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Examples Of Foreshadowing In A Good Man Is Hard To Find

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Stupidity should be painful. When paired with a lack of common sense strife usually occurs. In severe cases natural selection transpires. In Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” natural selection literally expunges a single blood line due to the selfish actions of the grandmother. In her story, O’ Connor utilizes foreshadowing in order to effectively orchestrate the family’s untimely death. The family is set to go on a vacation to Florida. Due to her longing for the trip to go to Tennessee, the grandmother “seized every chance she got” (O’Connor 427) to attempt to alter the family’s destination. To her dismay the final destination was never changed. Instead of staying home the grandmother goes with the family because she is “afraid to miss something”(427) no matter how unimportant. When the family leaves for the vacation the grandmother, refuses to leave her cat at home, and in turn decides to smuggle her cat inside a basket because her son would not be very happy with arriving “at a motel with a cat” (427). Little did she know that her precious feline would be associated with the whole family’s demise. While the grandmother was going from one “cat nap”(430) to the next, the family ironically passes through the …show more content…

She is slow to get out of the car for this reason. Inconsistent to her wish to be heavily injured during the wreck, the grandmother emerges from the wreck virtually unscathed. To the dismay of June Star the grandmother, or anyone else was not “killed”(432). The grandmother’s thoughts about potential injury and June Star’s disappointment with no one being killed foreshadows that someone is going to die. Ironically, the grandmother positively identifies The Misfit when he drives up. Now, The Misfit has to kill them in order to insure that they cannot live to speak of his actions, possessions and

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