Relateed Lesson: "A Good Man Is Hard to Find"
Story in a Nutshell
An emotionally-stunted 30-year-old woman, Hulga (formerly Joy), stomps around on her artificial leg with anger, sees herself as superior to the human race, bloviates pseudo-intellectual gibberish, schemes to seduce a Bible salesman, and finds that it is she who is the dupe as she is reduced to the phony cipher for whom she really is. This is a mean story with no redemption, merely a character profile of someone with intellectual pride. Hulga is a spiritual cousin of the Misfit, but he is a real nihilist while she is a phony one.
Artificial Leg as a Metaphor
Badge of pride
Victimization
Pride in self-destruction
Only identity that remains for a lonely narcissistic cipher
Way of being a misfit, an outsider, someone apart from the universe
Many of us, if not all of us, have an artificial leg that defines us. As such, we are fixated on the past.
Examples
My “friends” betrayed and rejected me and this event defines your whole life. Everything that happens to you current, in your mind, can be traced to The Rejection.
My parents divorced. Everything in your life can be traced to The Divorce.
My uncle stole my savings under my bed. Everything in your life can be traced back to The Theft.
Your girlfriend dumped you for your best friend. Everything in your life can be traced to The Betrayal.
All your friends got into UCLA while you were forced to go to Pig Knuckle University. Everything in your life can be traced to I Was Left Behind.
All your friends got money to go to Mexico for Spring Break but your parents didn’t let you go. Your whole life can be traced to Lonely in Spring.
When you were a teenager you went to a swim party. Because you had bad acne resulting in pimples all over your back and chest, you tried to hide the pimples, boils, and blemishes by wearing a white T-shirt in the pool. But wet, the T-shirt revealed the pimples anyway upon which all the other teens in the pool laughed at you and mocked you with unforgiving glee. Now twenty years later, you’re still scarred and your whole life can be traced back to The Great Pimple Swim Party.
Hulga’s Sin of Pride
1. She relishes in the martyr complex, see paragraph 2.
2. She triumphs in feeling like a misfit, a “special” outsider.
3. She wears the mask of hauteur and sneering braggadocio to conceal her insecurity.
4. She fears intimacy so she throws banana peels in people’s path.
5. She savors other people’s stupidity, perceived or otherwise.
6. Her chip on her shoulder (grudge) is her grand investment, which must be capitalized.
7. She specializes in irrelevant, arcane knowledge that affirms her self-proclaimed superiority.
8. She is so absorbed by judging others that she is blind to her own grotesque and abysmal deficiencies.
9. She prides herself as insightful when in fact she is a superficial judge of others.
10. She is like a child who “plucks the wings off the fly” as she craves a helpless victim.
The Characteristics of the Trickster (Manley Pointer)
1. He is a master of modulated obsequiousness.
2. He wears the mask of the innocent simpleton to make people feel smarter than he is.
3. He wears the mask of piety or religious devotion to make him appear less suspicious.
4. He with subtly and slyly challenge one’s character by offering a test.
5. He will fish for pity as a way of manipulating his victim.
6. He is the supreme psychologist who sees through other people’s masks.
7. He has a strong smell for loneliness in others for he knows that loneliness makes people easy victims. See 210, bottom
8. He is an expert at a perfectly timed self-esteem challenge.
9. He puts his victim through the 4 levels of emotion—the earthly, the angelic, the mystical, and then crashing into the demonic. Sometimes this cycle is repeated over and over.
10. The Trickster makes himself look like a sucker, a dupe, a punk, just what he needs to punk his victim.
Sample Thesis Statements
While Frankl's spirit of love for humankind suffuses Man's Search for Meaning, Hulga and the Misfit embody Anti-Meaning evidenced by ________________, ________________, ________________, and ____________________.
Let us disregard McMahon's rigid dogma regarding the meaning of life and admit that the Misfit and Hula have found their own meaning. Yes, pride is a form of meaning. It gets the Misfit and Hulga through the day and we should not judge them for finding a form of meaning that doesn't meet McMahon's standards.
To defend the Misfit and Hulga on the grounds that they have found in their pride some sort of meaning is an utter absurdity that collapses when we consider _______________, _________________, _______________, and ___________________.
Frankl says we must create our own meaning. No therapist can define meaning for us. This is true. But while there are no specific definitions of meaning that can be imposed on us, there is a general criteria of what constitutes meaning that does apply. And we can easily judge the Misfit and Hulga as individuals who fail to meet that general criteria and in fact exist in violent opposition to meaning.
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