Breakthrough Writer

Lesson for “The Lottery” and “The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas”: Updated for Summer 2011

 

"The Lottery"

Why were so many Americans insulted, even spurred to threaten violence, by the story when it was first published?

 

1.   Its depiction is true and truth strikes a nerve, telling us something demonic about human nature.

2.   That we’re not as civilized as we think, for people are driven more by irrational and traditional forces than they are by logic and reason.

3.   In spite our façade of being civilized, we’re consumed by bloodlust and the need for violence.

4.   We’re too cowardly to admit our murderous violence, so we veil it within sanctimonious rituals.

5.   We have a backward primitive notion of God, who we see as a tribal deity thirsty for blood sacrifice. In fact, this so-called God is a projection of our own murderous unconscious.

6.   We corrupt our children’s innocence by forcing them to participate in our murderous ways.

7.   The glue that keeps our society cohesive and unified is often violence and the arbitrary killing of an innocent party.

8.   We reject the progress of science and reason so that we can uphold a primitive notion of appeasing a violent god.

9.   We commit violence against others with piety and middle-class morality in order to appease our conscience and to maintain our sense of moral superiority.

10.                 We commit violence as a group, rather than as individuals, because it’s easier to say we we’re simply following orders rather than taking personal responsibility. In other words, we’re cowards.

 

 

Conditions for the Banality of Evil in “The Lottery”

 

1.   For the evil perpetrators, the end justifies the means; usually the “end” is to “purge,” “cleanse,” or “purify” some human “contaminant.”

2.   Violence is not spectacular but part of the numbing, commonplace everyday activity.

3.   The perpetrators of evil are not conspicuously evil but mediocre, innocuous, conforming.

4.   The perpetrators of evil are not bold decision makers but placid followers, eager to please authority figures.

5.   For the evil perpetrators, there is no human dimension to cruelty and violence; rather, murder and/or torture are done in a cold, detached bureaucratic fashion.

6.   The evil perpetrators have an absence of imagination to see the human and moral dimensions of their actions.

7.   There is complicity between evil political agenda and the followers’ lack of empathy.

8.   The evil perpetrators are automatons who obey superficial “decency” and “manners” and outward appearances in order to hide their brutality to others and to themselves.

9.   The evil perpetrators assiduously exercise an adherence to convention and empty political clichés in order to enable their violent actions.

10.    Evil perpetrators focus on the letter of the law, no the spirit.

 

Major Theme in "The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas"

Scapegoating: Sacrificing a usually innocent party for the greater good of the majority or for an elite group.

Examples:

An Arizona politician wants to create an extra tax for fat people. Since most fat people come from a poor economic background, the tax will punish the poor to fund the needs of people with higher incomes.

Slave labor overseas and even in our borders (think chicken farms) keeps prices down so we can buy more crap we don't need.

Poor people agree to be subjects in medical experiments so that procedures and drugs can be approved for general use. This is also called being a "guinea pig."

We conduct hideous experiments on animals to make sure medical procedures and cosmetics are safe for humans.

Today's Essay Option

In a 5-page essay, compare the tribe’s influence on nihilism, the misguided desire for a provisional existence, and the soul’s forfeiture of meaning in “The Lottery” and “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.”  Your Works Cited page should refer to the two stories, Frankl’s book, my blog, and one other source for a total of 5 sources.

Introducing Your Essay with Transition and Thesis

Recently while hiking up the Palos Verdes Trail, I saw two unleashed dogs, one a black pit-bull mix, the other a tan German Shepherd mix, descending upon me. Hundreds of gallons of adrenaline and cortisol stress hormone flooded my body as I told my friend Rafael, “We’ve got loose dogs. Don’t know if they’re hostiles or friendlies.”

Instead of hiking the steep trail as was my original plan, I deviated left to get away from the two dogs, but they chased me. Now standing still with my back turned, I heard Rafael say, “One of them is right behind you.”

Moments later, I felt the black dog’s bated breath on my butt and did my best not to cower in fear in front of the other hikers.

Wondering if a chunk of flesh would be torn from a butt cheek, or worse, if I was in the blink of an eye to be castrated, I then heard a faint woman’s voice: “Don’t worry. The dogs are friendly.”

