BACK TO English III page | The North Fork School Home Page |
top of this page
Click on bar below to email Marie
Copyright April 21, 2008 Marie M. Furnary All rights reserved.
About Us | Student/Parent comments | Site Map
Contributions from: Kirsten, Kelsey, Katie, Bailey
(149) "'Yes, you should have bought it,' he said. 'Put it on and let's go.' It was a hideous hat...Everything that gave her pleasure was small and depressed him."
Kirsten >>> Throughout the story, Julian seems particularly intent on going against everything that represents his mother. His insistence on defying her seems to be sparked not by his true beliefs, but with the intention of hurting his mother by separating himself from her.
(149) "her eyes, sky-blue, were as innocent and untouched by experience as they must have been when she was ten. Were it not that she was a widow who had struggled fiercely to feed and clothe him through school and who was supporting him still, 'until he got on his feet,' she might have been a little girl that he had to take to town."
Kirsten >>> Part of the reason that Julian resents his mother so fervently is related to her innocence: her ideas about who she is are fairly child-like; she honestly believes that she is better than most people because of her family's past. Julian also resents her because while he thinks of her as a child, he still depends on his mother, and he also seems to resent the fact she has worked so hard for him -- he doesn't want to feel indebted to someone he respects so little.
Kelsey >>> I don't think that he dislikes her because of her childish ways; I think it is more because she is so narrow-minded and unopened to change.
Katie >>> I agree with Kelsey on this quote. It is part of O'Connor's way of showing a character through another character's skewed perspective. If the reader takes this quote at "face-value" he will miss O'Connor's point. Julian describes her as an innocent child but he fails give her any respect for all the work she has done for him. Julian has no appreciation for his mother even though he still lives at home and is taking no personal efforts to change or better his own life.
Bailey >>> What one often hates the most about a person, is what we hate the most about ourselves. Julian may say he hates the things his mother does, but he is guilty of the same actions. He sees her as childish, yet he is the one still living at home under his mother's care.
(150) "She was one of the few members of the Y reducing class who arrived in hat and gloves and who had a son who had been to college."
Kirsten >>> It seems important to Julian's mother that she can always "keep up appearances" -- even when waiting at the bus stop she held, "herself very erect under the preposterous hat, wearing it like a banner of her imaginary dignity." (153) -- I wouldn't necessarily describe her dignity as "imaginary", but outdated maybe: she is proud because she still thinks she's impressive because of her son and small things like the hat or gloves, even though this perception based on her family's history is no longer applicable. This is another reason Julian seems to detest his mother.
(149) "Since this had been a fashionable neighborhood forty years ago, his mother persisted in thinking they did well to have an apartment in it."
(151) "'if you know who you are, you can go anywhere.' She said this every time he took her to the reducing class. 'Most of them in it are not our kind of people,' she said, 'but I can be gracious to anybody. I know who I am.'
Kirsten >>> Another source of their tension occurs in their different perceptions of what creates someone's current reality. Julian's mother believes that her family's past entitles her current self even though she is no longer "better" than anyone else, as exemplified by when the black woman is shown wearing the same hat as her (p. 161). Julian, on the other hand, understands that his past no longer means anything to anyone except his mother. I also believe that Julian is secretly resentful that this is true, as he thinks: "it was he, not she, who could have appreciated [the family's old house]... He preferred its threadbare elegance to anything he could name and it was because of it that all the neighborhoods they had lived in had been a torment to him -- whereas she had hardly known the difference." (152) Julian seems angry that he never got to experience this world that his mother uses as a reason for their superiority.
Bailey >>> Julian's mother feels that superiority, because her ancestors were governors, and plantation owners. She believes that one remains who their ancestors were and that because she came from a good background then that automatically means she is of higher status. [right, Bailey -- but that is parapharase, not interpretation -- what does it mean within the story?]
(153) "he made it a point to sit down beside a Negro, in reparation as it were for his mother's sins."
Kirsten >>> I'm not sure if Julian does this out of guilt for his mother's bigotry; I think it's done more just to spite her.
Kelsey >>> Julian looks down on his mom because of her narrow-minded ways, but is he any better? Julian befriends the scholarly-looking blacks merely because it is what society is supposed to do and it angers his mom. He also befriends them so that the African Americans will be impressed with his openness. Julian feels guilty and responsible for his mother's actions and pities the blacks too much to make friends with them.
Katie >>> The way Julian sits next to African Americans on the bus is almost as bad as his mother's personal discrimination. He uses the blacks to annoy his mother and to defy her.
(154) "'I come on one the other day and they were thick as fleas -- up front and all through.'"
Kirsten >>> It's interesting that it's completely unnecessary for the women to explain whom they refers to.
