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The Geranium

• O'Connor writes from the point of view of Old Dudley, an aged father of a woman from the South, now living in a depressing walk-up apartment in New York City. Old Dudley's observations of his "new world" are written through dialect and as internal dialogue.

• Old Dudley's longing for "home" is poignant and vivid; he sits for hours watching a red geranium in a pot on the windowsill of an apartment across the alley way, worrying that the sun is too hot for it and that it needs water.

• Old Dudley’s homesickness becomes even more painful when he finds out the black man next door to his daughter's apartment is not a servant, but the new tenant. His lifelong belief in segregation in his beloved South finds this untenable.

• Within a day or two, Old Dudley’s daughter sends him downstairs to a friend's apartment...

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