Seconds later, a mousey woman in her late thirties with adult acne descended the trail. She said she was sorry and then repeated that her dogs were friendly before disappearing with her canine companions down one of the trails.

After pumping all that adrenaline and cortisol through my system and on the verge of cowering in front of strangers, I expected more than a meek apology. All those panic-induced hormone secretions must have cut at least a few weeks from my life. But in her mind we were even. In her mind terrorizing people with her loose dogs is a peccadillo that can be erased with a curt “I’m sorry.” And with clear conscience she probably sleeps in bed at night like a baby.

I shouldn’t demonize her. I should demonize us all since she behaves like most of us, operating on a Bare Minimum Decency model, asserting just enough decency to create a façade to others, and ourselves, that we’re good so we can go through the world with a positive self-image when in fact that self-image is grossly inaccurate.

This gross disparity between tribes of people who feel good about themselves but who are in fact truly evil is rendered in the two stories, "The Lottery" and "The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas." Both stories show the conditions that make this evil possible, including ________________, _________________, ___________________, and _____________________.

 

 

Lecture for "Sonny's Blues"

Essay Topic: How does “Sonny’s Blues” complement the themes in Man’s Search for Meaning?

1.     The narrator, the older brother, and Sonny, the younger brother, both escape into nihilism. Sonny uses drugs; the narrator uses fear, apathy (“What can I do?”), hopelessness, and withdrawal, hiding behind decorum, manners, rules. The narrator is afraid to face the darkness within himself. He needs to confront his emotion or else his emotion will overtake him. Both characters want to die either through drugs or self-pitying despair.

2.     The brothers lost their father when Sonny was 15. The father was a drunk. Perhaps he was grieving over the death of his own brother. So he was haunted by past demons. And now so are the two brothers, the narrator and Sonny. Logotherapy is about finding meaning in the future, not about fixating on the past.

3.     We don’t choose meaning. Meaning chooses us. The older brother’s mom says to him tearfully, that he must never let go of Sonny. He must guide him into the light and in doing so the narrator will find light for himself. Initially, the narrator tries to escape his calling. He marries and disappears. One gets the sense that he is running away from his duties, using marriage as a disguise for his fear.

4.     He doesn’t listen to his brother or understand Sonny’s musical passion.

5.     The brother is jealous that Sonny treats others like family but not him, as if he deserves it. Also he feels guilty because their lack of connection is not what his mother wanted.

6.     Both brothers must grapple with the world’s inevitable suffering reminding us of Frankl’s principle:”We must be worthy of our suffering. We hear Sonny say, “I don’t want to see you die—trying not to suffer.”

7.     The narrator learns to listen to Sonny, to go into Sonny’s world and connect with him, thereby keeping his promise to his mother.

Excellent lecture on "Sonny's Blues"

Lesson for “The Lottery” and “The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas”

 

"The Lottery"

Why were so many Americans insulted, even spurred to threaten violence, by the story when it was first published?

 

1.   Its depiction is true and truth strikes a nerve, telling us something demonic about human nature.

2.   That we’re not as civilized as we think, for people are driven more by irrational and traditional forces than they are by logic and reason.

3.   In spite our façade of being civilized, we’re consumed by bloodlust and the need for violence.

4.   We’re too cowardly to admit our murderous violence, so we veil it within sanctimonious rituals.

5.   We have a backward primitive notion of God, who we see as a tribal deity thirsty for blood sacrifice. In fact, this so-called God is a projection of our own murderous unconscious.

6.   We corrupt our children’s innocence by forcing them to participate in our murderous ways.

7.   The glue that keeps our society cohesive and unified is often violence and the arbitrary killing of an innocent party.

8.   We reject the progress of science and reason so that we can uphold a primitive notion of appeasing a violent god.

9.   We commit violence against others with piety and middle-class morality in order to appease our conscience and to maintain our sense of moral superiority.

10.                 We commit violence as a group, rather than as individuals, because it’s easier to say we we’re simply following orders rather than taking personal responsibility. In other words, we’re cowards.

 

 

Conditions for the Banality of Evil in “The Lottery”

 

1.   For the evil perpetrators, the end justifies the means; usually the “end” is to “purge,” “cleanse,” or “purify” some human “contaminant.”

