当你看到同龄的同学穿着阿迪，踏着耐克，左手拿着iphone,右手端着星巴克，而自己却还在为以后的生活刻苦读书的时候，会不会有那么一瞬间，嫌弃自己的出身？
当你看到每天上下课都有男朋友的专车接送，每个星期都可以去高档餐馆吃烛光晚餐，每个长假都可以去各大景点游玩，而自己却还在为了你和你的他的下个月的生活费发愁的时候，会不会有那么一瞬间，想和她说分手？
当你看到同部门的下属就因为与某某领导有关系便一蹴而就，继而成为了你的顶头上司，而自己拼死拼活的加班加点却一下子化为虚无，会不会有那么一瞬间想要辞职？
然后你抬起头问老天：“为什么？这到底是为什么，为什么我这么努力还是得不到我想要的一切？”
有些人20岁就明白了一辆宝马连母亲的一句关爱的十分之一都不如，而有些人活到了四十岁等到母亲都卧床不起了才明白这个道理。

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A Good Man Is Hard To Find
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"A Good Man is Hard to Find" is a short story written by Flannery O'Connor. Flannery O'Connor was a southern Catholic and often incorporated her religious life into her stories. It is a short story in the collection of short stories with the same name, A Good Man Is Hard to Find. This piece has generated scholarly work discussing its controversial last scene and whether it is more important to look at how Flannery O'Connor meant for it to be interpreted or from a formalist approach.
The story begins with a family discussing where they want to visit for their vacation. The family wants to go to Florida except for grandmother. She suggests they go to east Tennessee instead. In trying to coax her family to withdraw their decision to go to Florida she says The Misfit, who escaped from the Federal Penitentiary, is on the loose somewhere on the way to Florida, foreshadowing events to come. Despite her conniving argument, the family refuses to listen to her and decides to go to Florida. On their way they stop at Red Sammy's during lunch and have a conversation which centers on nostalgia of the Old South. After leaving for their journey grandmother tells the family about a house and plantation she visited when she was young and coaxes the family into visiting there.
Unfortunately, on the way they have a car accident involving a smuggled cat the grandmother brings without the consent of her son, Bailey. The grandmother knocks open the valise in which she had hidden the cat and the cat lands on top of Bailey's head. Bailey's sudden, frightened reaction results in an accident in which the car flips over. Once the car comes to a rest, the family gets out. The grandmother complains of internal injuries to try and keep Bailey from lashing out at her. At this point a car appears in the distance and stops upon seeing the wreckage. Three men, Hiram, The Misfit, and Bobby Lee, exit the car, all carrying guns. The grandmother recognizes one of them as The Misfit and announces her realization, in effect dooming her and her entire family as the Misfit now must kill them all to cover his tracks.
The grandmother pleads for her life before The Misfit, claiming he is clearly not of common birth and asserting several times he is a "good man." She tries to appeal to any belief in Christ The Misfit might hold. While she tries to reason with The Misfit, her family (first the two males, then the two females and the baby) is taken into the woods by Bobby Lee and Hiram, where they are shot. When grandmother tries to touch The Misfit after saying he is also "one of my babies", The Misfit recoils and shoots her three times. At the close of the story, he claims that "She would of been a good woman... if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life."
Author: Flannery O'Connor
Country: United States
Language: English
Genre(s): Southern Gothic
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace and Company
Publication date: May 12, 1955
 

       

        没有谁是一座孤岛，每本书都是一个世界……

                                          ——《岛上书店》

        那块招牌挂在一幢维多利亚风格的紫色小屋的前廊上，已经褪色……“没有谁是一座孤岛，每本书都是一个世界”，乍暖还寒却被阴霾笼罩的春天，希望有更多的人，能像阿米莉亚一样在不经意间找到属于自己的岛上书店。                           

