A Good Man Is Hard To Find Moment Of Grace

In the short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” O’Conner, tries to make us understand the meaning of grace. The Misfit and the Grandma are the two main characters that show us what grace is and how it can be applied to a person’s everyday life. In Flannery O’Conner’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” the Grandma tries to save her family by convincing them to visit a place she recommends to keep them away from the Misfit, whom with they later come in contact. Neither the Grandma nor the Misfit deserves grace but it is given to them anyway.

In "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," Flannery O'Connor represents her style of writing very accurately. She includes her "themes and methods - comedy, violence, theological concern - and thus makes them quickly and unmistakably available" (Asals 177). In the beginning of the story O'Connor represents the theme of comedy by describing the typical grandmother. Then O'Connor moves on to include the violent aspect by bringing the Misfit into the story. At the end of the story the theme changes to theological concern as the attention is directed towards the grandmother's witnessing. As the themes change throughout the story, the reader's perception of the grandmother also changes.

Thesis Statement: In Flannery O'Connor's short story, "A Good Man is Hard to Find”, the grandmother's journey from being controlling and selfish to graceful symbolizes a Christian's journey toward salvation.

In the story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor starts out by giving a look at a dysfunctional family on a vacation, but ultimately, gives insight into ourselves as well as the nature of good and evil, how they can clash, and how they can co-exist, even in the same person. The setting, which plays a critical role in this short story because the grandmother shows her selfish wants and views on people and society and believes that things were much better in her early years. As the story unfolds the setting provides insights to the where the dysfunctional family will eventually meet their doom, which is

    “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” one of O’Connor’s best works, describes a family on a trip to Florida and their encounter with an escaped prisoner, The Misfit. Although “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” is an early work in O’Connor’s career, it contains many of the elements which are used in the majority of her short stories. The grandmother, a selfish and deceitful woman, is a recipient of a moment of grace, despite her many flaws and sins. A moment of grace is a revelation of truth. When the grandmother calls The Misfit her child and reaches out to touch him, the grandmother has a moment of grace that enabled her to see The Misfit as a suffering human being who she is obligated to love. The grandmother realizes that nothing will stop The Misfit from killing her but she reaches out to him despite this. The Misfit rejects her love and kills her anyway. This moment of grace is very important

Religion was a recurring theme in her work, and the main characters of her first and second novels were preachers of sorts. O’Connor is best known for her short stories, specifically the book, A Good Man Is Hard To Find. This story uses the theme of sin. The grandmother makes it known that everyone is guilty of something, as she tells the Misfit that no person is without sin. This is an example of O’Connor using her faith within her writings. The grandmother also brings up praying to Jesus, when confronted by the Misfit, another Religious example in her work. O’Connor also uses the theme of family in many of her works. This is shown through A Good Man Is Hard to Find by showing the family’s relationship. Although the relationship was not tight-knit, the theme of family of is prevalent.

    One of the most common ways that O'Connor's characters came to a moment of grace was through tragedy. By putting her characters through an intense gauntlet of fear or sadness, O’Connor made the sudden moment of grace much more believable and hard hitting. In “ A Good Man Is Hard To Find” O'Connor devotes a moment of grace to both the Grandmother and the Misfit. During the story the Grandmother is constantly picking apart the world around her. She believes that she is holier than everyone else, however she finally see reality upon meeting the Misfit. After making an unsuccessful attempt at convincing the Misfit that he is a good person, the convict holds a gun towards the old lady. In that moment she realizes that she has been living a false life. She was a hollow woman who did not practice what she preached, a fact that even the misfit noticed. “She would have been a good woman,” the Misfit said, “if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life” ( O'Connor 6). The old lady was bad person, and the only way she was going to change was through her moment of grace, which in this case resulted in

Flannery O’Connor’s short stories “A good man is hard to find” and “Revelation” share many similarities. While “A good man is hard to find” is about a family that goes on a vacation that ultimately results in all of their deaths. “Revelation” is about a woman who is very judgmental and looks down on people. In the end both characters have revelations that contrast with who they are and how they portray themselves to the world.