2.   Violence is not spectacular but part of the numbing, commonplace everyday activity.

3.   The perpetrators of evil are not conspicuously evil but mediocre, innocuous, conforming.

4.   The perpetrators of evil are not bold decision makers but placid followers, eager to please authority figures.

5.   For the evil perpetrators, there is no human dimension to cruelty and violence; rather, murder and/or torture are done in a cold, detached bureaucratic fashion.

6.   The evil perpetrators have an absence of imagination to see the human and moral dimensions of their actions.

7.   There is complicity between evil political agenda and the followers’ lack of empathy.

8.   The evil perpetrators are automatons who obey superficial “decency” and “manners” and outward appearances in order to hide their brutality to others and to themselves.

9.   The evil perpetrators assiduously exercise an adherence to convention and empty political clichés in order to enable their violent actions.

10.    Evil perpetrators focus on the letter of the law, no the spirit.

 

Major Theme in "The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas"

Scapegoating: Sacrificing a usually innocent party for the greater good of the majority or for an elite group.

Examples:

An Arizona politician wants to create an extra tax for fat people. Since most fat people come from a poor economic background, the tax will punish the poor to fund the needs of people with higher incomes.

Slave labor overseas and even in our borders (think chicken farms) keeps prices down so we can buy more crap we don't need.

Poor people agree to be subjects in medical experiments so that procedures and drugs can be approved for general use. This is also called being a "guinea pig."

We conduct hideous experiments on animals to make sure medical procedures and cosmetics are safe for humans.

 

Thesis Structure Examples

 

Using scapegoating to create a society does not result in meaning but the empty despair of tyranny.

 

“The Lottery” and “The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas” provide a study in the conditions that make the banality of evil possible. First, __________________.  Second, ___________________________. Third, ________________________. Fourth, ____________________________________.

 

 

Lesson for "Babylon Revisted"

Lexicon of Terms Pertinent to the Story

1. Nostalgia: inflating the glory of the past with distorted, sentimental memories

2. Fixation: Being stuck on nostalgia so you can't move forward with your life.

3. Juvenile hedonism: never growing up but staying in the "life is all about pleasure" phase

4. Boom and Bust Society: A society living on extremes, bubbles inflating until they burst; extreme emotional and financial ups and downs; a sort of collective bipolar disorder. 

5. Animus: Deep gut-filled hostility toward someone like the way Marion Peters feels about Charlie

6. Demure: Keep your emotions to yourself; don't put them on the table even as someone shows you animus be polite and dumure. This is Charlie's strategy.

7. Precipice: Behind him, Charles' ghosts of the past haunt him and seem to want to pull him back to his juvenile ways; in front of him, an abyss of the unknown with his daughter Honoria. Thus, Charles stands on the precipice. He can jump or he can turn back. Or if the metaphor is bad, the abyss represents him free-falling into the abyss of his past ways and he must turn to a more mature way of life in order to care for his daughter.

8. The 5 Motifs of Fiction:

One. Establish a home (which is what Charles wants by taking his daughter)

Two. Going on a journey.

Three. A battle or contest (Charles vs. Marion): Charles must prove that he can stay sober.

Four. Enduring suffering (Charles must endure penance to redeem himself and prove his worthiness of being a father)

Five. An obsession that results in consummation; we become consumed by our obsession whether it be love, revenge, greed, etc. Charles must not be consumed by his past, his nostalgia.

9. Tumultuous relationship: rocky, inflammed passions, extreme love and hate; alcohol; infidelity; Charles locked his wife out of the house after a drunken fight in which his wife Helen kissed a guy named Webb. Enraged, Charles locked the door not knowing his wife would die in a snow storm as she begged to be let inside the house.

10. Self-righteous self-certitude: Marion's spite and resentment toward Charles has made her addicted to her own sense of moral superiority. 

11. Open-ended story: No clear conclusion or resolution. We're left with more questions: Will Charlie reunite with his daughter? Will he find redemption? Is his life over, squandered on juvenile hedonism?

 

Major Themes in the Story

 

Bingeing and excess: A false sense of success and the sudden rush of wealth propels us to a life of self-abandonment and self-indulgence, a condition that always results in solipsism and disconnection from others. 

