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The dynamic, shape-shifting speaker of Sylvia Plath’s “Lady Lazarus” takes on the persona of a victimized Jew of the Holocaust and puts on a public performance displaying her transformation from death to resurrection. Scholars tend to see the poem as a sexualized performance that both reverses the gender role of the biblical Lazarus and illustrates Plath’s struggles with mental health disorders as well as her professional challenges. However, this paper argues that some critics misrepresent Plath’s mental struggles while most fail to notice how her use of the Jewish Holocaust and Jewish Phoenix represent a metaphorical way to challenge patriarchy.
At the end of Flannery O'Connor's story "A Good Man is Hard to Find,” a Grandmother calls an escaped fugitive known as the Misfit “one of [her] babies” after his gang has murdered her family while she pleaded to be spared. Some see her gesture as a “moment of grace” while others see it as a final appeal for respect for her Southern ladyhood or a recognition of her own stubbornness in the Misfit. This paper argues that regardless of the author’s theological intentions, the story offers insufficient evidence that the Grandmother has the faith required to receive God’s grace.
