The Genius by Frank O’Connor Essay -- Genius Frank Oconnor Essays

The Genius by Frank OConnorThe boys personality and his intelligence information are swiftly established inthe opening paragraph. His mother is presented as being a stronginfluence on him and appears as a descriptor of ally against the roughchildren savages as she describes them that live and play in thearea. It is clear that she encourages him to regard himself asdifferent and separate from them, but it is equally obvious that heis not anxious to associate with them anyway. He describes himself asa cissy by conviction and says that he regarded the idea of fightingas some(prenominal) unprepossessing and dangerous. He avoids rough games andprefers the company of girls to boys only because they dont fight somuch.Religion seems to play an unusually important procedure in his life and itseems probable that this is a reflection of his close relationshipwith Miss Cooney. He himself uses our Blessed Lord as a kind of defense against bullies who might otherwise hammer his head on the pavement. It is evident from the way he uses argument that he isunusually articulate for his age, and this is a reflection of both hisnatural intelligence and his strong preference for adult company.The fact that his mother has told him about geniuses makes it clearthat she has high ambitions for him. This is reinforced by the factthat sheWorried herself continuously finding answers to my questions.Miss Cooney, however, plays an important role in encouraging andfeeding the boys sense of himself as someone special. Although a real eccentric and even unstable woman, she recognises hisintelligence and, by making her religious books freely available tohim, seeks to plant and foster the growth of the idea th... ...y life, but also to Frank OConnorsdiscussion of the short storey in The Lonely Voice (1963). OConnorcompares the romance and the short story whereas the novel can adhereto the classical concept of civilized society, of man as an animal wholives in a community...the short st ory remains by its precise natureremote from the community - romantic, individualistic, andintransigent. The relevance of aspects of this will echo through mydiscussion of a story by Tobias Wolff in the final section of mypaper.For OConnor, the short story is concerned with individuals who aremarginalised, or who marginalise themselves these individuals areoutlawed figures wandering about the fringes of society...As aresult, there is in the short story at its most characteristicsomething we do not often find in the novel - an intense awareness ofhuman loneliness.