O'Connor, "A Stroke of Good Fortune"

"All those children were what did her mother in--eight of them: two born dead, one died in the first year, one crushed under a mowing machine. Her mother had got dead with every one of them. And all for what? Because she hadn't known any better."(O'Connor).

http://blogs.setonhill.edu/TiffanyGilbert/2008/03/count_your_blessings.html

"She gazed with stony unrecognition at the face that confronted her in the dark yellow-spotted mirror ever the table" (A Stroke of Good Fortune O'Connor pg 63).

http://blogs.setonhill.edu/AngelaPalumbo/2008/03/am_i_missing_something.html

“It was natural when you took on some weight to take it on in the middle and Bill Hill didn’t mind her being fat, he was just more happy and didn’t know why…he would never slip up” (O’Connor 77).
http://blogs.setonhill.edu/GretaCarroll/2008/03/pessimistic_pregnancy.html

“She was the only one in her family who had been different, who had had any get.” (O’Connor, A Stroke of Good Fortune, pg 65)

http://blogs.setonhill.edu/AngelicaGuzzo/2008/03/whos_to_say.html

"Do you know what great birthday this is?" he asked." (O'Connor pg. 69)
http://blogs.setonhill.edu/MadelynGillespie/2008/03/its_a_birthday_hapday_surprise.html
Nothin' like a bouncin' baby to bring a little high an' a little low into yer life!

"You better take it easy, baby, she told herself, you're too young to bust your gears. Thirty-four wasn't old, wasn't any age at all" (O'Connor, A Stroke of Good Fortune, pg 71).

http://blogs.setonhill.edu/AllisonHall/2008/03/how_old_is_too_old.html

"She opened her eyes and gazed down into the dark hole, down to the very bottom where she had started up so long ago. 'Good Fortune,' she said in a hollow voice that echoed along all the levels of the cavern, 'Baby.'

'Good Fortune, Baby,' the three echoes leered.

Then she recognized the feeling again, a little roll. It was as if it were not in her stomach. It was as if it were out nowhere in nothing, out nowhere, resting and waiting, with plenty of time."

-From Flannery O'Connor's "A Stroke of Good Fortune," page 79
http://blogs.setonhill.edu/EricaGearhart/2008/03/an_unconventional_birth_of_ide.html

"Noooo," she said and leaned her round red face between the two nearest poles. She looked down into the stairwell and gave a long hollow wail that widened and echoed as it went down. The stair cavern was dark green and mole-colored and the wail sounded at the very bottom like a voice answering her. She gasped and shut her eyes. No. No. It couldn't be any baby. She was not going to have something waiting in her to maker her deader, she was not (O'Connor 78)."

http://blogs.setonhill.edu/StephanieWytovich/2008/03/i_can_actually_understand_wher.html

"Laverne stood looking at her and after a second she folded her arms and very pointedly stuck her stomach out and began to sway back and forth" (O'Connor 73).

http://blogs.setonhill.edu/KaitlinMonier/2008/03/laverne_knows.html

"It was the one word that frightened her the most. She had thought the word cancer once and dropped it instantly because no horror like that was coming to her because it couldn't." (O'Conner 72)

"No. No. It couldn't be any baby" ("Good Fortune" 78).

http://blogs.setonhill.edu/EthanShepley/2008/03/a_twist.html

http://blogs.setonhill.edu/RichelleDodaro/2008/03/that_magical_place_but_there_i.html

"Nobody thinks any more," Mr. Jerger said (O'Connor 71).

Start thinking: http://blogs.setonhill.edu/LaurenMiller/2008/03/lack_of_knowledge_lack_of_valu.html

"She thought herself again in comparison with her mother at thirty-four and she pinched her arm and smiled. Seeing that her mother or father neither had been much to look at, she had done very well" (O'Connor 68).
http://blogs.setonhill.edu/JulianaCox/2008/03/the_trouble_with_her_heart_mig.html

"'Into my heart,' he said, placing his hand over it."

http://blogs.setonhill.edu/JessieFarine/2008/03/the_faiths_in_my_chest.html

“ ‘Collard greens!’ she said, spitting the word from her mouth this time as if it were a poisonous seed.”

The end of the story was predictable...especially if you knew this:
http://blogs.setonhill.edu/JeanineONeal/2008/03/collards_greens_and_baby_dream.html