Rising is falling and falling is rising: False success gives us a delusion of invincibility, causing us to act in foolish, reckless ways. There is always a suicidal urge, metaphorical or not, in this false rising. We unconsciously want the death of our demonic self that has taken control of us.

Wealth is an intoxicant, a drug. It is also a truth serum. It brings out the true self, for good or bad.

You can never erase the past. Its demons will haunt you and singe your garments.

You can never completely destroy your urge for the old life.

 

Helpful links for maintaining consistent pronouns in paragraphs and other pronoun questions

Pronoun shifts

Should I Use I?

Appropriate Pronoun Usage

 

Review of Fragments and Run-Ons

Grammar and Spell Check:

While Neddy Merrill is an incorrigible drunk doomed to a life of solipsism; Charlie Wales is a quasi-reformed alcoholic who in spite of attempts to gain custody of his daughter must suffer the ignominy brought on. When the ghosts of his past arrive at Charlie’s sister-in-law’s house and serve as a reminder to Charles drunken splurges. Encouraged in part by his need to celebrate the bull market that propelled him into a life of easy wealth. Only to be lost during the Great Depression. We do get the sense that Charlie may limit his drink to just one a day, however, Neddy Merrill seems on track to soak his brain with alcohol until his dying days. Both Neddy and Charlie’s pathology can be traced to there reaction to the existential vacuum. Although, Charlie’s meaning may be traced to getting his daughter back; he wavers between a life of joyless hedonism and contrite reform.

 

Lesson for “Good Country People”

 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.

 

 

 

 

Lesson for “The Swimmer”: The Tragedy of Confusing Compulsive Grandiosity with Noble Ambition

Quiz 4:

In 600 words, compare how obedience to authority results in evil (like Nazi Germany?) in the stories "The Lottery" and "The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas." Your quiz must have a thesis with 3 or 4 mapping components. 

Quiz is due in my office PE4 on July 26. Due to time constraints, we will not be reading "Sonny's Blues" or having a lecture in class that day. 

 

Essay 4 Choose Either A or B

A.      In a 5-page essay, compare the distorted time warp, the failure to grasp our “finiteness,” as Frankl writes about, and its danger to the human soul in “The Swimmer” and “Babylon Revisited.” For your Works Cited page, refer to the two stories, Frankl’s book, and my blog for a minimum of 4 sources.

B.      In a 5-page essay, compare the tribe’s influence on nihilism, the misguided desire for a provisional existence, and the soul’s forfeiture of meaning in “The Lottery” and “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.”  Your Works Cited page should refer to the two stories, Frankl’s book, my blog, and one other source for a total of 5 sources.

 

 

Reading Questions

 

1.  Why does alcohol figure so heavily in the first paragraph? One of the themes of alcoholism we will find out is that you piss people off and burn bridges until your circle of people who care about you diminishes to ZERO.

2. What rule does Merrill break?

Neddy Merrill violates the First Rule of Life: Always Know Your Situation.

Know when a group of people likes you or not;

know when your girlfriend is keeping you around until someone better comes along;

know when you're eating habits are making you inflate into the Pillsbury Dough Boy;

know when you're hanging out with unsavory characters who will weigh you down;

know when your drinking or spending is getting you into trouble;

know when a beautiful woman is asking you out that you don't have to go to the gym because if you do you'll never have an opportunity like that again.

All other rules in life stem from the First Rule: Know the Situation. 

Neddy Merrill doesn't know his situation. He's bankrupt, without family, without a job, without friends, without a home; however, he thinks he has all those things. He lives in alcoholic denial. He does not know his situation. 

In other words, Merrill's tragedy is rooted in a failure of metacognition.

3.  How in the first three paragraphs does Cheever establish that Neddy Merrill is a deluded madman? He juxtaposes youthful grandiosity (he sees himself as a “legendary figure” and the Great Swim Quest with the alcoholic dissolution that is Neddy Merrill.

The story’s power comes from the disparity, or great gulf, between the character’s inflated self-perception and his woeful reality. Grandiosity is always the response to denial and moral dissolution. (to define dissolution, recall the cop who talked about evil and the tissue). Later in the story, Merrill is described as looking like a homeless man, the true condition of destitution that defines his life.

