Sunday, April 24, 2016

Explain how the family's stop at Red Sammy's barbecue place and the character of Red Sammy himself are absolutely essential to what happens in the rest of the story. Use one quote from the text.

Red Sammy certainly shares the grandmother's view of the world. One of the first things he says to her is that "You can't win . . . These days you don't know who to trust . . . Ain't that the truth?" A few minutes later, the grandmother agrees, saying that "Europe was entirely to blame for the way things were now." Red Sammy reinforces the grandmother's own beliefs about people and how much better they, apparently, used to be. They can, together, "discuss better times." The grandmother is very quick to call Red Sammy "a good man"; she says that is why he gave gas away on credit the other day—he trusts people to do the right thing. She will, later on, be quick to call The Misfit a good man—perhaps too quick. Despite her fastidiously high standards, she is nonetheless fast to apply the term to someone who doesn't seem to be a very good man (Red Sammy, with his flea-ridden monkey, slovenliness, and awful rudeness to his wife) and someone else who is very clearly a criminal (The Misfit, with his gun and henchmen). The grandmother's interaction with Red Sammy seems to make it clear that she really can only communicate effectively with someone who believes (or at least pretends to believe) the same things that she does. There is literally no other character in the story who can stand to converse with her, and The Misfit will be no exception. The grandmother's successful interaction with Red Sammy shows that she really cannot have successful interactions in any other circumstances.

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