                    part 1  待宰的羔羊

        A.J.费克里，人近中年，在与世隔绝的艾丽丝岛经营着一家书店。第一部分第一篇《待宰的羔羊》恰恰是A.J.费克里生活的真实写照，与同是高知分子的妻子放弃继续攻读博士学位的远大前程，回到妻子的故乡，一个偏远的小岛开一家书店，只因为坚信“一个没有书店的小镇不能称之为真正意义上的小镇”。不幸的是怀有身孕的妻子却在一次开车送作者回家的路上因为车祸遇难身亡，从此费克里过上了自暴自弃，苟且度日，靠酒精才能见到梦中的鬼妻这样堕落迷茫的生活。同时，自己仅有的财富，一本价值不菲的限量版书籍《帖木儿》不明失窃，A.J.费克里的生活再次遭到重击。但正如书中所说，生活中的每一桩糟糕事，几乎都是时机不当的结果，每件好事，都是时机恰到好处的结果。A.J.费克里曾是一名跑步爱好者，这一天万念俱灰的A.J.费克里外出，以跑步的疼痛来缓解心理上的疼痛，只有肉体上的疼痛才能让他暂时忘记那些徒劳无益的烦恼。因为家中唯一的宝贝已遭偷窃，A.J.费克里外出并没有锁门，但就在他外出归来之时，他的生活遇到了重大的转机。

              part 2  咆哮营的幸运儿

        两岁零一个月大的弃儿玛雅出现在A.J.费克里小小的书店里。玛雅是个聪明的小女孩儿，玛雅知道她的妈妈把她留在小岛书店，但是也许每个小孩在某个岁数都会遇到这种事。有些孩子被留在鞋店，有些被留在玩具店，还有些被留在三明治店。你的整个人生都取决于你被留在什么店里，她可不想生活在三明治店。从开始的想把孩子交到警察局到阴差阳错作为一个笨拙却真诚的单身父亲收养了玛雅，如果费克里之前的生活是一潭绝望的死水，那这个“从天而降”的小女孩便是远道而来的天使，让费克里的人生有了春夏与秋冬，有了牵挂与羁绊，有了光明与希望。书中关于费克里和玛雅的父女之情最让我为之动容，这是一场关于爱和温暖的互相救赎。

                  part 3  好人难寻

        “因为从心底害怕自己不值得被爱，我们独来独往，然而就是因为独来独往，才让我们以为自己不值得被爱。有一天，你不知道是什么时候，你会驱车上路。有一天，你不知道是什么时候，你会遇到他(她)。你会被爱，因为你今生第一次真正不再孤单，你会选择不再孤单下去。”同样率真而善良的出版社女业务员阿米莉亚·洛曼因为推荐图书来到了与世隔绝的艾丽丝岛，但因为爱妻离世而变得秉性怪异的A.J.费克里并没有给阿米莉亚留下什么良好的初印象。随着玛雅的到来，燃起生活希望的费克里因为一本充满戏剧性的书籍《迟暮花开》重新结缘阿米莉亚，两人因为书籍结缘，又发现志趣相投，木讷且不善言辞的费克里千方百计地制造见面机会，坚定而又聪明的阿米莉亚毅然放弃了别人眼中出色的“美国英雄”军人男友，好人难寻，遇到了就千万不能轻易放弃，两人排除万难，在这个世外桃源般的小小书店过上了幸福恩爱的生活。

                  part 4  穿夏裙的女孩

        “有一天，你也许会想到婚姻，要是有谁觉得你在一屋子人中是独一无二的，就选那个人吧！”

        妮可是A.J.费克里因车祸去世的前妻，伊斯梅是妮可的姐姐，也就是费克里的妻姐。伊斯梅和妮可一样，有着姣好的面容和身材，在一所中学教书，伊斯梅的丈夫丹尼尔是一位帅气的作家，虽作品不温不火，但也有不少数的读者和粉丝。外人眼中看似般配美满的婚姻，实则千疮百孔。比起丹尼尔出众的才华和外表而言，丹尼尔的多情和不忠最终成为结束这段爱情的导火索。玛雅的母亲玛丽安·华莱士是一位出色的哈佛大学高材生，因为迷恋丹尼尔的才华而陷入感情困境，最终在带着丹尼尔的女儿玛雅求助无果的情况下，走投无路，将女儿弃之书店，投海自尽。丹尼尔也因为在费克里和阿丽米娅的婚礼上和一位伴娘调情而激怒伊斯梅，两人在回家的路途中发生争执，车祸身亡。最后，脱离了丹尼尔魔咒的伊斯梅敞开心扉，和善良并专情的警长兰比亚斯携手后半生，并在费克里因脑瘤离世后接管了岛上书店，收获了自己的专属爱情。                                               

