Of the two stories I read, one being The Storm by Kate Chopin and the other being AGood Man Is Hard To Find by Flannery O’Connor, I found that each had characters with moraldilemmas. In both, the setting played a role in these dilemmas but in different ways. In TheStorm, the bad weather was the set-off to and unpredicted intimacy while in A Good Man Is HardTo Find, the setting seems to be focused around a family’s vacation and their encounter with acriminal. In the following paragraphs, I will go on to explain how certain characters have moraldilemmas and how the setting helps to support my interpretations. The Storm is based around a woman by the name of Calixta who is left home alone whilea threatening storm blows up suddenly. Her husband and son are stranded at a local store untilthe weather calms down.
While she is preparing for the worst, a man visitor appears at herdoorstep needing a place of shelter. This man turns out to be an old sweetheart of hers, Alcee. As the story goes on, Calixta and Alcee, unleash themselves to passion once again and he is goneIn this particular story, I felt that Calixta’s moral dilemma is the fact that while she iscommitting this sin of betrayal, she does not think once of her husband. If she feels that having anintimate relationship behind her husband’s back is natural, then why is she hiding it from him? Having morals is to believe in something and to believe in them so strongly that you do not fearrejection because of them.
Calixta obviously does not feel that her husband should know aboutthe affair, but at the same time, she feels sexual relations are natural. To me, Calixta is confusedIn the story A Good Man Is Hard To Find, a family is off on a vacation to Tennessee. Inthe midst of their journey they are encountered by a wanted criminal, The Misfit. In briefsummary, the grandmother leads the rest of the family down a dirt road that she has mistaken fora road she used to live on. While driving down this road, they flip the car over in a ditch. At thispoint they are confronted by The Misfit who has witnessed this accident.
The setting in this storybegan playing a big part a while before when the grandmother was alerting the family of theknown Misfit being on the loose. At this point I interpreted that later in the story, the familywould encounter this man. On the scene of the accident, I really came to terms with how troubledthis Misfit character really is. Upon arrival of the scene, The Misfit instantly has the father takenin the woods and killed. Next were the mother and kids.
By this time only the grandmother andthe Misfit remain. Here, the grandmother is tries to reason with this crazy man but he is notwilling to listen. Next, she tries to make him pray, to trust in God. At this point, the Misfit goesinto detail about his life. He feels that everything he has ever done in his life has been consideredwrong whether it was or not.
He believes that Jesus threw everything off balance when He raisedThe Misfit’s moral dilemma is the fact that he thinks he is a misfit for life, that he can dono good. He feels he will be punished for good or bad deeds. He can not seem to find a way outand he is not willing to listen to otherwise. In both stories the setting is a prediction to the author’s purpose and the plot of thepiece. The Storm’s setting seemed a little more prominent than A Good Man Is Hard To Find,but with a bit of interpretation and thought, the reader is able to see how the setting is foreseeingstory’s main purpose. Calixta and the Misfit each have a moral dilemma and each of them dealwith it in their own way.
Calixta simply goes on with her normal duties and the Misfit kills thefamily. In today’s society, these conclusions seem to be similar in the sense that every persondeals with their dilemmas in a different way depending on what kind of background they have .
