1. Tell that boy to give me back my glass eye!
2. Oh, Flannery! Such a perfectly purply bleak tale of this sad potato sack of a young woman taken every advantage of as she struggles with her permanent defects physical and mental to walk in a world where we may engage and intercourse authentically with others.
3. A hoot and a holler in a hay loft!
4. Kisses sourer than vinegar.
5. I wonst knowd a woman just like that busy body Mrs. Freeman and she warnt free atall but was so cot up in everybody elses bizness but I will say she was probably free of her man but that woman wood knot bee welcome on in my kitchen, no sir we.
6. Poor Joy, I shall pray for you, that you got home safe and sound without your you know what. I do wonder, though, how did you ever get down that ladder? But you are such a strong girl. Keep it up, and you go, girl!
7. It’s about sin and redemption and people who wear their hearts on their sleeves.
8. Who’s Flannery tryin’ to kid here she ain’t never been up in no hay barn.
9. It sounds like Flannery is going to give us some pornography. Well, she does, in a way, with those playing cards of the bible salesman. But it’s all turned around. He’s the one who says she must say how she loves him. That’s backwards from what we are used to. It’s usually the girl must say this, and ask, will you still love me tomorrow? But this is no normal sex scene. What does the leg represent?
10. Yes, the kisses. First like a truck, then like tiny fishes sucking. It’s an absurd view, a distorted view, but the girl does lose it up in that barn.
11. You all missin’ the point here. It is tragic to have such a big nose, so he takes her nose and off he goes. So the tragic becomes comic. We must learn to laugh, even if we must cry to get there.
12. Yes, kind of. Sanctifying grace has fallen, and Joy has received a gift, the gift of grace. But we must be careful what we pray for. She was obsessed with her leg. Her leg was inseparable from her. It was her identity, her self-image, her poor but large and strong picture of herself that no one else saw, and so the gift she got was to be rid at long last of the leg.
13. She is her own antagonist, struggling against her self, but dynamic, for she changes from beginning to end, and all the others in relief remain static.
14. Look at the words, people! Mrs. Freeman’s “neutral” expression as she barrels down the road like a trash truck, Joy Hulga “lumbered” about like bats falling in a dugout, her leg made of wood. This is irony: textual and situational, and the one gives way to the other.
15. I think it’s about how Joy turns so sour on account of the hunting accident. That’s real. But then it becomes unreal, like a bad dream, like a nightmare, when Manley Pointer, the fake bible salesman, comes along. At first he seems real, though obnoxious, but then it’s obvious that he is there to do the devil’s work. He’s a cad.
16. No, no, no! He’s there to do the Lord’s work! For the Lord does work in strange ways in a Flannery O’Connor short story. Don’t you see? He frees Joy from her obsession with her leg.
17. I just want to say that I think Flannery is so courageous to try and write something like this.
18. Tell that boy to give me my glass eye back!
19. We all have our faults, but who would have thought a person can hope too much, and though ever hoping well, come to such ruin.
20. It was a very colorful story. I counted over 30 colors, and then lost count.
21. I’m reminded of the time my great uncle Leroy, this was when we was all still living down in Gulleytown, over the creek bridge and on out Smithy Road, up past the Gilclumps place, before it got so runned down after Olaf passed, and around the sharp curve where the railroad tracks veer off down toward the river where Charlene Apple lost control of her Mustang that year it rained so hard people said it must be the end of the world coming, and Leroy, suddenly one Sunday appears in church, though he had not stepped a foot near it in 40 years, and him with a tie around his big fat neck his face so red and bumpy like a fat spoiled strawberry and he’s holding one crimson red rose on a long stem and he walks up the aisle and you could hear a feather twist in the air as a mosquito flew near it and Leroy he stops at the third row on the left where of course in the aisle spot Mrs. Flanmph always sat, had sat every Sunday for the past 40 years, and Leroy genuflects and pauses and old Mrs. Flanmph won’t look nor budge, but Leroy gently insists his leg into the row and old Mrs. Flanmph she don’t move down but moves back twisting her legs sideways like a body does when someone wants by and Leroy steps over her and plops down and everything is still as a summer creek in the country and then Leroy hands Mrs. Flanmph his crimson rose and she looks at it for a good country moment and then takes the rose, and the uproar in that church like to wake the dead out in their graves and pretty soon people was dancing in the aisles and Preacher Justin he declared a good country pot luck supper later that afternoon back in the church backyard where Leroy cooked up his ribs for the first time in 40 years and all kinds of folks showed up to see what all the commotion was about and were told that Uncle Leroy and old Mrs. Flanmph were finally going to tie the knot. Thank you all for reading and commenting. Comments are now closed.
Related: Flannery’s Joy
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