The anecdotes A Good Man is Hard to Find and The Comforts of Home will be examined with respect to color
8 May 2005
English 11 SL
Flannery O'Conner - Color Connotations
The anecdotes A Good Man is Hard to Find and The Comforts of Home will be examined with respect to color connotation and imagery. This essay will discuss how colors affect the reader's abstract senses and emotions. Colors are also used to suggest the nature of the piece and characters within. Various cultures perceive colors differently which could change a reader's perspective.
A Good Man is Hard to Find is told from the grandmother's point of view. The first significant color is describing her son's wife. "... a young woman is slacks, whose face was as broad and innocent as a cabbage and was tied around with a green head-kerchief that had two points on top like rabbit's ears." The use of this color is ambiguous. It could be construed as either positive or negative. The positive is that it may be suggesting the woman's youth, fertility and vigor. The negative connotation is the grandmother's jealousy and envy towards her youthfulness. There is apparent animosity between the two. When the grandmother suggests visiting Tennessee "The children's mother didn't seem to hear her..." The grandmother never speaks directly to the mother. She repeatedly refers to the woman's attire with a definite manner of superiority.
"[The next day] the children's mother still had on slacks and still had her head tied up in a green kerchief, but the grandmother had on a navy blue straw sailor hat with a bunch of white violets on the brim and a navy blue dress with small white dots in the print. Her collars and cuffs with white organdy trimmed with lace and at her neckline she had pinned a purple spray of cloth violets containing a sachet. In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on a highway would know at once that she was ...
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"[The next day] the children's mother still had on slacks and still had her head tied up in a green kerchief, but the grandmother had on a navy blue straw sailor hat with a bunch of white violets on the brim and a navy blue dress with small white dots in the print. Her collars and cuffs with white organdy trimmed with lace and at her neckline she had pinned a purple spray of cloth violets containing a sachet. In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on a highway would know at once that she was a lady." The color blue suggests coldness and conservatism. When the Misfit took Bailey and John Wesley into the woods, she continues conversing with the Misfit showing her coldness. Her conservatism is validated by her attitude towards the children, the Negro child and her conviction in the "good ol' days".
Color is used not only to portray characters and their perception but is also used to depict scenery which establishes the ambiance. "They turned onto the dirty road... along in a swirl of pink dust." This imagery is very mystic and reminiscent of the stars and beyond; the unknown. "All at once they would be on a hill, looking down over the blue tops of trees for miles around, [and] then the next minute, they would be in a red depression with the dust-coated trees looking down on them." Throughout this paragraph, the reader is cycling between heaven and hell. While at the top of the hill, blue depicts heaven, tranquility, and calmness. As they descend, the use of red represents depression, fire, hell, and violence. This is the moment when the antagonists are en medias res. The characters are moving from naïveté to danger.
The Comforts of Home's protagonist is Thomas who lives with his mother at thirty five. Colors are rarely mentioned until immediately before the murder of Star Drake, formally Sarah Ham. The color pink is mentioned twice. The first reference in on page 384: "Her face greasy with whatever she put on it at night, was framed in pink rubber curlers...his mother's eye, intimate but untouchable, were the blue of great distances after sunset." The reference to pink curlers illustrates her simplicity and childish behavior. In the description of his mother's eye, the reader has the impression that Thomas glorifies her. The second reference to pink is on page 395. He is imagining what his father would want him to do. "The old man- small, wasp-like, in his yellowed panama hat, his seersucker suit, his pink carefully soiled shit, his small string tie- appeared to have taken up his station in Thomas's mind and from there, usually squatting, he shot out the same rasping suggestion every time the boy paused from his forced studies." Despite Thomas's fearful reverence of his father, the depiction is comical to the reader. This shows Thomas's submissive personality. As in A Good Man is Hard to Find, the colors become more violent and dark as the reader progresses.
Preceding red and black on the last two pages, the color yellow appears. "[The dog] opened one yellow eye, took him in, and closed it again." This indicates and Thomas's cowardice and avarice. He is greedy because he wants his house and mother's attention. Violence shortly ensues. Black is related to Sarah twice; although there is only one reference to black regarding Thomas. Thrice were both characters correlated with red, demonstrating they mutually played a role in the death of the mother.
Colors are in effect word-pictures which work by a method of association. Images and emotions are created when readers make connotations of colors within the text. In United States of America, white is a representation of purity, peace, cleanliness, innocence and marriage; however, in China, white is symbolic of mourning and death. Universally, blue has the fewest negative connotations across various cultures.