                  part  5  写在最后

        书中有言，每个人的生命中，都有最艰难的那一年，正是那一年，将人生变得美好而辽阔，有时候也会觉得生活是一片无边无际的汪洋大海，前途迷茫，没有人会知道明天即将发生的事情，也许是惊喜，也许是意外，即使再奋力划桨的人，也无法预判一条一帆风顺的人生航程。但在航行的过程中，时常保有一颗乐观而善良的赤诚之心，就一定会收获亲情，友情，爱情，即使暂时被痛苦包围，被背叛伤害，为离别而烦恼，我们也要时常勇敢地接受失望，积极地走出失望，这样我们才能不断地重整旗鼓，迎接更好的人生。

      没有人会漫无目的地旅行，那些迷路者是希望迷路，别人的故事，我们的人生……

A Good Man Is Hard To Find
The grandmother didn't want to go to Florida. She wanted to visit some of her connections in east Tennes- see and she was seizing at every chance to change Bailey's mind. Bailey was the son she lived with, her only boy. He was sitting on the edge of his chair at the table, bent over the orange sports section of the Journal. "Now look here, Bailey," she said, "see here, read this," and she stood with one hand on her thin hip and the other rattling the newspaper at his bald head. "Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida and you read here what it says he did to these people. Just you read it. I wouldn't take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn't answer to my conscience if I did."
Bailey didn't look up from his reading so she wheeled around then and faced the children's mother, a young woman in slacks, whose face was as broad and innocent as a cabbage and was tied around with a green head-kerchief that had two points on the top like rabbit's ears. She was sitting on the sofa, feeding the baby his apricots out of a jar. "The children have been to Florida before," the old lady said. "You all ought to take them somewhere else for a change so they would see different parts of the world and be broad. They never have been to east Tennessee."
The children's mother didn't seem to hear her but the eight-year-old boy, John Wesley, a stocky child with glasses, said, "If you don't want to go to Florida, why dontcha stay at home?" He and the little girl, June Star, were reading the funny papers on the floor.
"She wouldn't stay at home to be queen for a day," June Star said without raising her yellow head.
"Yes and what would you do if this fellow, The Misfit, caught you?" the grandmother asked.
"I'd smack his face," John Wesley said.
"She wouldn't stay at home for a million bucks," June Star said. "Afraid she'd miss something. She has to go everywhere we go."
"All right, Miss," the grandmother said. "Just re- member that the next time you want me to curl your hair."
June Star said her hair was naturally curly.
The next morning the grandmother was the first one in the car, ready to go. She had her big black valise that looked like the head of a hippopotamus in one corner, and underneath it she was hiding a basket with Pitty Sing, the cat, in it. She didn't intend for the cat to be left alone in the house for three days because he would miss her too much and she was afraid he might brush against one of her gas burners and accidentally asphyxiate himself. Her son, Bailey, didn't like to arrive at a motel with a cat.
She sat in the middle of the back seat with John Wesley and June Star on either side of her. Bailey and the children's mother and the baby sat in front and they left Atlanta at eight forty-five with the mileage on the car at 55890. The grandmother wrote this down because she thought it would be interesting to say how many miles they had been when they got back. It took them twenty minutes to reach the outskirts of the city.
The old lady settled herself comfortably, removing her white cotton gloves and putting them up with her purse on the shelf in front of the back window. The children's mother still had on slacks and still had her head tied up in a green kerchief, but the grandmother had on a navy blue straw sailor hat with a bunch of white violets on the brim and a navy blue dress with a small white dot in the print. Her collars and cuffs were white organdy trimmed with lace and at her neckline she had pinned a purple spray of cloth violets containing a sachet. In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady.
She said she thought it was going to be a good day for driving, neither too hot nor too cold, and she cautioned Bailey that the speed limit was fifty-five miles an hour and that the patrolmen hid themselves behind billboards and small clumps of trees and sped out after you before you had a chance to slow down. She pointed out interesting details of the scenery: Stone Mountain; the blue granite that in some places came up to both sides of the highway; the brilliant red clay banks slightly streaked with purple; and the various crops that made rows of green lace-work on the ground. The trees were full of silver-white sunlight and the meanest of them sparkled. The children were reading comic magazines and their mother and gone back to sleep.
"Let's go through Georgia fast so we won't have to look at it much," John Wesley said.
"If I were a little boy," said the grandmother, "I wouldn't talk about my native state that way. Tennessee has the mountains and Georgia has the hills."
