Journal 3

Allison Rood
Topics in Literature
6/23/2010

Both of these stories address the White population’s disagreement with desegregation with completely polar opposite approaches. In the Welty story, the main character, who I believe is unnamed, takes matters into his own hands and murders a Black man in cold blood. In the O’Connor story, Julian accidentally causes his mother to collapse through his frustration with her attitude towards the Black people.

The Welty story is a little unclear, apart from the point that the main character wants Roland Summers, whom I assume to be a black preacher of sorts, dead. Even the process of shooting him is a round-about way of doing so. It is never told that a shot is fired. Only that Roland gets pulled to the ground, tries to get up, and stops moving. The surrounding story relates to his wife asking about the gun, and the townsfolk talking about the murder. The main character seems almost angry that he isn’t getting credit for his work. He didn’t want to see Roland’s face in the papers, yet after he was killed, that was all he saw. Nobody had HIS picture on the front cover. He uses this murder as his own stand as a taxpayer calling the shots, proving that he can do more than any judge, preacher, or teacher.

The O’Connor story has more of a plot. A college graduate, Julian, is living with his mother while selling typewriters during the time of desegregation. His mother is still living in the old times, disapproving of the free Black man and vocalizing her opinions to her now very well-informed son. He went from being a mama’s boy to a strong, opinionated, intelligent college graduate who no longer believed in her foolish thoughts. He found her petty and ridiculous in her daily opinions and behavior, and resented having to take her to the Y every week for a class to help her with her blood pressure. Even the smallest things like her hat choice drove him up the wall. She refused to take the bus by herself because of the black people that now rode the public transportation, so she insisted that he accompany her, after all that she had done for him. His anger and fire inside drove him to do anything and everything in his power to insult and upset her on that bus ride. He tried to sit next to a black man and strike up conversation, though the other man wasn’t interested. Eventually a large black woman sat next to him, and her son next to his mother. The large woman even wore the same hat as Julian’s mother, something he hoped would infuriate her, but it failed. His mother, being the “gracious” woman she strongly claimed to be, offered the little boy a shiny penny against Julian’s warnings. The boy’s mother, overthrown with anger, yelled and Julian’s mother, claiming they didn’t need their pity charity. So finally Julian got what he wanted, his mother’s discomfort. They got off the bus and Julian gave her a piece of his mind, letting the steam billow from his ears. His mother had enough, wanted to go home, and after being followed my Julian she ran. Finally she collapsed, and I assume she had a stroke due to her facial disfiguration that Julian had mentioned in the story. In the end, it was her son’s stubborn dislike for her behavior in combination with her refusal to admit that her own thinking was flawed that led to her demise.

In these readings, I sympathize with Julian and his mother, and perhaps Roland and his wife, but I am still torn. Julian had reason to be angry at his mother’s belief system but after all she is a product of the society she grew up in. Roland, as far as the reader is concerned, did nothing personally to his assailant to call for such desperate actions. So I have trouble to sympathize with any character in the O’Connor story because every character is essentially at fault. In the Welty story, it is more complicated because we do not know a back-story as to why Roland should have been killed. So with this lack of information, I must side with Roland and his family.