4.  What universal tragedy does Neddy Merrill represent? The dissolution and private hell that results from lack of self-awareness and intractable denial. We don’t lie in our personal hell overnight. We sink there gradually or incrementally: We can kill a frog painlessly by slowly turning up the pot of water.

In 2003, I realized I was fat at 257 pounds, but I was in denial for a long time.   I know an alcoholic who gets drunk at parties and starts fights. His circle of friends is getting smaller and smaller and yet he doesn’t have a clue about his drinking problem. In fact, he would vehemently deny having a problem.

My doctor told me to eat more slowly, so did my wife, but I didn't believe I ate too quickly until I started paying attention. I bite people's fingers during the frenzy.

5.  What in the third paragraph suggests that Merrill is having a bipolar episode? He's walking naked in the rain on a highway.

6.  What analogy does the story give us? A nude man swimming in water as he believes he’s returning to his “home,” his Eden. The analogy is that of a man who’s shedding his delusions and purifying himself by facing the truth of his existence. We read on page 607 that he feels compelled or “determined to complete his journey.” And portentously we see that his “return is impossible.” This is the journey of all journeys.

He is hitting rock bottom for he must die before he can be born again.

7.  What evidence is there that the time of year is not summer as Merrill believes?  Notice the trees are stripped of their leaves. Another pool is dry, a sign that the homeowners have drained their pool after summer. Also the bathhouse is locked for the non-swim seasons. What is his delusion analogous of? He’s no longer in the summer of his life, but the autumn and autumn is death.

8.  What evidence is there that Merrill’s alcoholism has played games with his memory?  Merrill seems unaware of “all his misfortunes” announced by Mrs. Halloran. He's living in a past, one which features him strong, popular and connected to people. In fact, he is the antithesis of these things.

9.  What is the possible naval metaphor? Separated from the human race? Helplessness of a baby? He cries for the first time like a baby. He sheds his masks and defenses and becomes the helpless baby he is.

10.  How does Merrill exhibit the signs of solipsism?  Grace Biswanger refers to Merrill as a “gate crasher,” an unwelcome visitor. Merrill isn’t aware of how others perceive him. In other words, he doesn't know the situation. Such awareness is crucial to being sane and getting along with others. The opposite condition is solipsism, being self-centered to the point of being oblivious of how others perceive you. Later on page 611 an ex lover asks if he will ever grow up.

 

The Tragedy of the Swimmer: Confusing Compulsive Grandiosity with Noble Ambition

 

Compulsive Grandiosity:

1. inflated self-esteem or delusions of grandeur mask one's bitter defeat in life. This bitter defeat is usually the failure to achieve intimacy with one's spouse and the social community as one descends further and further into self-pity. Thus we can say grandiosity is the condition in which one has a big ego with low self-esteem. 

2. Grandiosity always results in obnoxious behavior, alienating the grandiose from others and reinforcing the grandiose person's isolation. 

3. While noble ambition is well planned and based on realistic goals, grandiosity is compulsive and unrealistic. 

4. Grandiosity never sees the big picture, but tries to show off. Case in point: Over 70% of professional football and basketball players are bankrupt 5 years after they retire. 

5. Grandiosity is often fueled by drugs or alcohol, which unleashes the grandiose person's raw low self-esteem converted into grandiose obnoxious acts.

6. While noble ambition shows the strength of the person like Bill Gates or Mark Cuban, grandiosity shows how small and pathetic the person is. In other words, grandiosity is a cry for help. Take the case of a rich landlady who wore a body-length mink coat in the heat of summer to the bazaar. She eventually died of heat stroke. Her grandiosity, wearing a $5,000 coat, killed her. 

Sample Thesis Statements Addressing the Distorted Time Warp and Life's Finiteness

 

 Both Neddy from "The Swimmer" and Charlie from "Babylon Revisisted" get entangled in the distorted time warp evidenced by ____________________________, ________________________, _________________________, and _________________________________.

Both Neddy and Charlie show that immaturity is proportionate to a lack of meaning. This immaturity is evidenced by __________________, _________________, ________________, and ______________________.

