In the middle of my reading I made a pause and thought about two things. First, I hated the grandmother. Second, I was wondering what was going to write about. For that moment, I only could say “I like it”, but nothing else. Then, I finished the story and sadly my first impression was not that different (I hated the grandma a little bit less). I didn’t know what to write about this very particular story.    Lets start with the title. Didn’t tell me much about the story. Actually, at the beginning I thought that may be was a kind of love story. Of course, after the first paragraph I realized that I was wrong.

Maybe I could start with all the things that there are not in the story and I was guessing why them were not there. First of all the location. We know where this particularly “family” will go, but we don’t know where are them at the initial moment. Where are they at the very beginning of the story? Why are they moving? Why Bailey does wants to go to Florida and doesn’t hear to his mom? (I’m not saying that he should, but he never says why he doesn’t want to go to Tennesse) Also, we don’t know where do they have the accident (if it was a real accident, I have some doubts about it). Another thing that don’t appear in the story are some names. Especially, woman’s names. The two adult woman are only named by their relation to their sons/daughter. One, is “the grandmother” and the other one is “The children’s mother”. This character doesn’t speak more than 10 words in the whole story.

In this ocean of things that are-not-there, there is someone that is there every time, the grandmother. She is that kind of character made to be hated, in some way. At least, I hated her. She put them in the situation. She lied about the panel of the house in order to make the “uneducated” kids to ask to see the house. She knew that them will behave like that when she said that. And when she realize that she was wrong, that the house was not there, she didn’t say anything. After she was killed Misfit said: “She would be a good woman (…) if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life” (133). It is hard to find a good man. But also, I think we can read “man” as “man and women”. Where some “good” character in the story?