Two Short Stories By Mary Hood example essay topic

In the two short stories by Mary Hood, "Lonesome Road Blues" and "Inexorable Progress", the main characters endure a great deal of suffering. The unnamed widow in "Lonesome Road Blues" tries to get over the death of her husband and the loneliness that followed by trying to seduce a man with the hopes that he may take the place of her late husband. She has had time to heal and is ready to get on with her life and even though in the end she doesn't get what she set out to accomplish, she has made great steps to reinserting herself back into society and getting her life back on track. On the other hand, Angelina in "Inexorable Progress" has suffered a great deal through the loss of her mother, stillborn son, and her dog. She has endured a great deal more suffering than the woman in "Lonesome Road Blues" and her inability to deal with these hardships have an even more tragic impact on her life. The two of these women are similar in that they both have endured great losses in their lives but are in direct contrast to each other in their way of dealing with their suffering.

In Hood's short story "Inexorable Process" we learn that Angelina is haunted by dreams of her stillborn son and dead mother and even though she has a husband "from black-powder season to doe season she might as well been a widow" (Hood 103). She doesn't know how to deal with these hardships and when she finds a lump on her breast (her mother died of breast cancer) she refers to it as "a dream come true" and that "it somewhat satisfied her" (Hood 104). Right at that moment Angelina gives up on life and develops a negative view of life and God. She loses her appetite, starts arranging "snapshots" into albums for her daughter Bonnie in preparation for her death, and begins to "smoke heavily" and drink.

At one point in the story she faints and begins to fall but is -1- saved by the Reverend. The reverend could be seen as a possible spiritual healer but instead "she turned away" (Hood 105) and refused to accept help of any kind. She didn't want to be helped. She wanted to be miserable and didn't make any efforts to make herself feel otherwise.

She willingly accepted and hoped that she was going to die of breast cancer. When a check up showed that the lump was non-cancerous she "was relieved, yet oddly disappointed" (Hood 106). With this little bit of good news she begins to have a different outlook on life. She becomes more positive. She quits smoking and drinking, cuts back on coffee, and picks up on crafts. Then when the slightest unfortunate thing happens, after her feet swelled up from canvassing from door to door she says to Grace, "what's the use?" , "Nobody listens" (Hood 112) "But Angelina didn't have her mind made up; she was still trying" (Hood 113).

When the car stalls the second time she prays for it to restart and when the dog dies she figured that was the consequence of the car starting, a very negative way of thinking. Hood has been known to "use unexpected and realistic detail to find effective symbols" (Briggs). When the dogs head falls off it symbolizes her giving up on life, "Angelina didn't care" (Hood 117). "Hood's characters are often stubborn" (Kitchen 212). Angelina blames god for the dog's death even though it was very old and would have died anyways. She is railing against God is this story.

She blames him for everything that has happened to her. At one point she says " (the only cloud in the sky) was looking for me" (Hood 118). She figures the only way to end her suffering is to commit suicide. This backfires when she survives only now to be challenged with more suffering caused by the gun shot to the -2- head, a conflict she will most certainly not be able to overcome. This woman's negative response to the problems she came across and her failure to try to remain positive ended up in her complete destruction. On the other hand, in Hood's short story "Lonesome Road Blues" the unnamed widow chooses to deal with the hardships life has dealt her in a completely different and more effective way.

Maybe this is due to the fact that her husband has been dead for years and she has had time to heal or that she hasn't suffered as many hardships as Angelina but this woman is trying to reinsert herself back into society by getting past her heartache. She had been anticipating meeting Edmund Lovingood for nearly a year. She composed a "mental page... (of)... her thoughts" (Hood 11) of what she was going to do and say when she finally talked to him. When she finally did confront him and asked him to come back to her house for a wash and something to eat. She is so happy that he agreed to this "she gave a little jump back down to earth" (Hood 12) before she could proceed to the car. She goes out of her way to see that her plan succeeds.

She already had dinner prepared, had soap, towels and razor laid out for him, drove across the border for water, picked up a bottle of wine, and made two pies so he could choose which one he preferred. In terms of her getting on with her life, the reader thinks everything hinges on the success of her seducing this man into taking the place of her dead husband because she had gone to such great lengths to impress him. Surely he turning her down would send her spiralling back into isolation and loneliness. In the end Lovingood moves on to another woman and her initial reaction is what the reader expected it to be. But then, after she "examine (d) the past" (Kitchen 209) the widow realizes the brief happiness she -3- had felt. Happiness she had not felt for a long time.

She realizes that by building up the courage to get out of the house and taking the time to connect with someone it turned her life around for the better and that this was one of "the moments that matter" in her life (Kitchen 209). This woman is a survivor and through her optimism and courage she was affectively able to change her life and the way she looked at life. These two stories provide great insight into how to deal with problems that a person encounters in everyday life. "We get a constant sense that two sides are being told... but it is the reader who must perform... conclusions" (Kitchen 212). It is only natural to feel distraught after having to deal with the anxieties that these two women faced but the important thing is to try and stay positive in the hopes that good things can happen in life and not revert back into the shadows, being consumed by negativity and revulsion when you bear hardships. Mary Hood "believes that the hopes, the trials, and the difficult loves of her characters are well worthy of our attention" (O'Connor 24).

By reading these two stories the reader sees that it is important to remain positive and optimistic that good things can happen and through thinking this way, good things will happen. Works Consulted Briggs, Matt. Pif Magazine. web. Buffington, Robert. "Comedy, Human; Variety, Southern" The Sewanee Review 104 Summer 1996: 468-475. Busch, Frederick.

The Georgia Review. 39 (1985): 203-204. "Familiar Heat". Barnes and Noble. web Farmer, Joy A. "Mary Hood and the Speed of Grace: Catching Up with Flannery O'Connor". Studies In Short Fiction. 33 (1996): 91-99.

Hood, Mary. How Far She Went. 1984. The University of Georgia Press. Hood, Mary.

"Why Stop?" . The Gettysburg Review. web Kitchen, Judith. "The Moments That Matter". The Georgia Review.

41 (1987): 209-214. Long, Judy. 'Though For Food". 27 Oct. 1999... Mcdermott, Alice. "Love Was All They Knew to Call It".

The New York Times Book Review. 17 Aug. 1986: 11. Melton, Heather. "Mary Hood". O ' Connor, Patricia T. "New & Noteworthy" The New York Times. 26 July 1987: 24.

Pope, Dan. "The Post-Minimalist American Story or What Comes After Carver?" The Gettysburg Review 1 (2) Spring 1988: p 91-99 Rogers, Michael. "Book Reviews: Classic Returns". Library Journal. 117 (1992): 123. S cura, Dorothy M. "Southern Women's Writing at the End of the Century: Five Recent Novels".

The Southern Review. 33 (1) Winter 1997: 859-871/ Sheffield, Christopher. "Southern Writer in Residence". The Southern Register. Spring 1996.