The grandmother feels that God provides the answer to any underlying problems, and the Misfit knows and feels that all of the horrible things he has done are truly not considered morally wrong from his perspective. Towards the end, when the grandmother experienced an epiphany before the Misfit shot her in the chest she stated, “Why you’re one of my babies. You’re one of my own children” (11). This made the grandmother realize that she was expressing the true Christian belief that we are all seen as equal in the eyes of God, no matter how murderous someone may be. O’Connor’s use of spiritual insight stripped away the grandmothers self-centeredness, and helped her discover the ability to see others with compassion and understanding. Nonetheless, within “A Good Man is Hard to Find” O’Connor provides great amount of spiritual insight in her short stories mainly as a way to connect her characters with God and to make them recognize the true meaning of individual equality.

Flanner O’Connor, author of “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, has an underlying theme within her writing, which is Christianity. If a reader does not keep O’Connor’s Christian background in focus, it will be impossible to fully interpret/understand O’Connor’s stories. In Flannery O’Connor’s writing, she leans more towards the subjects of: the search for Jesus, the meaning of ‘prophecy’ and the struggle for redemption, per Nazaryn, A. Out of these three subjects, coming from Nazaryn, the most important to Flannery would be the struggle for redemption and the search for Jesus, since these are the most vital to a searching spiritual life. O’Connor’s character, for example, the grandmother, in “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, follows her journey of a person in need of salvation and then the violence she endures awakens her towards a spiritual need. O’Connor creates a violence which leads to a personal crisis, which then leads to someone waking up to spiritual salvation. Taking into consideration on how a person goes through life, through trials and tribulations, he or she is bound to reach that point in their life of reaching salvation. In “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, it is critical to understand that O’Connor’s Christian values are embodied in the message that her characters tell

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.

ous first impressions of the grandmother in the short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” would not be associated with a good woman. At glance, the grandmother is manipulative towards her own family, starting with the introduction of the story when she attempts to convince the family to visit Tennessee instead. As the story progresses, the grandmother is more closely evaluated and portrayed as superficial and shallow due to her misconceptions of what is considered “good.” In the final scene, the last bit of the grandmother and the Misfit’s exchange is where the grandmother has her moment of grace. Author Flannery O’ Connor, in her short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” depicts the life of a family with a seemingly selfish and deceptive grandmother, whom claims to adhere to the everyday practice and morals of the ideal Christian; her character raises the question of redemption once the story comes to an end. Also, from the beginning of the story until the end, the grandmother leaves a negative

In the short story, “ A Good Man Is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor, multiple things go disastrously wrong. A family with a self centered grandmother take a road trip to Florida and because of her, the family is all led to their demise. It is a story some would argue to be about a wicked grandmother coming to grace; however, it is the opposite. It is about a granny that has never been concerned for anyone or anything other than herself. There is no act of final grace. The grandmothers talkativeness, narcissism, and stubbornness all contributed to the events that ultimately lead to her families untimely deaths.

"A Good Man is Hard to Find" is an extremely powerful commentary that elucidates Flannery O'Connor's opinions about religion and society. Like the majority of her other works, " A Good Man is Hard to Find" has attracted many "interpretations based on Christian dogma" (Bandy 1). These Christian explications are justified because Miss O'Connor is notorious for expressing Catholic doctrines through her fiction. Once she even remarked "I see from the standpoint of Christian orthodoxy" (Kropf 1). This longstanding reputation compels every critic of O'Connor to expose the religious convictions encrypted within her stories. The grandmother's final gesture towards the Misfit is not a

Flannery O’Connor also begins her story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” with the introduction of Grandma, the main character. The grandmother appears to represent godliness and Christianity. She is said in the story to have “lacked comprehension, but… had a good heart”.