Both Neddy and Charlie are centripetal characters doomed to falling prey to their worst impulses and as such they defy Viktor Frankl's major beliefs set forth in Man's Search for Meaning. The centripetal motion is inevitable after a certain time and this motion defies meaning in four ways, including __________________, _________________, ______________________, and ________________________.

 

 

Lesson for "A Good Man Is Hard to Find"

Quiz 3: An extended definition of the term "intellectual pride"

Study the extended definition example below of the term "meta-fighting" and imitate the style to write an extended definition of the term "intellectual pride" in the context of the stories "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" and "Good Country People."

Your definition should have a single-sentence definition, distinguishing characteristics, and examples from the two stories. Be sure to include an effective title for your quiz. Don't simply title it "Quiz 3"

Your quiz should be between 450-500 words. 

An extended definition has a single-sentence definition, which also contains distinguishing characteristics.

 

Example:

Marriage is a legally-binding contract, which requires loyalty, hard work, compromise, and humilty.

 

The above sentence has characteristics that you flesh out in the body of your paragraph.

 

Intellectual pride is a _____________________, which is fueled by ___________, ________________, _____________, and ___________________.

Example of an Extended Definition

Are You Meta-Fighting with Your Partner? If So, Stop It Immediately

If you’re simply fighting with your girlfriend or wife, you don’t know what real fighting is. The type of fight when you are focused on the original source of your argument is a lightweight argument, one which can be resolved with relative ease. But when you and your partner elevate the fighting to a new level, in which the original subject of the argument deviates into newer, more toxic, more hostile territories, it’s called meta-fighting.

Meta-fighting is when you begin to argue about how you are arguing about the argument. You are bickering about style, tone, and methodology. And this argument, this meta-fight, about how you deliver your argument also spawns an argument about how you are scrutinizing and judging the analysis of the style of the argument over a topic that you most likely have forgotten, the original topic being obscured by layers and layers of analysis about the analysis about the analysis about the methodology of your arguing. By this time, the subject behind the original argument is beside the point. It’s as if the original controversy or hot-button was simply a springboard to vent deeper issues about your relationship.

Perhaps the next point is obvious: When you recognize that you are in the middle of a meta-fight, it’s important to stop it as soon as possible because the damage to your relationship can be beyond your understanding and control. So let us be clear. When you catch yourself in the middle of a meta-fight, you need to go into Damage Control Mode. Here’s what you do:

Abruptly stop arguing, clear your throat, and say you don’t feel well. Then disappear into the bathroom for at least a half hour and be resolved not to bring up the fight upon exiting your “cool-off cubicle.” Apologize for “getting carried away” and start cooking a meal, preferably comfort food. Start chopping onions, dicing carrots, peeling potatoes, and in general keep busy and pretend to be absorbed by your new task so that you don’t get sucked back into the meta-fight.

If you do not know how to cook, take on a outdoor or indoor project you’ve been putting off. Wash windows, clean the garage, vacuum, anything to distract both of you from the meta-argument.

Be adamant about not getting sucked back into the meta-argument. Remember this: A meta-argument is a black hole, a bottomless pit of pain, hurt, and suffering from which sometimes there is no return. So be warned. If you must fight with you’re partner, that is fine. But no meta-fighting, not ever.

Happy cooking. 

 Other Tools for Definition

Single-Sentence Definition: includes the term, the class, and the distinguishing characteristics.

Jealousy is a form of madness in which the afflicted obsesses over fantasies of being cheated on, of fantasies of ultimate control, of inclininations of violence, and of a deep need to cheat on his partner in order to avenge her "misdeed."

Negation: What the thing is NOT: Love is not infatuation.

Classification: Know which classification your term belongs to.

For example, there are many types of pride:

1. Charity pride: You're too proud to accept help or charity even when you're having tough times.

2. Physical pride: We pass the beautiful woman who wears an arrogant, supercilious expression that says, "You're lucky I'm not charging you money to simply look at me, loser."

Or if she is more arrogant, her face will say: "You can't afford this expensive champagne, Mr. Loser Man, so don't even bother looking."

3. Stubborn pride: You won't back down on a position even though you know you're wrong because you're too proud.

4. Vindication pride: George Costanza hates his girlfriend but he refuses to break up with her because he wants everyone who accuses him of being too immature to be in a relationship to believe otherwise. Of course, his stupidity proves their point.