"Tennessee is just a hillbilly dumping ground," John Wesley said, "and Georgia is a lousy state too."
"You said it," June Star said.
"In my time," said the grandmother, folding her thin veined fingers, "children were more respectful of their native states and their parents and everything else. People did right then. Oh look at the cute little pickaninny!" she said and pointed to a Negro child standing in the door of a shack. "Wouldn't that make a picture, now?" she asked and they all turned and looked at the little Negro out of the back window. He waved
"He didn't have any britches on," June Star said.
"He probably didn't have any," the grandmother explained. "Little riggers in the country don't have things like we do. If I could paint, I'd paint that picture," she said.
The children exchanged comic books.
The grandmother offered to hold the baby and the children's mother passed him over the front seat to her. She set him on her knee and bounced him and told him about the things they were passing. She rolled her eyes and screwed up her mouth and stuck her leathery thin face into his smooth bland one. Occasionally he gave her a faraway smile. They passed a large cotton field with five or fix graves fenced in the middle of it, like a small island. "Look at the graveyard!" the grandmother said, pointing it out. "That was the old family burying ground. That belonged to the plantation."
"Where's the plantation?" John Wesley asked.
"Gone With the Wind" said the grandmother. "Ha. Ha."
When the children finished all the comic books they had brought, they opened the lunch and ate it. The grandmother ate a peanut butter sandwich and an olive and would not let the children throw the box and the paper napkins out the window. When there was nothing else to do they played a game by choosing a cloud and making the other two guess what shape it suggested. John Wesley took one the shape of a cow and June Star guessed a cow and John Wesley said, no, an automobile, and June Star said he didn't play fair, and they began to slap each other over the grandmother.
The grandmother said she would tell them a story if they would keep quiet. When she told a story, she rolled her eyes and waved her head and was very dramatic. She said once when she was a maiden lady she had been courted by a Mr. Edgar Atkins Teagarden from Jasper, Georgia. She said he was a very good-looking man and a gentleman and that he brought her a watermelon every Saturday afternoon with his initials cut in it, E. A. T. Well, one Saturday, she said, Mr. Teagarden brought the watermelon and there was nobody at home and he left it on the front porch and returned in his buggy to Jasper, but she never got the watermelon, she said, because a nigger boy ate it when he saw the initials, E. A. T. ! This story tickled John Wesley's funny bone and he giggled and giggled but June Star didn't think it was any good. She said she wouldn't marry a man that just brought her a watermelon on Saturday. The grandmother said she would have done well to marry Mr. Teagarden because he was a gentle man and had bought Coca-Cola stock when it first came out and that he had died only a few years ago, a very wealthy man.
They stopped at The Tower for barbecued sand- wiches. The Tower was a part stucco and part wood filling station and dance hall set in a clearing outside of Timothy. A fat man named Red Sammy Butts ran it and there were signs stuck here and there on the building and for miles up and down the highway saying, TRY RED SAMMY'S FAMOUS BARBECUE. NONE LIKE FAMOUS RED SAMMY'S! RED SAM! THE FAT BOY WITH THE HAPPY LAUGH. A VETERAN! RED SAMMY'S YOUR MAN!
Red Sammy was lying on the bare ground outside The Tower with his head under a truck while a gray monkey about a foot high, chained to a small chinaberry tree, chattered nearby. The monkey sprang back into the tree and got on the highest limb as soon as he saw the children jump out of the car and run toward him.
Inside, The Tower was a long dark room with a counter at one end and tables at the other and dancing space in the middle. They all sat down at a board table next to the nickelodeon and Red Sam's wife, a tall burnt-brown woman with hair and eyes lighter than her skin, came and took their order. The children's mother put a dime in the machine and played "The Tennessee Waltz," and the grandmother said that tune always made her want to dance. She asked Bailey if he would like to dance but he only glared at her. He didn't have a naturally sunny disposition like she did and trips made him nervous. The grandmother's brown eyes were very bright. She swayed her head from side to side and pretended she was dancing in her chair. June Star said play something she could tap to so the children's mother put in another dime and played a fast number and June Star stepped out onto the dance floor and did her tap routine.
"Ain't she cute?" Red Sam's wife said, leaning over the counter. "Would you like to come be my little girl?"
