Every Masterclass will open with a quote to help you and a quote to close the class after our live discussion via Zoom. Every Masterclass will have a writing experiment and time to do it or think about it—but this free class does not, as this class is not live via Zoom. Here are the q’s from yesterday followed by my analysis, based, to whatever extent possible, on your comments from yesterday’s introduction of the Masterclass. Here’s the pdf I offered yesterday, in case you missed that:
First: Here’re the questions for the second read of “Good Country People” and that I posted yesterday; your answers may be in the comments of yesterday’s post—or here below:
List all the plot elements.
Then:
1. Tell me how each plot element works to reveal and deepen the reader’s understanding of Hulga/Joy.
2. Explain to me why the “plot” is not what the story is “about,” so to speak, even though without it there’s no story. Of course, this latter point is arguable. We will discuss my assertion. You learn from me, and I learn from you, as any good teacher knows!
3. Do you think Hulga’s wooden leg is a gimmick? Why? Why not?
4. Building on that: O’Connor said about this story that the wooden leg accumulates meaning in the story? How? Why?
Analysis:
Once you’ve listed the plot elements, we need to get beneath the continuous dream of the narrative and figure out how O’Connor achieved what she did. Startling story, isn’t it?
First, plot is simply what happens in a story. What ‘happens’ in narratives that matter the most happen in the PRESENT action of the story—not in backstory or flashbacks. We’ll talk about this bunches in the Masterclass.
Second, we need to understand WHOSE STORY this is. I argue that this is Hulga’s story because, arguably, she is the only character in the story who changes in some sense. What I mean is that the Hulga we see at the end of the story will never be the same as the Hulga we met at the beginning of the story. You may, of course, argue this with me.
Third, in the Masterclass we’ll discuss the power and importance of POINT of VIEW in every story and, in fact, every flick we watch. In this story, O’Connor does something quite original: She has, of course, learned the so-called rules in order to break them. O’Connor is using an unusual form of ‘omniscience’—another tool we’ll talk about in the Masterclass.
What I’m saying is that even though this is Hulga’s story, the story is not fully omniscient, meaning that the narrator knows all. Structurally, the story is “FRAMED”.
More on this below in a sort of footnote.
Here’s what I mean: The story opens with two ‘judgemental’ type of folks: Hulga’s mother Mrs. Hopewell and her employee/friend Mrs. Freeman. The story ends with these two as well.
That fact, the FRAME, strikes me as key because the conflict bounces off not only Hulga, but these two as well. All three characters seem to think they have life figured out. By story’s end, the two that Hulga is so critical of are not so different from Hulga—as, perhaps, she must see at story’s end. Thus, I argue that she is profoundly changed.
In the Masterclass, we will study CONFLICT and how all good narratives operate around the way the conflict unfolds with internal beliefs banging up against external events that result in a change for the character with the primary conflict.
Don’t you agree that Hulga, despite all her protests, is the character with the most conflict? When she’s duped by the Bible salesman, I see her at story’s end in a moment of grace in the sense that she must see the world renewed—even as she deals with the cruelty of her betrayal.
As to my last question: I don’t think the wooden leg is a gimmick, but rather that when the Bible salesman steals what is so important to Hulga, the most cynical of the three—mother, friend, Hulga—Hulga has had to face herself. The loss of her leg strikes me as the loss of her virginity, in a metaphorical way. Perhaps that is part of what O’Connor meant when she said that the wooden leg accumulates meaning by story’s end. What do you think?
In a profound sense, the story strikes me as revelatory — I argue that Hulga comes to a moment of grace, a realization of how vulnerable she is, by way of astonishing cruelty.
What we learned (I hope):
1. How each plot element works to reveal and deepen the reader’s understanding of Hulga
2. That the PLOT is not what the story is about—even though without it there is no story.
3. Character is key to story.
4. Why we as readers and writers are not interested in so-called “theme”—see the closing quote.
Note: In the Masterclass, we’ll learn about inner conflict versus external; how character is built with the stories the character tells himself; and so much more that I’ll list in the opening session.
closing quote:
Here’s an aside on how O’Connor gets us to that revelatory place: One of the phrases that O’Connor uses in the story is “I am”— Jesus’s well-known words in the New Testament—and so key to Christians; also Abraham’s words in the Old Testament when the angel of the Lord calls out to him (the Hineni prayer in Judaism).
O’Connor gives us that hint on p. 10: “If you can’t come pleasantly, I don’t want you at all,” to which the girl, standing square and rigid-shouldered with her neck thrust slightly forward, would reply, “If you want me, here I am – LIKE I AM.” Mrs. Hopewell excused this attitude because of the leg (which had been shot off in a hunting accident when Joy was ten).
Note on other stories that are “Framed”: A framed story is a story within a story: The Book of Job, The Arabian Nights, The Canterbury Tales.
Hope to see you in the Masterclass.
Love,
Framing is essential. One thing I wonder about is whether the end of a story is part of the foundation. By this, I mean it is what holds the story together, takes the reader back to the beginning to consider more attentively the rooms the author has taken us through. O'Connor's stories seem to work this way, challenging us to circle back to look more closely at the characters, what they say, how they respond, and how we are affected by them.
"When you can state the theme of a story, when you can separate it from the story itself, then you can be sure the story is not a very good one."
The story in a nutshell is a nutshell.