Flannery O’Connor

Considered an important voice in American literature, O'Connor wrote two novels, 32 short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries. She was a Southern writer in the vein of William Faulkner, often writing in a Southern Gothic style and relying heavily on regional settings and grotesques as characters. A "born" Roman Catholic, her writing is deeply informed by the sacramental, and the Thomist notion that the created world is charged with God. Her most famous work is a collection of short stories which includes the eponymous “A Good Man is Hard to Find”

“ The Life You Save May Be Your Own ”

A one-armed tramp, appropriately named " Mr. Shiftlet," walks up to a run-down farm where an old woman and her retarded daughter, Lucynell, are sitting on the front porch. Lucynell cannot talk. Mr. Shiftlet persuades the old woman to hire him for work around the farm and for repairing a car. She says she can feed him but not pay him. Over a period of a few weeks he repairs the car (which is what he really wants) and offers to marry Lucynell if her mother will give him some money

After the wedding Mr. Shiftlet takes Lucynell on a honeymoon, but abandons her in a country diner the first day, claiming she's a hitchhiker. As he drives towards Mobile, he picks up a boy and begins to lecture him about being good to his mother. The angry boy jumps out of the car, and Mr. Shiftlet prays that God will " break forth and wash the slime from this earth. "

Eugene O'Neil (1888 – 1953)

O'Neil is very important for the GRE. He is very likely to show up for a few questions. Two plays not represented here are Desire Under the Elms and The Hairy Ape, which are minor compared with the three presented here.

an American playwright. More than any other dramatist, O'Neill introduced the dramatic realism pioneered by Chekhov, Ibsen, and Strindberg into American drama. Generally, his plays involve characters who inhabit the fringes of society, where they struggle to maintain their hopes and aspirations but ultimately slide into dillusionment and despair.

"Mourning Becomes Electra (1931)"

Mourning Becomes Electra updates the Greek myth of Orestes to the family of a Northern general in the American Civil War. Agamemnon is now General Ezra Mannon, Clytemnestra is his second wife Christine, Orestes is his son Orin, and Electra is his daughter Lavinia. As an updated Greek tragedy, the play features murder, adultery, incestuous love, and revenge, and even a group of townspeople who function as a kind of Greek chorus. Though fate alone guides characters' actions in Greek tragedies, O'Neill's characters have motivations grounded in 1930s-era psychological theory as well. The play can easily be read from a Freudian perspective, paying attention to various characters' Oedipus complexes and Electra complexes.

It is divided into three plays of four to five acts each. In order, the three plays are titled Homecoming, The Hunted, and The Haunted. However, these plays are never produced individually, but only as part of the larger trilogy. Mourning Becomes Electra is thus extraordinarily lengthy for a drama, and in production is often cut down. Also, because of the large cast size, it is not performed as often as some of O'Neill's other major plays.

"The Iceman Cometh"

The Iceman Cometh stages the story of the whiskey-soaked and disillusioned denizens of Harry Hope's saloon and the upheaval caused by the newly sober salesman Hickey, who -- with all the annoying zeal of a recent convert -- urges his former drinking companions to give up their "pipe dreams."

"Long Day's Journey Into Night"

Long Day's Journey Into Night covers a fateful, heart-wrenching night at the seaside Connecticut home of the Tyrones (the autobiographical representations of O'Neill himself, his brother, and their parents): James Tyrone Sr., an Irish-born retired actor who squandered his considerable gifts as a classical thespian to make a career playing one particular role in a commercially successful but artistically unfulfilling play; Edmund, the younger and more poetically inclined son, suffers from a respiratory condition and a deep disillusionment with the world around him after sailing the world as a deck hand; the elder son James Jr. (" Jamie "), an affable alcoholic and the object of stubborn repeated attempts by his father to be set up in business, despite his status as a confirmed ne'er-do-well; and the wife and mother of the family, Mary Cavan Tyrone, who lapses between self-delusion and the haze of her morphine addiction - the result of the shoddy ministrations of a quack doctor during her difficult labor and delivery of Edmund twenty-three years prior.