(155) "Behind the newspaper Julian was withdrawing into the inner compartment of his mind where he spent most of his time. This was a kind of mental bubble in which he established himself when he could not bear to be a part of what was going on around him. From it he could see out and judge but in it he was safe from any kind of penetration from without. It was the only place where he felt free of the general idiocy of his fellows. His mother had never entered it but from it he could see her with absolute clarity."
Kirsten >>> I like this passage because it perfectly describes that mental place where people retreat -- while I often have thought about this place, I've never really been able to explain or describe it like O'Connor does.
(156) "He could not forgive her that she had enjoyed the struggle and that she thought that she had won.ÊWhat she meant when she said she had won was that she had brought him up successfully and had sent him to college and that he had turned out so well -- good looking (her teeth had gone unfilled so that his could be straightened)...and with a future ahead of him (there was of course no future ahead of him)."
Kirsten >>> Julian resents that his mother gave up everything for, what I think he believes, as selfish reasons -- she did anything so that he could be successful, which would in turn make her look successful. I think that Julian, however, doubts his ability to do well, which will hurt his mother, and resents that she did this for him to make herself look good.
(157) "The Negro was well dressed and carried a briefcase... 'Now you see why I won't ride on these busses by myself,' [Julian's mother] whispered."
Kirsten >>> It's ironic that his mother says this since the man is probably more successful, better educated, and of a higher-class than she is.
(159) "He began to imagine various unlikely ways by which he could teach her a lesson. He might make friends with some distinguished Negro professor or lawyer and bring him home to spend the evening. He would be entirely justified but her blood pressure would rise to 300. He could not push her to the extent of making her have a stroke, and moreover, he had never been successful at making any Negro friends."
Kirsten >>> Stating that he simply wants to "teach her a lesson" in order to help her is a cowardly way of making himself sound just, since his true desire is to hurt her. It's also understandable that he doesn't actually have any black friends since his desire to be friends with them isn't because of a desire of friendship, but to spite his mother.
(159-160) "Drive her out of here, but remember, you're driving me too."
Kirsten >>> In his fantasy it's interesting that he seems to want a way so that she disowns him so that he doesn't feel guilty for wanting to abandon her.
"The vision of the two hats, identical, broke upon him with the radiance of a brilliant sunrise." (p. 161)
Kelsey >>> The black mother and Julian's mom are one in the same person, hence why O'Connor has them wearing the same hat. Being that the mothers have similar ideals it is easy for them to exchange sons: "Julian saw that it was because she and the woman had, in a sense, swapped sons." (p. 161)
(162) "'Isn't he cute?' Julian's mother said to the woman with the protruding teeth...The Negress yanked him upright but he eased out of her grip and shot across the aisle and scrambled, giggling wildly, onto the seat beside his love. 'I think he likes me,' Julian's mother said, and smiled at the woman. It was the smile she used when she was being particularly gracious to an inferior."
Kirsten >>> The little boy's mother dislikes her son's behavior with Julian's mother because it's degrading to him: Julian's mother is fascinated with him because she thinks of him as a toy, and he behaves in the way that Julian's mother would want him to. His behavior even prompts Julian's mother to have the nerve to try and give him a penny (p. 163), which is particularly insulting/degrading.
(164) "Her legs were stretched out in front of her and her hat was on her lap."
Kirsten >>> This reminds me of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart in that the women had to sit like that to show their venerably and submission -- a state that Julian's mother is forced into after the confrontation and realization that her way of thinking is no longer applicable.
"That was the whole colored race which will no longer take you condescending pennies. That was your black double. She can wear the same hat as you..."(p. 165)
Kelsey >>> The mother finally sees that truth that blacks are equal to her: this thought destroys her dignity, leaving her with nothing.
(165) "'the old world is gone. The old manners are obsolete and your graciousness is not worth a damn.' He thought bitterly of the house that had been lost for him. 'You aren't who you think you are,'...'Buck up' he said, 'it won't kill you.'"
Kirsten >>> This is ironic since his mother's loss of what she understood to be her identity does, in fact, lead to her stroke.
(166) "'Tell Caroline to come get me,' she said...'Mother!' he cried. 'Darling, sweetheart, wait!' Crumpling, she fell to the pavement. He dashed forward and fell at her side, crying, 'Mamma, Mamma!'"
Kirsten >>> Both Julian and his mother seem to revert to childhood at this point because childhood was the place where, in their innocence, the realities they wanted to believe were real.
BACK TO English III page | The North Fork School Home Page |
top of this page
Copyright April 21, 2008 Marie M. Furnary All rights reserved.
'They don't give a damn for your graciousness,' Julian said savagely. 'Knowing who you are is good for one generation only. You haven't the foggiest idea where you stand now or who you are.'
...'You remain what you are,' she said tensely."
Click on bar below to email Marie
