stealing it. It appears that Hazel will stay, but almost immediately he leaves. Hazel is an individual that thinks and acts on impulses as we find out later in the book with the purchase of a car and the decision to move to a new city.