Alice Walker (1944-)

Walker's writings include novels, stories, essays and poems. They focus on the struggles of African-Americans, and particularly African-American women, against societies that are racist, sexist, and often violent. Her writings tend to emphasize the strength of black women and the importance of African-American heritage and culture.

"The Color Purple"

The Color Purple is an epistolary novel: that is, the book is written in the form of letters. The central character is Celie, a young woman who is sexually abused by her father (who, she later discovers, is her stepfather) and is forced to marry a widower with several children, who is physically abusive towards her.

When her husband's mistress, singer "Shug" Avery, comes on the scene. Initially, Celie feels threatened by this effervescent, liberated version of feminity - a form that has previously been alien to her.

Like "Mr-", Celie's husband (Albert Johnson), Shug has little respect for Celie and the life she lives at first and continues in her lover's footsteps, abusing Celie and adding to her humiliation.

In time, however, the two women bond, and Celie gradually learns what it means to become an empowered woman in her own right, through both sexual and financial emancipation and she finds the strength to leave her tyrannical husband.

This book is often argued to address many issues which are important to understanding African-American life during the early-mid 20th century. Its main theme is the position of the black woman in society, as the lowest of the low, put upon both because of her gender and her color. The book also deals with the idea of how Celie finds true emotional and physical love with Avery.

Eudora Welty (1909-2001)

Both Delta Wedding and "Why I live at the P.O." are good candidates for a question or two on the GRE.Her first short story, "Death of a Traveling Salesman," appeared in 1936. In 1941 she published her first collection of short stories, A Curtain of Green. Her novel, The Optimist's Daughter, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973.

"Delta Wedding"

Delta Wedding by Eudora Welty creatively unfolds through the overheard thoughts of the members of the Fairchild family. The oversized clan deals with a massive amount of external and internal issues that focus on both the unity and the conflict within this tight-knit Southern family. This novel does not focus on one person, place, or thing. The protagonist of Delta Wedding is the Fairchild family in that the author tells the story through the voices of the entire family. However, the character of George does stand out as the hero of the novel.

“Why I Live at the P.O.”

Sister, the narrator of “Why I Live at the P.O.”, opens the story explaining why Mr. Whitaker broke up with her and married her sister, Stella-Rondo: she “[t]old him I was one-sided. Bigger on one side than the other, which is a deliberate, calculated falsehood: I'm the same.” While this bit of dialogue may seem innocent initially, it refers to the folk belief that all women have one breast bigger than the other. Blunt interest in female sexuality is hardly characteristic of the prim southerner misrepresented in so much Welty criticism

Tennessee Williams (1911-1983)

You can count on a few questions from these plays to appear on the GRE. An American playwright. Genre critics maintain that Williams writes in the Southern Gothic style. He is known for A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

"The Glass Menagerie (1944)"

The Glass Menagerie is a memory play, and its action is drawn from the memories of the narrator, Tom Wingfield. Tom is a character in the play, which is set in St. Louis in 1937. He is an aspiring poet who toils in a shoe warehouse to support his mother, Amanda, and sister, Laura. Mr. Wingfield, Tom and Laura’s father, ran off years ago and, except for one postcard, has not been heard from since.

Amanda, originally from a genteel Southern family, regales her children frequently with tales of her idyllic youth and the scores of suitors who once pursued her. She is disappointed that Laura, who wears a brace on her leg and is painfully shy, does not attract any gentleman callers. She enrolls Laura in a business college, hoping that she will make her own and the family’s fortune through a business career. Weeks later, however, Amanda discovers that Laura’s crippling shyness has led her to drop out of the class secretly and spend her days wandering the city alone. Amanda then decides that Laura’s last hope must lie in marriage and begins selling newspaper subscriptions to earn the extra money she believes will help to attract suitors for Laura. Meanwhile, Tom, who loathes his warehouse job, finds escape in liquor, movies, and literature, much to his mother’s chagrin. During one of the frequent arguments between mother and son, Tom accidentally breaks several of the glass animal figurines that are Laura’s most prized possessions.

