If not, one may not be viewed as great as they were before to those they are to carry the tradition with. In Leslie Marmon Silko’s, “A Man to Send Rain Clouds”, Teofilo, a Native American man, is perceived to be buried under native traditions while the priest feels the deceased man should end his life under Roman Catholic traditions. The priest states, “Why didn’t you tell me he was dead? I could have brought the Last Rites anyway” (Silko 25). You would expect the priest to be upset that Teofilo received the Native American tradition first, but the priest accepted the fact in peace. The priest did not turn out to be a bad person; he was just trying to carry out tradition, similar to the civilians of a small village in Shirley Jackson’s, “The Lottery”. Initially, it is believed that winning the lottery is a good thing, but throughout the story, the reader starts to realize that winning the lottery in this story is nothing to celebrate. “Mr. Graves opened the slip of paper and there was a general sigh through the crowd as he held it up and everyone could see that it was blank” (Jackson 70). Yet, in difference to the priest in “A Man to Send Rain Clouds”, once the villagers stone “winner” Tessie Hutchinson to death, it does make them bad people. Even though they were continuing a tradition, bringing someone to their death is never …show more content…
How someone acts when they are facing a life changing situation also contributes to their nature as well. Ernest Hemingway’s, “Hills like White Elephants”, deals with a man and woman conversing about aborting their unborn child. The man is talking the woman into it secretly wanting her to say yes but does not want to look bad. To further enforce his suggestion, he ensures her that everything will go back to normal by stating, “We’ll be fine afterwards. Just like we were before” (Hemingway 48). But, their choice on whether or not to have an abortion does not make them bad people. Just like the grandma’s choice to let her family go to Florida with a misfit on the loose does not make her a bad person in Flannery O’Conner’s “A Good Man Is Hard To Find”, but it is how she carries herself is what makes her a bad person. She sees herself as a classy, uppity woman yet in contrast, she is malice. When confronted by the misfit, she tries to spare her life, “You wouldn’t shoot a lady, would you?”(O’Conner 85), disregarding the rest of the