A Good Man Is Hard To Find Analysis

Two more pertinent points are made by the author, in regards to the grandmother, follow in quick succession; both allude to further yet-to-be seen gloom within the story. O’Connor writes of the grandmother “[s]he 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 the gas burners and accidentally asphyxiate himself” (1043) and of the way she is dressed “[i]n case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady” (1043). These two observations are innocent enough on the surface but provide true intent on the foreshadowing that O’Connor uses throughout the story. It is these two devices, irony and foreshadowing, that I feel are prominent and important aspects of the story and are evidenced in my quest to decipher this story.

First we will take a look at grandmother. She is made to look like the saint in this story. Her, in contrast to the rest, is the good person, always looking out for the best of others. She is not going on vacation, she is going to visit her "connections" in Tennessee. While

n the Flannery O’Connor’s short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” we find out that the title indicates of what the story is about. The title actually came from the lyrics of a song written by Eddie Green in 1918. The title of “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Conner is quite ironic really. The reader expects to eventually find a good man in the story, but is quite surprised at the ending of the story. The title "A Good Man is Hard to Find" is expressed clearly in this story by introducing a variety of male personalities that all have one thing in common, they are not truly good men.

He acts like a mirror. He lets whatever the Grandmother says bounce right off him. He never really agrees with her or disagrees, and in the end he is the one who kills her. His second to last line, “She would of been a good woman,” The Misfit said, “if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life,”(O'Conner 425). might be the way O'Conner felt about most of us alive, or how she felt that God must feel about us. The third, and final stage of the Grandmother is the moment of recovery. She finally sees The Misfit for who he really is, a person just like her. He is not someone who was made by his social class. He is a simple human being just like her. At this point she sees herself in relation to everyone else. She finally realizes that her class does not make her. Society makes the class, and she just fits into it. She shows this by claiming that The Misfit could be one of her own beloved children.

Perhaps lingering memories of times past allow grandmother to conclude that good men are hard to find. While grandma comments that he is a good man, his wife comes to the table with the food and a contributing thought that no one can be trusted (as she looks at Red). To this point, even a routine stop for a bite to eat never escapes the harsh realities of the grandmother as she tries to deal with choices, and the resulting consequences from her youth.

Throughout the story we can see O’Connor’s wicked humor she portrays through the character grandma, grandma is very judgmental and manipulative of others. She lives in Georgia with her only son Bailey, his wife and their three children John

Flannery O’Connor uses this small, seemingly insignificant sentence to begin to unravel the family’s dark future that lie ahead of them. This, yet again, resorts to the grandmother being a symbol for a mischievous deity or spirit. In the story, her role is the enabler and perpetrator of disasters. Not only does the grandmother’s reasoning seem too foretelling to be reasonable, she is also the perpetrator of total disasters because of her frivolous little things like dressing up.

Flannery O’Conner grew up in the backwoods of Georgia, where she found her inspiration for her writing. Her Southern heritage was not the only thing that influenced her though; often her Roman Catholic faith would impact her stories as well (Ellis 35-36). She described herself as a “Catholic peculiarly possessed of the modern consciousness” (qtd. in Hubbard 38) and stated that “the best of [her] work sounded like the old testament would sound if it were being written today” (qtd. in Kreyling 85). As such, O’Conner is known for her portrayal of religious themes throughout her writings. In “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” Flannery O’Conner utilizes violence in order to develop the grandmother’s character within the story, and by doing so, she is able to demonstrate the difference between having a moral code and being virtuous.

Thought to be one of Flannery O'Connor's best short stories "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" regales us with the narrative of an inconsiderate maladroit family and their subsequent chilling massacre as committed by fugitives led by a notorious butcher christened the Misfit. This tale is renowned for its spiritual qualities, specifically the author’s portrayal of redemption through the appalling and vicious deaths of her surreal characters. O'Connor can be applauded for her vivid use of colorful details from everyday life in addition to utilizing the comical elements of her southern upbringing. O’Connor also shows a proclivity with the talent to make the reader visualize the eccentricities of characters like the grandmother

In my view I believe that the grandmother is not a sympathetic character because when they got into that wreck, she over done everything and made everything that happed seem so bad. It also seemed like no one cared that she was even there at that time. The grandmother also is a very bossy woman and she doesn’t put up with nothing. When the misfit came around her, she acted real fine almost like she liked him and really cared for him.

Good and bad, right and wrong, hero and monster, are just a few of the many views that encompass society. Everyone has their own opinions, and they depend on their morals and values to help guide them through life. In the short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” Flannery O’Connor portrays a family vacation to Florida that unfortunately ends up being a catastrophe when they run into a monster called the Misfit. The short story depicts a contemporary society, where the characters’ actions and beliefs are parallel to those in the real world. Egotism, bellicosities, and crimes cohabit with compassion, morals and ethics. The characterization and irony in the story illustrate that all people have qualities of a hero and a monster. O’Connor uses

Using O’Connor’s Catholic faith as an inspiration, the main protagonist, the grandmother, act as the epitome of a civilized Southern lady, utilizing her faith as a distraction from the material world, and vice versa. Unlike her seemingly secular family members, O’Connor develops the grandmother to ultimately act as the beacon of grace in a cruel, unforgiving world, but acting as the victim, she inevitably succumbs to worldly vices. Plainly put by Susan Larson in her analysis of “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” the grandmother is possessed by “pride, pettiness, and self-centeredness” (1). Despite her efforts as a Christian woman, the grandmother places the utmost importance of the betterment of herself, passing off the basic Christian virtue of humility. When facing ordinary life, the grandmother performs no

Throughout her short story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” Flannery O’Connor exposes the blatant racism and disjointed practice of religion within her mid-twentieth century society. To display these themes, she presents the grandmother and the Misfit, two exceedingly flawed and immoral characters. However, being a Catholic writer, O’Connor utilizes the Misfit to demonstrate grace’s ability to convert troubled and hateful people through the metamorphosis of their moral conscious. Despite his initial lack of faith, the Misfit’s morality and attitude towards religion are transformed by the grandmother’s graceful epiphany.

In Flannery O'Connor's eccentric short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” the reader is introduced to her fundamental theme of Identity through a typical southern family. O’Connor’s exceptional use of fictional elements such as characterization, point of view, and setting further develop this theme in her work. She does so by familiarizing the use of violence, humor, and salvation along with point of view and setting to create a deeper connection between her work and the reader.

(O’Connor 2) This depiction of her moral judgement shows how superficial the grandmother’s concept of good truly is. Her ignorance is furthur illustrated by her interactions with Red Sammy, the owner of a gas station that the family stops in. She labels him a good man for being swindled by two scammers, simply because she relates to his statement that no one is trustworthy any longer. The grandmother is so swept up in agreeing with Red Sammy, she fails to see his poor judgement.