"No I certainly wouldn't," June Star said. "I wouldn't live in a broken-down place like this for a million bucks!" and she ran back to the table.
"Ain't she cute?" the woman repeated, stretching her mouth politely.
"Arn't you ashamed?" hissed the grandmother.
Red Sam came in and told his wife to quit lounging on the counter and hurry up with these people's order. His khaki trousers reached just to his hip bones and his stomach hung over them like a sack of meal swaying under his shirt. He came over and sat down at a table nearby and let out a combination sigh and yodel. "You can't win," he said. "You can't win," and he wiped his sweating red face off with a gray handkerchief. "These days you don't know who to trust," he said. "Ain't that the truth?"
"People are certainly not nice like they used to be," said the grandmother.
"Two fellers come in here last week," Red Sammy said, "driving a Chrysler. It was a old beat-up car but it was a good one and these boys looked all right to me. Said they worked at the mill and you know I let them fellers charge the gas they bought? Now why did I do that?"
"Because you're a good man!" the grandmother said at once.
"Yes'm, I suppose so," Red Sam said as if he were struck with this answer.
His wife brought the orders, carrying the five plates all at once without a tray, two in each hand and one balanced on her arm. "It isn't a soul in this green world of God's that you can trust," she said. "And I don't count nobody out of that, not nobody," she repeated, looking at Red Sammy.
"Did you read about that criminal, The Misfit, that's escaped?" asked the grandmother.
"I wouldn't be a bit surprised if he didn't attack this place right here," said the woman. "If he hears about it being here, I wouldn't be none surprised to see him. If he hears it's two cent in the cash register, I wouldn't be a tall surprised if he . . ."
"That'll do," Red Sam said. "Go bring these people their Co'-Colas," and the woman went off to get the rest of the order.
"A good man is hard to find," Red Sammy said. "Everything is getting terrible. I remember the day you could go off and leave your screen door unlatched. Not no more."
He and the grandmother discussed better times. The old lady said that in her opinion Europe was entirely to blame for the way things were now. She said the way Europe acted you would think we were made of money and Red Sam said it was no use talking about it, she was exactly right. The children ran outside into the white sunlight and looked at the monkey in the lacy chinaberry tree. He was busy catching fleas on himself and biting each one carefully between his teeth as if it were a delicacy.
They drove off again into the hot afternoon. The grandmother took cat naps and woke up every few minutes with her own snoring. Outside of Toombsboro she woke up and recalled an old plantation that she had visited in this neighborhood once when she was a young lady. She said the house had six white columns across the front and that there was an avenue of oaks leading up to it and two little wooden trellis arbors on either side in front where you sat down with your suitor after a stroll in the garden. She recalled exactly which road to turn off to get to it. She knew that Bailey would not be willing to lose any time looking at an old house, but the more she talked about it, the more she wanted to see it once again and find out if the little twin arbors were still standing. "There was a secret:-panel in this house," she said craftily, not telling the truth but wishing that she were, "and the story went that all the family silver was hidden in it when Sherman came through but it was never found . . ."
"Hey!" John Wesley said. "Let's go see it! We'll find it! We'll poke all the woodwork and find it! Who lives there? Where do you turn off at? Hey Pop, can't we turn off there?"
"We never have seen a house with a secret panel!" June Star shrieked. "Let's go to the house with the secret panel! Hey Pop, can't we go see the house with the secret panel!"
"It's not far from here, I know," the grandmother said. "It wouldn't take over twenty minutes."
Bailey was looking straight ahead. His jaw was as rigid as a horseshoe. "No," he said.
The children began to yell and scream that they wanted to see the house with the secret panel. John Wesley kicked the back of the front seat and June Star hung over her mother's shoulder and whined desperately into her ear that they never had any fun even on their vacation, that they could never do what THEY wanted to do. The baby began to scream and John Wesley kicked the back of the seat so hard that his father could feel the blows in his kidney.
"All right!" he shouted and drew the car to a stop at the side of the road. "Will you all shut up? Will you all just shut up for one second? If you don't shut up, we won't go anywhere."
"It would be very educational for them," the grandmother murmured.
"All right," Bailey said, "but get this: this is the only time we're going to stop for anything like this. This is the one and only time."
