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Endings in Short Fiction

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In reading each of the three author's short stories, it can be assumed that they all have a similar moral or theme at the end. In all of the short stories, every main character is faced with a decision to remain the same, or to conform. O'Connor's grandmother character in A Good Man Is Hard To Find, comes to a moment of truth at the end of the story, and recognizes her unjust ways. Updike's Sammy character in A&P, goes through a morphing period and ends up showing himself a side that he never knew he had, he gains his own respect, but at the same time wonders if what he chose was the right move. Cheever's Neddy character in The Swimmer, realizes that the waters are becoming colder and increasingly more difficult to swim through, which in retrospect, the waters are similar to his life tale and how the story ends. All in all, each character goes on a journey from beginning to end. In the beginning of A Good Man Is Hard To Find, Flannery O'Connor expresses grandmother as being ethically correct to others by her rectitude of being a southern lady. She deliberately and repeatedly declares shrewdness on others. She professes that her sense of right and wrong is a leading influence in her life. An example would be, when she informs Bailey that her inner voice would not permit her to take the children in the matching route as the Misfit(O'Connor). She denounces the mother of her grandchildren, for not journeying to a place that would permit the children to open minded, as well as contrasting the mother’s head to a cabbage. She scolds John Wesley for not possessing more admiration for Georgia, his origin state. She additionally seizes any and all opportunities to deem the lack of mortality in individuals in the world today. Throughout the entire narrative, grandmother pompously sports her thought-out fashionable dress and hat. The grandmother at no time places her fault-finding eye on herself to examine her own false virtue, fraudulence and wrong-doings. Subsequently, towards the ending of the story, it is evident that the grandmother can no longer keep up with her persona that she portrays throughout the story. When rubber met the road in this story, grandmother showed her true colors. While the Misfit is killing off each member of the family, the grandmother at no time asks him to pardon her children or grand-children. Although, she does implore for her own existence because she cannot visualize the Misfit wanting to execute an elderly lady. She feels confident that he will acknowledge and have the courtesy not to go against her moral code, nevertheless, hoping

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