A Good Man is hard to Find Essay

If you were to ask someone what their definition of a happy life would be, they would probably give you an answer like, “having fun.” This is completely untrue in Aristotle’s terms. According to Aristotle, for a man to lead a happy life he must learn each of the intellectual virtues, and practice each of the moral virtues throughout his life. These moral virtues are justice, courage, temperance, magnificence, magnanimity, liberality, gentleness, prudence, and wisdom. With so many virtues to constantly abide by, a man cannot know if he has led a happy life until his life is nearly finished. In the story “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” by Flannery O’ Connor, the question is

Southern family preparing to go on what seems to be a typical vacation. The story is humorous at first because the reader is unaware of how the story will end. The tone changes dramatically from amusing to frightening and plays an important part in making the story effective.

Since the beginning of mankind there is been an unsolved issue of good verses evil. We see this controversial issue in everyday life, Such as Television, Newspaper, etc. " It is not difficult to label the agent of evil in Flannery O' Connor's signature story, "A Good Man is Hard To Find", says John, Desmond. The family is described as a typical modern family, which has all type of problems. Agreeing with each other is one of the biggest problems the family faces. The story starts of where Grandma is in disagreement with her son about where they should plane there next family trip to. After much discussion they decided on going to Florida. The story makes a twist when their car gets into an accident and they have an encounter with Misfit,

I’ll give you all the money I’ve got!” (O’Connor 355). She is pleading the Misfit for her life only by saying the word lady repeatedly and offering him the money. She is also praising the Misfit by calling him a good man and trying to save her life. She was also careless about her family. When her family is taken down into the woods, she continues to talk to Misfit. She ignores the sound of when her son and rest of the family were being shot. She is apparently oblivious to many things. She was ignoring everything but the Misfit. “The shirt came flying at him and landed on his shoulders and he put it on. The grandmother couldn’t name what the shirt reminded her of” (O’Connor 354). The grandmother doesn’t even realize that shirt was her son Baileys. She had no interest in knowing where that shirt came from and what happened to my family. For the concern of her life only, she tries to persuade the Misfit the same way she tried with her family. “I know you’re a good man. You don’t look a bit like you have common blood. I know you must come from nice people!” (O’Connor 352). She is trying to manipulate the Misfit and hopes that he will bear her. She is thinking about no one else but the sake for herself. However she fails once again to influence the Misfit.

     One of the most important scenes in the story takes place in the vehicle. The grandmother spots an old family graveyard that once belonged to a plantation. She tells the children that the graves

The grandmother hid her cat in a basket, which she puts in the car with her on the day of the trip. The grandmother wears a floral hat and dress, because if she were to get into a car accident people would know she is “a lady”. The two kids June Star and John Wesley clearly dislike their grandmother, it is very clear because they often make remarks to suggest this. The family makes their way through Georgia and they Grandma reminisces about an old suitor she had back in the day when the family passes

To begin with, the narrator’s emotional bond that grew with her grandmother was slow but impactful. One day she was sick and her grandmother had taken care of her, using homemade balm she describes as “sun shining through the darkness of your eyelids” (Viramontes 33). As a result of this feeling of care and warmth she became fond of her time with her grandmother. Out of all her sibling, she was the one that chose to visit her and help with chores. On the contrary to the beliefs of her sisters, the

Moments later The Misfit releases some of his stress when he tells two of his companions to bring two of the children back into the woods. The grandmother hears gunfire and shivers in pain, not knowing the two children were just killed. She then begins to ask The Misfit about his life, "I just know you're a good man," the woman said (O'Connor 688). The Misfit slowly began to tell the woman about his parents and his childhood. He explained how his father looked down upon him; "you're a different breed of dog," he once said (O'Connor 688). The grandmother waits with anticipation as The Misfit tells her about his life. After hearing about his hardships and misfortunes, tells The Misfit to pray for help. He listens to her and shows no response. The Misfit did not know what he was punished for: "somewheres along the line I done something wrong and I got sent to the penitentiary…I forget what I done lady. I set there… trying to remember what it was I done and I

After riding along a little further, the family is involved in a car accident. The main reason that the family is involved in the car accident is due to the grandmother. The grandmother remembers a mansion that she visits as a young girl. She is eager to go, because she wants the children to see how she grew up. This further states how the grandmother social class, because she lived in a mansion. During the time of the grandmother’s life, only plantation owners and their family lived in mansions. This also stressed the social class of the grandmother, because you can tell from this that the

A good man really is hard to find. But what is the real definition of a real man? Maybe it is not just the prince charming you see in fairy tales or the perfect guy walking down Sixth Ave. that you pass by everyday to work. Maybe a good guy is simply someone that is good what they do. In this case the relationship between the grandmother and the misfit is just that. The only thing is if the reader sees it as clearly as the author would like them too or simply as she does.

The main character of the story, the grandmother, finds herself in a situation of conflict while trying to help and understand a murderer who has just killed her whole family. Even though she might not be the only one at fault, her actions started the end to all of her family in the story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find”. In “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, written by Flannery O’Connor, we come across what some would see as a manipulating person, the grandmother. Could the earlier generation of the grandmother just give her a different way of thinking than that of the current generation of her son and grandchildren? We have 3 generations of a family all with different ideas of the perfect weekend getaway. We have an adult son who in his mind is the one in control, his wife and two not so well behaved children and their manipulative grandmother, who believes she can get whatever she wants. O’Connor writes the story so that the reader can understand the situation. Most have been in a similar situation with family, where they all cannot agree on what to do or where to go. None of them saw what would take place by days end. O’Connor puts most of the focus onto the grandmother. She is a woman who knows what she wants and will do whatever to get it. But by ends day you see that narcissistic grandmother transform right in front of you. The

In “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” this talks about a family who is set on a journey to go to Florida for their vacation. The grandmother saw in a newspaper that a serial killer whose name was Misfit was on a loose. The grandmother tried persuading his son, Bailey, to just go to Tennessee and not to

Looking at “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, the reader is introduced to a family very early on in the story. With a particular character standing out, the grandmother. Her

The Misfit’s motivation for killing the family and for his criminal behavior overall derives from his time in the penitentiary. During his conversation with the grandmother, the Misfit reveals that “‘a head-doctor at the penitentiary said what [he] had done was kill [his] daddy but [he] known that for a lie’” (460); however, he denies the possibility that they threw him in the penitentiary by mistake, claiming that “‘they had the papers on [him]’” (460). The Misfit receives a punishment for a crime he cannot remember committing, which leads him to question whether the “punishment fits the crime.” His worries morph into a belief that he did not deserve the punishment they gave him, and this belief begins to increase the divide between his views on punishment and criminal behavior. This gap continues to widen until the Misfit no longer sees any correlation between crime and punishment. Because of his inability to see the affiliation

Almost every story has a protagonist. A protagonist is the main character of a story there can be more than one, they can be female or male, and they can be good or bad. It might be thought that they are all the same or that they are all different. These are easy assumptions to make but, after reading many stories it becomes apparent that protagonist’s might share similarities and differences. By comparing the main female characters from three different stories the questions surrounding protagonists can easily be answered. Are all protagonist’s the same? Are they different? Or are they both?