"The dirt road that you have to turn down is about a mile back," the grandmother directed. "I marked it when we passed."
"A dirt road," Bailey groaned.
After they had turned around and were headed toward the dirt road, the grandmother recalled other points about the house, the beautiful glass over the front doorway and the candle-lamp in the hall. John Wesley said that the secret panel was probably in the fireplace.
"You can't go inside this house," Bailey said. "You don't know who lives there."
"While you all talk to the people in front, I'll run around behind and get in a window," John Wesley suggested.
"We'll all stay in the car," his mother said.
They turned onto the dirt road and the car raced roughly along in a swirl of pink dust. The grandmother recalled the times when there were no paved roads and thirty miles was a day's journey. The dirt road was hilly and there were sudden washes in it and sharp curves on dangerous embankments. All at once they would be on a hill, looking down over the blue tops of trees for miles around, then the next minute, they would be in a red depression with the dust-coated trees looking down on them.
"This place had better turn up in a minute," Bailey said, "or I'm going to turn around."
The road looked as if no one had traveled on it in months.
"It's not much farther," the grandmother said and just as she said it, a horrible thought came to her. The thought was so embarrassing that she turned red in the face and her eyes dilated and her feet jumped up, upsetting her valise in the corner. The instant the valise moved, the newspaper top she had over the basket under it rose with a snarl and Pitty Sing, the cat, sprang onto Bailey's shoulder.
The children were thrown to the floor and their mother, clutching the baby, was thrown out the door onto the ground; the old lady was thrown into the front seat. The car turned over once and landed right-side-up in a gulch off the side of the road. Bailey remained in the driver's seat with the cat gray-striped with a broad white face and an orange nose clinging to his neck like a caterpillar.
As soon as the children saw they could move their arms and legs, they scrambled out of the car, shouting, "We've had an ACCIDENT!" The grandmother was curled up under the dashboard, hoping she was injured so that Bailey's wrath would not come down on her all at once. The horrible thought she had had before the accident was that the house she had remembered so vividly was not in Georgia but in Tennessee.
Bailey removed the cat from his neck with both hands and flung it out the window against the side of a pine tree. Then he got out of the car and started looking for the children's mother. She was sitting against the side of the red gutted ditch, holding the screaming baby, but she only had a cut down her face and a broken shoulder. "We've had an ACCIDENT!" the children screamed in a frenzy of delight.
"But nobody's killed," June Star said with disappointment as the grandmother limped out of the car, her hat still pinned to her head but the broken front brim standing up at a jaunty angle and the violet spray hanging off the side. They all sat down in the ditch, except the children, to recover from the shock. They were all shaking.
"Maybe a car will come along," said the children's mother hoarsely.
"I believe I have injured an organ," said the grandmother, pressing her side, but no one answered her. Bailey's teeth were clattering. He had on a yellow sport shirt with bright blue parrots designed in it and his face was as yellow as the shirt. The grandmother decided that she would not mention that the house was in Tennessee.
The road was about ten feet above and they could see only the tops of the trees on the other side of it. Behind the ditch they were sitting in there were more woods, tall and dark and deep. In a few minutes they saw a car some distance away on top of a hill, coming slowly as if the occupants were watching them. The grandmother stood up and waved both arms dramatically to attract their attention. The car continued to come on slowly, disappeared around a bend and appeared again, moving even slower, on top of the hill they had gone over. It was a big black battered hearselike automobile. There were three men in it.
It came to a stop just over them and for some minutes, the driver looked down with a steady expressionless gaze to where they were sitting, and didn't speak. Then he turned his head and muttered something to the other two and they got out. One was a fat boy in black trousers and a red sweat shirt with a silver stallion embossed on the front of it. He moved around on the right side of them and stood staring, his mouth partly open in a kind of loose grin. The other had on khaki pants and a blue striped coat and a gray hat pulled down very low, hiding most of his face. He came around slowly on the left side. Neither spoke.
The driver got out of the car a