Creative Writing: Painted Girl Home

The Grandmother often finds herself at odds with the rest of her family. Everyone feels her domineering attitude over her family, even the youngest child knows that she's "afraid she'd miss something she has to go everywhere we go"(Good Man 2). Yet this accusation doesn't seem to phase

After hesitating a moment, Papa says, “Now, I don’t know anything about all that woman stuff; that is something you will have to talk to Becky, Aunt Georgiana, or Jenny about- I didn’t tell him, but that woman stuff happened well before our talk that day, and when it did, it scared the dickens out of me!

The other Wes Moore written by Wes Moore is about two completely different life stories that have completely different outcomes. Two young men with the same name, lived in the same neighborhood, yet they chose two different paths to walk through life. The author chose going to school and getting an education. The other Wes Moore chose the path of drugs and alcohol. Each Wes had events that help shape the path they would walk on through life.

The grandmother is the master manipulator in this story. She tries to get anything she wants even if it means putting others’ lives in danger and by manipulating others to make her point. The grandmother after several attempts of trying to get attention from her son, Bailey and her daughter in-law, but to no avail, she decided to go see a plantation knowing that Bailey would not pay attention to her, she then turns to the children and lies about a secret panel, “There was a secrete panel in this house, and the story went that all the family’s silver was hidden in it when Sherman came through but it was never found” (O’Connor 312), she knows if she lies to the kids it will cause them to throwing a fit in the car which will in turn draw Bailey’s attention to

“Yeah, sure.” She called the waitress over and straightened herself in her seat. “Could we get two glühweins, please?”

The doorbell rang and John walked away from Sarah grinning. He grabbed Painted Girl’s arm and dragged lead her to the door. Quickly he opened the door but he faltered when he gazed at its

Bailey, the son of the character known as the Grandmother, decides to go to Florida anyway. Along their way to Florida with Bailey’s wife, the baby, and the two disobedient children; June Starr and John Wesley, the Grandmother is characterized as a senile, racist woman of bad judgment. This can be seen when along the ride she sees an African-American young boy and states, “Oh look at the cute little pickaninny!...Little niggers in the country don’t have things like we do. “ (O’Connor 12). The climax of the story occurs as the family leaves Red Sammy’s Famous Barbecue and gets in a car accident with the Misfit himself. It is then safe to say that the assumption of the senile Grandmother is accurate due to the thought that runs through her mind, “A horrible thought came to her…the house that she had remembered so vividly was not in Georgia, but Tennessee,” (19). The Grandmother’s forgetfulness is in turn the direct cause of the accident and run-in with the Misfit.

Painted Girl put her bags down on the counter, tired from a long day at work. Tizio was great. He’d taken her to his uncles place and they’d spent a wonderful day ordering things from his antique store. She looked around the kitchen. Chinese takeout littered the countertop but no one had cleaned up. She picked up a note.

An hour later, Sarah joined Painted Girl in the kitchen. Sarah’s suitcases towered over Painted Girl’s, ready to be loaded into the car.

As she is talking with her son and giving her reasons for not wanting to go to Florida we start to see through her communication and interaction with her family just how rude and unruly all of the family members are. The children, John Wesley and June Star, were constantly interrupting the grandmother with their smart remarks while she was talking. Never once are they corrected or reprimanded by their parents. The following day the family sets out on their trip early in the morning. The grandmother is the first one in the car. We get to see her being deceitful as she brings along her cat knowing that her son did not want the cat at the motel with them. She settles herself into the vehicle with her stow away and begins to situate herself. We are given the impression by how she is dressed and carries herself that this is a very elegant and sophisticated woman (398). It is not until she continues to speak and uses inappropriate and offensive language that we get a clear picture of how obnoxious she is . Her obnoxious behavior progresses throughout the story.

Panic gripped the grandmother when she realized she knew who the Misfit was, and that she was going to die. Her persuasion tactics were not as cunning as Marion’s, but she tried her best to point out her importance as a lady and complimented him, “You don't look a bit like you have common blood. I know you must come from nice people!”(O’Connor). The grandmother begged for her own life to be saved, but didn’t mention the rest of her family members besides yelling, "Bailey Boy!"(O’Connor) pathetically after her son. Terror brought out the grandmother’s persuasiveness and the use of mystery and suspense heightened the characters’

Sarah slugged through the early morning work and realized-too soon- that she needed to make a trip to the house. She made her way, clasping her arms around her for warmth in the cold November morning. Painted Girl’s borrowed sweater did not help dissipate the cold air, and neither did the lingering whiskey in her system. A light shone in the window illuminating Grandfather and Dingle, who sat at the table together eating pie. She watched as Dingle grabbed a juicy strawberry from Grandfather’s pie and nibbled at it greedily. Grandfather must have finished his hunt early, Sarah realized. She had hoped to avoid Grandfather today but nature called. There was no choice, either the woods or the house. Sarah did an about turn and went for the

As the grandmother insists that they should go somewhere else, the children’s mother didn’t seem to hear her, but John Wesley and his sister, June Star, who are the grandchildren tell her “why don’t you stay at home?” As she replies back saying “Yes and what would you do if this fellow, The Misfit, caught you?” This is a great example of miscommunication as the grandmother doesn’t

To illustrate the sudden shift in the grandmother’s outlook on good and evil sparked by violence, O’Connor first establishes the grandmother’s general attitude in her actions, words, and thoughts. O’Connor describes the grandmother’s desire to sway the family into pursuing a trip to east Tennessee as opposed to the family’s original plan to visit Florida and includes her deceitful tactics to manipulate her son, Bailey. The grandmother continues to talk about how lucky she would be to have married a “very wealth man,” exposing her shallow values. She goes on to spout off racist comments concerning a small black child. Setting up the grandmother’s

She criticizes the children’s mother for not wandering to a place that would permit the children to be “wide-ranging,” and she compares the mother’s visage to a cabbage. Later on in the story, she proudly wears her cautiously selected dress and hat, being sure that being a lady is the main asset of all. The grandmother by no means, ever turns her critical eye on herself to examine her own dishonesty, selfishness, and hypocrisy. For example, the sense of right and wrong the grandmother invokes at the start of the short-story is handily quiet when she sneaks the cat into the car, lies to the kids about the secret panel, and decides not to admit that she made an error about the location of the house they were going to. When the Misfit methodically kills the family, the grandmother does not beg him to keep the children and grandchildren alive. She tries to drag him into her own world by assuring him that he’s a good man and yet agrees with her assessment of him, but doesn’t see this as a cause to keep her alive. This is a moment of awareness, one that is right away followed by her