Literary Analysis

The two stories that I chose to compare are Flannery O’ Connor’s, “The Geranium” and Constance Fenimore Woolson’s, “Miss Grief”. These two different authors told quite different stories but had similar meaning behind both. In the story “Miss Grief”, it is about a woman who spends her life trying to get her literary work to be noticed. She finally finds an author to look at it for her and get it published. It is not until the very end of her life when she finally feels satisfaction when she is told that it is finally going to happen for her. In “The Geranium”, the story is about a man who is happy during the beginning of his life but is then sent to live with his daughter due to health issues. He struggles trying to find his place in his new life and comes to rely on a geranium in a nearby apartment window for happiness. Through the selection of characters and settings in both stories, “Miss Grief” and “The Geranium” examine the struggles and setbacks and the unseen powers in the main characters and what they have endured throughout the stories.