“A Justifying Necessity” In Truth and Beauty, Ann Patchett uses letters from her late friend Lucy Grealy, along with her own writings, to illustrate their friendship over the years since they graduated college together as writers. However, questions are raised, especially by the Grealy family, about whether or not Patchett is justified in presenting only one viewpoint of Lucy. In Suellen Grealy’s article, Hijacked by Grief, Lucy’s sister goes as far as to claim that Patchett is riding on Lucy’s fame and that Patchett provides too narrow of a viewpoint to truthfully represent who Lucy is. This is not Ann Patchett’s intention. As evidenced by her long-standing friendship with Lucy, Patchett’s inclusion of Lucy’s letters is not to ride on her fame, but to help her describe her friend as she knew her; a charismatic, outgoing person who overcame cancer and the related physical deformities by becoming a successful writer, only to be overcome by depression.
Following their graduation from Sarah Lawrence College, Ann and Lucy both travel to Iowa City to live together as they continue their studies to become writers. This is the start of their long and intimate friendship. In the following years they provided food, money, support, and companionship for each other. When they are far away from each other they call, write letters, and send packages to each other. “I got home today to find my St. Lucy medal waiting for me: I have always wanted one of those. Thanks pet: it's just so amazing to me how good you can make me feel, more than anyone else...”(p.52) They support each other when trying to win grants to writers’ workshops, when stuck in meaningless relationships, and when they hit writer’s block. They share grief, sorrow, joy, depression, good times, bad times, triumphs, and failures. They're best friends, and Ann Patchett successfully conveys this in her book by using her own recollection of the events supported by Lucy’s letters to her.
Truth and Beauty is a sometimes brutally honest book that revealed Lucy’s frailties and insecurities to the world. “She told me later that's when she started grinding up the OxyContin and snorting them. When they were gone, she made the simple transition back to heroin.”(p.232) This was too much, too soon for the Grealy family, who were already left in a state of intense grieving following Lucy’s death in 2002 from an accidental heroin overdose. In Hijacked by Grief, Suellen Grealy describes the negative impact Truth and Beauty has had on her family, mainly that it was too narrow of a viewpoint to accurately present who Lucy actually was. Suellen laments that this skewed version of Lucy is the one that is presented to the public, who then jumped to conclusions both about Lucy and the Grealy family, especially her mother. She also alleges that the reason Patchett published her book so soon after Lucy’s death was to attract more publicity because Lucy was so famous from her writings. Suellen raises the question of whether or not Patchett was justified in using Lucy’s writings to add to what she says is an incomplete book.
Ann Patchett is justified in using her friend’s letters for a number of reasons. She needs Lucy’s
used in both Pirandello’s prose and Owen’s poetry to convey that war has little meaning. After the grieving parents discuss the necessity of sending their children to battle, a woman brings the encounter back to an emotional level. After witnessing the reactions of the parents riding the train, the woman poses an unassuming question to one traveller who insists on justifying the reason to go to conflict: “… just as if she had heard nothing of what had been said and almost as if waking up from a dream…
conundrum in his article “The Moral Instinct”. Pinker argues that “reassigning an activity to a different sphere, or taking it out of the moral spheres altogether, isn’t easy. People think that a behavior belongs in its sphere as a matter of sacred necessity and that the very act of questioning an assignment is a moral outrage” (Pinker p.52). Pinker argues that by examining our different moral thinking through the lens of these five moral spheres (harm, fairness, community, authority, purity), it may…
part of the melee after being shot in the head with a non-lethal police projectile. He tells of almost unlivable conditions in overcrowded jail cells, inedible food, and god-like correctional officers in charge of the systematic denial of basic necessities. When telling the stories of the other prisoners arrested for rioting and looting, there is almost a sense of justification for their actions. The common argument that the troublemakers are just repressed, unheard, and frustrated youth out to get…
Chapter 2 – Equal Opportunity and the Law Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act An employer cannot discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin with respect to employment. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission The commission, created by Title VII, is empowered to investigate job discrimination complaints and sue on behalf of complainants. Affirmative action Steps that are taken for the purpose of eliminating the present effect of past discrimination. Office…
Sarah Bailey Dr. Gessell ENGL 4441 February 16, 2015 A Tradition of Epic Proportions In order to fully appreciate the genre of “epic” with which Milton’s Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained have been labeled, one must first look at the great epic poets of centuries past and consider how much each of their works shaped and was shaped by epic tradition, for each of these poets’ works would act as a precedent and point of reference for the poems that would follow as the times changed. Epic tradition…
Diamond, Jared M. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York: W.W. Norton, 1998. Print. Jared Diamond, a professor of geography at the University of California Los Angeles attempted to provide a brief history of everybody over the last 13,000 years in this non-fiction, historical monograph. The question that motivated Diamond to compose this book is: “Why did history unfold differently on different continents?” (9). This detailed monograph includes excerpts from articles composed…
TUMAINI UNIVERSITY IRINGA UNIVERSITY COLLEGE FACULTY OF LAW RESEARCH PROPOSAL RESEARCHERS: ❑ JESCA KABISSA ❑ PETER R. THADEO SUPERVISOR: ❑ MISS. RUHUNDWA TOPIC: AN EXAMINATION OF THE BOUNDARIES OF, AND THE THEORETICAL JUSTIFICATION FOR JUDICIAL REVIEW IN TANZANIA. CONTENT PAGE 1. Introduction -------------------------------------------------------------------…
easily one of the most important documents in our country’s history. It states the reasons the British colonies of North America sought independence from Great Britain and King George III. It opens with the preamble which describes the document’s necessity. The preamble also goes into detail explaining why the colonies chose to overthrow King George III and establish themselves as their own nation. America stands united and tall today on the principles set forth by the representatives of the original…
the impetus and aims of its composition, it is not autotelic, but terminal and meaningless – one’s perception of an artwork’s meaning can vary, but it can never influence the quality. As soon as this happens, the art loses what it truly is – self-justifying – and becomes what it is not, which is truth and logic. This is the problem in the hands of a satirist, for the genre is deeply rooted in a desire for social change, as is any act of criticism. Pointing out societal problems is the tool of a satirist…