Amanda and Tom discuss Laura’s prospects, and Amanda asks Tom to keep an eye out for potential suitors at the warehouse. Tom selects Jim O’Connor, a casual friend, and invites him to dinner. Amanda quizzes Tom about Jim and is delighted to learn that he is a driven young man with his mind set on career advancement. She prepares an elaborate dinner and insists that Laura wear a new dress. At the last minute, Laura learns the name of her caller; as it turns out, she had a devastating crush on Jim in high school. When Jim arrives, Laura answers the door, on Amanda’s orders, and then quickly disappears, leaving Tom and Jim alone. Tom confides to Jim that he has used the money for his family’s electric bill to join the merchant marine and plans to leave his job and family in search of adventure. Laura refuses to eat dinner with the others, feigning illness. Amanda, wearing an ostentatious dress from her glamorous youth, talks vivaciously with Jim throughout the meal.

As dinner is ending, the lights go out as a consequence of the unpaid electric bill. The characters light candles, and Amanda encourages Jim to entertain Laura in the living room while she and Tom clean up. Laura is at first paralyzed by Jim’s presence, but his warm and open behavior soon draws her out of her shell. She confesses that she knew and liked him in high school but was too shy to approach him. They continue talking, and Laura reminds him of the nickname he had given her: “ Blue Roses,” an accidental corruption of the word for Laura’s medical condition, pleurosis. He reproaches her for her shyness and low self-esteem but praises her uniqueness. Laura then ventures to show him her favorite glass animal, a unicorn. Jim dances with her, but in the process, he accidentally knocks over the unicorn, breaking off its horn. Laura is forgiving, noting that now the unicorn is a normal horse. Jim then kisses her, but he quickly draws back and apologizes, explaining that he was carried away by the moment and that he actually has a serious girlfriend. Resigned, Laura offers him the broken unicorn as a souvenir.

Amanda enters the living room, full of good cheer. Jim hastily explains that he must leave because of an appointment with his fiancée. Amanda sees him off warmly but, after he is gone, turns on Tom, who had not known that Jim was engaged. Amanda accuses Tom of being an inattentive, selfish dreamer and then throws herself into comforting Laura. From the fire escape outside of their apartment, Tom watches the two women and explains that, not long after Jim’s visit, he gets fired from his job and leaves Amanda and Laura behind. Years later, though he travels far, he finds that he is unable to leave behind guilty memories of Laura.

"A Street Car Named Desire (1947)"

Blanche DuBois is a fading Southern belle whose pretensions to virtue and culture only thinly mask her nymphomania and alcoholism. After her ancestral southern plantation is "lost" (due to the "epic fornications" of her ancestors), Blanche arrives at her sister's house in the French Quarter of New Orleans where the multicultural setting is a shock to her nerves. Stella, the sister, is just as addicted to sex as Blanche, and is willing to put up with Stanley's crudity and lack of culture because of her need for a sexual partner.

The reference to the streetcar (tram) called Desire is ironic, as well as an accurate piece of New Orleans geography. Blanche has to travel on it to reach Stella's home, the idea being that she has already indulged in desire before she arrives. Her sorrow is that the pleasure brought from desire is only short, just like the streetcar journey. It does not give her security. Still, she cannot return on the streetcar named Desire because she has only a one-way ticket.

"Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955)"

It is the story of a Southern family in crisis, focusing on the turbulent relationship of a wife and husband, Maggie "The Cat" and Brick Pollitt, and their interaction with Brick's family over the course of a weekend gathering at the family estate in Mississippi, ostensibly to celebrate the birthday of patriarch and tycoon "Big Daddy" Pollitt. Maggie, through wit and beauty, has escaped a childhood of desperate poverty to marry into the wealthy Pollitt family, but finds herself suffering in an unfulfilling marriage. Brick, an aging football hero, has neglected his wife and further infuriates her by ignoring his brother's attempts to gain control of the family fortune. Brick's indifference, and his nearly continuous drinking, date back to the recent suicide of his friend Skipper. Although Big Daddy has cancer and will not celebrate another birthday, his doctors and his family have conspired to keep this information from him and his wife. His relatives are in attendance and attempt to present themselves in the best possible light, hoping to receive the definitive share of Big Daddy's enormous wealth.

Дата добавления: 2015-10-31