Flannery O Connor Grandmother

The grandmother is the central character in the short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” by Flannery O’Connor. She is also a very well rounded and dynamic character. She shows various characteristics and reveals various remarks as they story progresses. Some of her qualities include selfish and a pushy person. She is also kind of manipulator in a way that she insists her family to change the plan. At the beginning of the story when we first realize her desire to visit her childhood house, she is being a very selfish person. Examining her conversation with her son Bailey, the grandmother is moreover a pushy person. She is convincing Bailey to change the trip plan according to her need only and which will

The Grandmother displays the proper image of a southern Christian woman in the presence of other people. Her clothing, her perfection, and her attitude are perceived as truly religious. In reality, the grandmother is exceedingly selfish and corrupt morally. She preaches and gives sermons throughout the story yet in the face of danger she thinks only of herself. O'Conner writes “…the grandmother had on a navy blue straw sailor hat with a bunch of white violets on the brim and a navy blue dress with a small white dot in the print. Her collar and cuffs were white organdy trimmed with lace, and at her neckline, she pinned a purple spray of cloth violets containing a sachet. In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady” (O'Conner, 2007). She is obviously over dressed for a road trip, again it pin points the grandmother's obsession with materials. Grandmother uses gender roles, “you wouldn’t shoot a lady would you,”(O'Conner, 2007) and religious images to try to save herself. She preaches and prays to the Misfit as if he is Jesus, “Jesus…you’ve got good blood, Jesus you ought not to shoot a lady” (O'Conner, 2007). She radiates an aura of holiness at the same time sounding self-serving.

Right off the bat we get the sense that the grandmother is very self-centered and conniving. She mentions the Misfit for one reason only- to get what she wants, rather than being genuinely concerned about her family. “‘…See here, read this,’ and she stood with one hand on her thin hip and the other rattling the newspaper at his bald head. ‘Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and head toward Florida… I wouldn’t take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn’t answer to my conscience if I did’”. (O’Connor 705) This indicates the grandmother’s selfish focus and her willingness to manipulate others to attain her own desires. She puts a lot of effort in making sure she is well

Flannery O’Connor was an extravagant author who lived a tough childhood. She lost her father to lupus at a young age, but continued to strive for excellence. She attended grammar school, high school, college, and earned a fellowship to Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa. At age 22 she was ready to start her writing career. Some of her best work was written in the twentieth-century. One of her books even won the National Book Award. She was clearly a writer of success. Unfortunately, Flannery O’Connor’s writing career was cut short when she died of lupus right before her fortieth birthday (1925-1964). However, her work of brilliance continues to live on without her.

The intriguing question that puzzles the audience on the debate at what declares a person to be good. In Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” The protagonist, the grandmother, is an old-fashioned character that lives with her only son named bailey. The grandmother, who portrays to be a conniving manipulator, whom leads them to their demise. O’Connor foreshadows the twist that the story is not what it appears to be, the morality of good and evil, and a moment of redemption.

In the opening sentences, the reader is given the first glimpse of the grandmother’s selfish and manipulative personality when describing her point of view about going to Florida. “The grandmother didn’t want to go to Florida. She wanted to visit some of her connections in east Tennessee and she was seizing at every

The Grandmother is not a lady and a good Christian woman from the beginning of the story she is introduced to be unlikable by complaining and trying to manipulate her son and his wife to go to Tennessee instead of Florida. She proves herself selfish when she sneaks Pitty Sing, the cat into the car disregarding her son's wishes. Throughout the story, she judges and tries to push her morals on to everyone this is evident throughout the story but especially when the family stops at Red Sam’s to eat. The Grandmother asks Red Sam’s wife if she is ashamed of where she lives insinuating that she should be. If she was truly good she would not have tried to make the wife feel ashamed of her own home but instead stayed quiet or pointed out good qualities.

In the beginning of the story, O’Connor introduces a somewhat typical family preparing for vacation with their grandmother. During their preparation, the family illustrates just how disjointed and manipulative they truly are. In fact, in an attempt to get her own way, the grandmother tries to scare the family into going to Tennessee instead of Florida, with the news of a killer who escaped prison. “Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is loose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida and you read here what it says he did to these people”.(O’Connor 575). The grandmother 's tactic represents the selfish and manipulative tendencies of humanity.

In the short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” Flannery O'Connor reveals the true characteristics of a grandmother who poses herself as a respectable “lady” and a good Christian woman, although she is not. Even though she may speak of Jesus to the misfit, the grandmother is certainly not a deeply religious person. Believing that, “If you would pray, Jesus would help you,”(6) in her eyes, makes her more ladylike, more so because of the way she was brought up. Being ‘ladylike” meant being polite, cultured, and modest, which is what they expected women to be like in the time period the story was taken place. Also, being religious, back then, made you more respectable because it showed that you had a set of morals to live by. She has convinced

This lady is quite self-centered, manipulative, and proud; she is constantly persuading her family to make them do what she wants. For example, after the Grandmother has convinced them to take the dirt road, and she realizes that the house they are looking for is not in Georgia, but in Tennessee, the Grandmother stays silent to avoid the embarrassment. However, the most distinctive aspect of the Grandmother’s personality is her sense of Utopia. She is constantly recoiling better times which she associates with the Old South of Gone with the Wind, “when there were no paved roads” (135), and more importantly, when good men were easy to find. There also traces of what Lipset calls morality plays in the Grandmother; at the beginning of the story, the Grandmother does not want to go to Florida because she “wouldn’t take [her] children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it.

The Grandmother is one of the main characters in “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor. As the family is heading toward Florida for vacation, the Grandmother manipulates her son to turn around to visit an old plantation. The family has an accident and comes face-to-face with an escaped convict and his henchmen. After the Grandmother recognized the criminal as the Misfit, the rest of the family is lead into the woods by the henchmen and murdered. Even after pleading for her life, the Grandmother is shot and killed by the Misfit. The Grandmother, who longs for the “good old days,” attempts to manipulate others with her dishonesty. I chose the Grandmother because she reminds me of my father. I dislike the Grandmother, and I would not want to have anyone like her in my life.

The grandmother can be visually perceived as an archetypical woman who believes she is better than she authentically is. Her values throughout the story portray her as a “Souther Belle”. While struggles between her southern values and money-oriented culture, her comportment is justified due to her Southern upbringing (Owens).By incorporating class and social values to the story, O’Connor tackles the manifestation of her social order, and present her character to portray her as exactly as she is (Owens). Focusing on the grandmother character, Mitchell Owens explains the grandmother’s values and her relationship with wealth, and social order as they are all heredity. He states

My beliefs are the grandma had all good intentions, however, she has an attitude of being selfish, manipulative and deceitful to make things go her way. This is much like a friend I know. For this essay, we will call that friend “Tiffany”. At the beginning of the story, we see that the grandmother has good intentions. The grandmother brings to Bailey, the son, the idea of going to another location for the vacation.

The twentieth century had many great short story writers. Flannery O'Connor one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. The most popular selections were “A Good Man is Hard to Find” “Good Country People” and “Everything That Rises Must Converge. Her background had many influences on what she wrote about in these selections. Her influential background greatly affected the situations that were present in her work.

"Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida and you read here what it says he did to these people. Just you read it. I wouldn't take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it" (925), this quote leads us into the story of how the grandmother will act throughout the story. The grandmother is the one that brings everyone to The Misfit, she takes them down the wrong road, by indirectly causing the accident, and then by telling The Misfit that she recognizes him. The grandmother is very at fault for this because she spoke when she probably should not have about knowing who the Misfit is. The grandmother is implicitly setting herself up as a "good" person, since good people are people who follow their conscience.