5. Perfectionist pride: You throw away a chocolate cake you made for your family because it doesn't meet your high standards.

6. No excuses pride: You always deliver top quality product and performance on time and you are never late. Nor do you ever disappoint people because you have pride in your honor and integrity.

7. Indignation pride (adapted from Louis C.K.): These are people who see themselves as victims because they operate on the stupid belief that NOTHING BAD IS SUPPOSED TO EVER HAPPEN TO THEM. Their dinner reservation might be late; their airplane departure might be late; their dry cleaning might not be ready. Whatever it is, they always have the same response: "THIS IS AN OUTRAGE! DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM? YOU WILL BE HEARING FROM MY ATTORNEYS!"

8. Intellectual pride: You believe you are intellectually superior to the human race and because you are superior you do not have to comform to the same moral principles as the rest of the world. In fact, your noncomformity, your moral lapses and moral depravity, prove your superiority. 

Intellectual pride is always the mask of the emotionally wounded, the people who have a grudge or a chip on their shoulder. They wear their pride as an excuse so they don't have to grow up and have moral accountability and adult responsibilities like the rest of us.

Intellectual pride is a childish position. It is the position of emotional retardation.

Intellectual pride cuts us off from the rest of the human race.

Intellectual pride cuts off our empathy.

Intellectual pride results in solipsism, extreme self-centeredeness, and as such its final destination is insanity.

 

Research Links:

A Defense of the Grandmother

Google Books

Misfit's Nihilism

Misfit as Christ Figure?

The Price of Distortion

Study Questions and Answers

Karen Bernardo Commentary

Light and Shadow

Paradox of the Grotesque and Grace

Reading Between the Lines

"One of My Babies"

In Defense of Flannery O'Connor's Point of View

Misfit as Satan

Jesus Thrown Everything Off Balance

Misfit Reverses Christ Or Tries

The Power of Good and Evil

Search for Authenticity

The God of Self

Misfit Quotes

 

Three Life Traps

Peter Kreeft in his book Three Philosophies of Life discusses three life traps, all of which are in focus in O’Connor’s short story:

Complacent Mediocrity: being self-satisfied and indifferent to life's higher questions as you distract yourself with triviality: This is the condition of most people. 

Intellectual Pride: You feel superior to the "peasants and stupid hoards" because you're of higher intelligence and are special and as such conventional morality does not apply to you. This attitude embodies the Misfit. 

Despair: The inverse of pride: You feel isolated and apart from the human race and impervious to the solutions that bring them happiness and redemption. You're "beyond saving." Again, the Misfit embodies this attitude. 

 

The family in the story embodies complacent mediocrity in that they are indifferent to morality evidenced by the disrespectful children and happily ignore life’s most ultimate and urgent questions such as the meaning of life.

The grandmother is the family’s worst offender and while many defend her as innocent and kind there is much evidence in the story that condemns her:

1.    She is racist and patronizing in her attitudes toward others.

2.    She is provincial in her self-aggrandizing self-satisfaction and disdain for Europeans and presumably anyone from any country other than America.

3.    She chatters herself to distract her from death and the meaning of life.

4.    She is manipulative and prone to lying to get her way.

5.    She is hypocritical as she supposedly longs for honest, decent people while she exacts dishonesty upon others.

6.    Her religious piety only raises its head when she is confronted with her own mortality.

Causes of Complacent Mediocrity

1. Paralyzed by routine and comfort; routine puts us in a sort of trance and we develop an unconcious fear of change. I read about a college basketball coach who everyday eats the same lunch: peanut butter and honey sandwich. I love peanut butter and honey but every day?

2. Paralyzed by having no vision of a better, higher life. Without a vision or anything to compare our lives to, we easily delude ourselves into believing we have good reason to be content. Our "normal" might not be so normal but we don't know without a point of comparison. If you look up to people whose adult lives consist of watching ESPN, drinking booze, and playing poker when they're not slaving some job they hate, then you probably imitate those people and assume you're life is good and flourishing.

3. Paralyzed by sloth and inertia. A lack of movement reinforces more stillness or inertia. For example, the hardest part of writing a research paper is getting started because we must break free from the intertia.

