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The Man Who Knew Belle Star Character Analysis

1420 Words6 Pages

When short stories are written they can be realistic, nonrealistic, scary, fantasy, etc. Some of the more realistic stories have the plot grow from the characters, meaning that the story unfolds and makes sense because of a character's personality. However there are stories that are set in a realistic time or place, but the story itself is less likely to happen in real life based on the behavior and personality of the characters, and appears to happen only by chance or coincidence. The short stories, "The Man Who Knew Belle Starr", by Richard Bausch and "A Good Man is Hard to Find", by Flannery O'Connor, follow fatal moments in their character's lives. The way the story and the characters develop in O'Connor's story is based on coincidence, …show more content…

That's exactly the case in "The Man Who Knew Belle Star", the villain of course being Belle. As the story progresses we discover that Belle is a dangerous teenage anarchist who has nothing to lose. She also kills men who make dirty remarks or actions towards her because of what happened to her when she was growing up (Bausch 174). From this background that the author gives the reader, one can begin to foreshadow what may happen towards the end of the story. When a reader is able to foreshadow an ending or big event in the story, it means the story is something that makes sense to them, something that relates to history or other events that they have seen or heard of before. Now take Belle Starr and compare her to The Misfit, a man who is mentioned once at the beginning of the story and another in the middle and finally encountered by the family at the end. As a reader all we know is that he did something bad to a family and is heading towards Florida (O'Connor 117). When the family encounters him it is easy to predict what will happen to them because it's something that has happened in real life to many people. What doesn't make sense is how the Misfit found the family in the first place. We are told in the beginning that the Misfit was heading towards Florida, which is the whole reason why the old lad wanted to go to Tennessee in order to avoid him. We are given no background or other reason why the misfit would be in Tennessee, so one can only assume it was coincidence. With the characters, villains and story given with these two short stories, one starts to ask whether its possible for any of these to

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