"A Good Man Is Hard To Find"

          This is a disturbing short story because nobody's really a hero. There's no one to root, everybody's bad. I could understand how you could feel a little bit for the grandmother because we see the story mostly through her eyes, but yet its too hard to like her either, whether it be due to her being a loud mouth, being too judgemental or just pretty superficial. She feels that just her being a lady should deem her ineligible to be killed by the misfit and somehow this should cause her life to be spared. On her high horse of self-entitlement, when she should be pleading for the lives of the son and other family members. So with no one to truly root for, I see this story as more so a bit of a moral puzzle. A puzzle of who is right?. Is anyone right? if no one is right, then where is "rightness"?. Is it right that they all die?  Is the misfit right about the grandmother when he says "somebody should have shot her every day of her life"? He was obviously tired of hearing her mouthing' off and talking too much.

   There is almost no redemption in this story in this story. Almost nobody changes or grows, except maybe the grandmother discovers something at the very end when she's about to be killed and she says "you could be my child". that implied a little bit of deeper awareness about this murderer, but that much growth is still quite trivial if any. Some would say that the mother, father, and children come together as a family and form a much closer bond in acceptance of death than they ever had before. Prior to this we and see that there was a bit of a disconnect at home and they were very argumentative, insulted each other and had an all-around grumpy experience on the road.One child even kicking the back seat of his father while he is driving. Even when they stop to eat you can see how rude the little girl is, even when someone tried to give her compliment.

Ultimately , this reading could be looked at as the death of the old south with the killing of the grandmother. A lot of he dialogue and references are of an old south that no longer exists, or may have never existed except for in her delusional mind. 

The Use Of Force

This short story is about a doctor's visit to a stubborn child, who gets treated by a doctor seemingly just as stubborn as she is.It is narrated from a first-person view and conveyed through technical dialogue and seems to pose the questions in ethics, a position of power and the assertion of such. Although Mathilda has been hiding the sore throat from her mother for some time, it can be argued that it wasn't out of defiance but out of the fear of being treated. There are apparent sexual undertones within his pleasure in exercising violence on the young girl, this somewhat brings about the duality of helping Vs harming the sick child. I'll go out on the limb and say the dialogue reads like a subtle psychological rape if that makes any sense.Given that the plot revolves around the doctor's dominance being asserted on the young girl, this would be the most apparent theme. There is a progression of his dominance as he initially presents himself and a king and gentle doctor, in wake of the young child's defiance to being treated. Ultimately it boils down to a little girl needing treatment for potentially having a deadly disease and the necessary evil her parents fell they have no choice to allow her to endure for the sake of her wellness.