Comparison Of The Lesson And A Good Man Is Hard To Find
Toni Cade Bambara’s “The Lesson” and Flannery O’ Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” necessitate comparison: Bambara’s story is written to shed light on social issues in the 1970s, and how there was a watershed of events leaning on blacks in environmental poverty. While on the other hand, O’Connor’s story took a religious approach. Flannery’s story revolves around Jesus and how one character is Christ and anti-Christ, she intends to focus on good and evil. Both of these stories contain important ironic, symbolic, and forms of tone aspects that reflect their central moral idea and understanding their structure for writing their stories.
“The Lesson” encompasses great symbolic pieces. In this case the item that portrays symbolism is a toy sailboat in a toy store, F.A.O Schwartz. This sailboat is a representation of independence and freedom, its purpose is to foreshadow the journey that lies ahead. Another very important symbol would be the microscope that was also in the toy store, which was pointed out by Big Butt. The microscope purpose was to symbolize the bigger picture, to opening their eyes to reality. In stating both of these figurative quantities of her story, they fall back on to the social issue of the inequalities these children are experiencing during this story.
“A Good Man Is Hard to Find” took place in a later time period, 1950s. Affirming the time period gives a better understanding to O’Connor’s purpose for her symbolic pieces. The focal symbol used in her story is the grandmothers’ hat. In the story the grandmother puts on her hat purposely to show she is a “lady.” This is significant because by looking at her she looks like an elderly lady, but that’s not why she is worried if she looks like a lady now. Her main reasoning is for if she gets in a wreck and looks disheveled she’s still recognizably a woman. The symbolism reasoning of the hat is to simply symbolize her imprudent honesty, and how she collapses literally and figuratively.
Noticing the differences in these two stories of their symbolism and their central moral ideas is prudent. Likewise, “The Lesson” and “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” are similar, the two have situational irony. Such as, in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” the situational irony connotation is brought out when the misfit and the mother of Bailey come to realization that she is a sinner, which is ironic because out of all the other characters the misfit is the furthest from religious views and is most defiantly a sinner. Bringing this to light in “The Lesson” Sylvia was the most recalcitrant and disobedient out of the children and did not want any part in the little trip Miss Moore had planned. She expected not to get anything out of the trip but, yet she was the one who took the most out of it.
Having these things in common there is one more significant figure to bring forth this is the tone of the two stories. Toni Cade in “The Lesson” provides a persuasive and precarious tone, concerning Miss Moore and the children. The tone provided is shown in the story when the children learned and understood the real value in money and using the knowledge Miss Moore tried to teach them about their future decisions and how doing things a certain way benefits them. Just as in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” the tone given by Flannery O’Connor is seen as pessimistic and skeptical, almost to the point where it degrades the characters. She perfects this by bringing out the evil in each character, the grandmother more than the others. A great example of the grandmother is when she recognized Bailey would not want to be a part of taking a scenic route to see a broken-down house, but she insisted.
In the final analyze, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor and “The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara encompass their own separate values by containing important ironic, symbolic, and forms of tone that reflect their central moral idea for understanding their structure of their social class and society issues. Both stories showed examples of manipulation and confrontation, also examples of good and bad embodiments. By each story superficially symbolizing items as bigger pictures to the story to the point they become deeper meanings. Having a tone that helps the reader decide to follow through and create a feeling towards the actions of each character. To conclude each irony gives a stopping point for the reader to think about the actions and conversations going from each character, by emphasizing the problem at hand.