4. Paralyzed by learned helplessness. We condition ourselves to believe in certain limitations and make peace with these limitations until we convince ourselves of our own helplessness. I convinced myself that I could not learn math until I after I graduated from college I took a CBEST test to qualify me to be a sub teacher. I got 99% correct on the math part of the exam. With a gun to my head, I could learn math.

Causes of Intellectual Pride

1. The ego tells us we are different from everyone else. We are apart from them, removed. We are in other words special and as such we are not connected to the human race.The Misfit says, "No one had nothing I wanted."

2. The ego sees us as superior, educated, caring, full of soulful torment over life's big questions while the "toothy masses" are ignorant, and like the grandmother chatter their lives away on BS. We read that some people can live their whole life without caring about life's big questions but that the Misfit "has to know why it is." He is on a spiritual search but he has found nothing and he is in rage. He was "buried alive" but has never been reborn. He is a member of the walking dead.

3. The ego demands a sense of entitlement and the sense that the world "owes us."

4. The ego refuses to call out for help. The Misfit says, "I don't want no hep. I'm doing all right by myself."

Causes of Despair

1. Related to pride, despair convinces us that we are so different from everyone else that their prescriptions for life's ailments will be worthless to us. We are beyond repair, beyond help, beyond the point of no return. Nothing can save us. The Misfit is a "different breed of dog."

2. We recoil into the Self and disconnected from others we live in alienation and isolation and this condition feeds the condition of despair.

3. We assert our hopelessness because we need to feel vindicated for the thousands of hours we've invested into being miserable.

4. Over time we begin to believe in our imagined despair and we become nihilists. A nihilist is someone who rejects all meaning, values, and the very idea of right and wrong. Life is without purpose. Life is a joke. There is no pleasure in life but meanness. This is the bitter reaction for having been born into a world of suffering without meaning or redemption. 

Flannery O'Connor's Religious Faith Informs the Story by Seeing the Human Race as 3 Types of People

1. There are those, like O'Connor, who see themselves as helpless sinners and humbling themselves before God they accept God's grace and find goodness and meaning in life.

2. There are those, like the family in the story, and especially the grandmother, who might put up a facade of religious piety but in truth are willfully ignorant of religious ideas and live in a bubble of stupidity. 

3. Finally there are those like the Misfit who delve deep into religious ideas, know ideas like grace, salvation, redemption, and damnation to the very marrow of their bones but they reject God and prefer to lord over their own lives. They don't need help from anyone or any god. They're doing fine by themselves. These type of people go through a rot of the soul that in many ways is far more dangerous than the second type of people. But it's clear, O'Connor rejects both types of people and sees them as doomed to damnation. 

Objections to O'Connor's story that I have read over the years and often wonder about myself

 

The story is hypocritical. Why? Because the author writes from a religious point of view, one that says we should all be connected to the human race, yet the story's omniscient narrator shows disdain against the characters. Indeed, the story is soaked with misanthropy.

The story claims to be informed by a religious point of view but the "salvation" gained by the grandmother is not salvation at all but the hysteria one suffers before a violent death.  No redemption is achieved by anyone in the story. Therefore, the story has no meaning. It is a story of nihilism and misanthropy. It is a Gospel of Nihilism.

The story is soaked with virulent misanthropy, hatred of the human race, informed by the author's religious view that says anyone outside her religious beliefs is lost and damned. This is evidenced by the story's caricatures and stereotypes. In other words, O'Connor's fiction is suffused with humanity's lowest common denominator, a function of her unconscious disdain for the human race. 

The story's religious dogma is so narrow that only a select few people in this world can be saved. Anyone who doesn't fit O'Connor's model of religious faith is damned, including all the story's characters. 

 

Possible Thesis Statements

While Viktor Frankl and Flannery O'Connor are both people of faith, Man's Search for Meaning is incompatible with "A Good Man Is Hard to Find." This argument is evident when we look at __________, ____________, ____________, and ________________. 

Criticisms of "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" as a work of nihilism incompatible with Man's Search for Meaning are warranted. In fact, a close look at the story reveals it has an urgent call for the quest to find meaning evidenced by ____________, ____________, __________, and _____________.