A Good Man Is Hard To Find By Flannery O Connor

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.

Working Thesis: In “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, O’Connor uses the corrupt, manipulative character of the grandmother, as well as the story’s plot and theme in order to emphasize the flaws of the church and the need for grace.

    “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

     In the short story, 'A Good Man is Hard to Find', the main character is the grandmother. Flannery O'Connor, the author, lets the reader find out who the grandmother is by her conversations and reactions to the other characters in the story. The grandmother is the most important character in the story because she has a main role in the stories principal action. This little old lady is the protagonist in this piece. We learn more about her from her direct conversation with the son, Bailey, her grandchildren, June Star and John Wesley, and the Misfit killer. Through these conversations, we know that she is a lady raised from a traditional background. In the story, her attitude changes

Flannery O' Connor, a native of Georgia was one of the most prolific writers of the twentieth century. As a strict Catholic, O' Connor often displayed a sense of spiritual corruption within the characters in most of her stories. One of O' Connor's famous stories, "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," reveals the image of spiritual deficiency inherent in the characters which foreshadowed a bloody end.

An ardent Catholic as she was, Flannery O’Connor astonishes and puzzles the readers of her most frequently compiled work, A Good Man Is Hard to Find. It is the violence, carnage, injustice and dark nooks of Christian beliefs of the characters that they consider so interesting yet shocking at the same time. The story abounds in Christian motifs, both easy and complicated to decipher. We do not find it conclusive that the world is governed by inevitable predestination or evil incorporated, though. A deeper meaning needs to be discovered in the text. The most astonishing passages in the story are those when the Grandmother is left face to face with the Misfit and they both discuss serious religious matters. But at the same time it is the

Flannery O’Connor was a short story author from Savannah, Georgia. She has produced many critically acclaimed pieces and has won several awards for them. Two distinct pieces she wrote are titled The Life You Save May Be Your Own and Good Country People. While both of her stories are unique, the underlying storyboard and character creation process that O’Connor used is the same throughout her stories. Her stories usually involve one or more self-centered woman, a younger person who become the victim of egregious crime, and a conniving male driven by his own motives. Good Country People and The Life You Save May Be Your Own do not stray from this rule. In either story, the narrative is driven around a shocking tragedy that is very unexpected. Even though in the tragedies committed in the book always have a belligerent and a victim, it is not easy to discern who amongst the two are the antagonist and the protagonist. In either of these narratives, the tragedy that occurred within the stories blurs the line between antagonist and protagonist.

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.

Flannery O’Connor, undoubtedly one of the most well-read authors of the early 20th Century, had many strong themes deeply embedded within all her writings. Two of her most prominent and poignant themes were Christianity and racism. By analyzing, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and “Everything that Rises Must Converge,” these two themes jump out at the reader. Growing up in the mid-1920’s in Georgia was a huge influence on O’Connor. Less than a decade before her birth, Georgia was much different than it was at her birth. Slaves labored tirelessly on their master’s plantations and were indeed a facet of everyday life. However, as the Civil War ended and Reconstruction began, slaves were not easily assimilated into Southern culture. Thus, O’Connor grew up in a highly racist area that mourned the fact that slaves were now to be treated as “equals.” In her everyday life in Georgia, O’Connor encountered countless citizens who were not shy in expressing their discontent toward the black race. This indeed was a guiding influence and inspiration in her fiction writing. The other guiding influence in her life that became a major theme in her writing was religion. Flannery O 'Connor was born in Savannah, Georgia, the only child of a Catholic family. The region was part of the 'Christ-haunted ' Bible belt of the Southern States. The spiritual heritage of the region profoundly shaped O 'Connor 's writing as described in her essay "The Catholic Novelist in the Protestant South" (1969). Many

“A Good Man Is Hard To Find” and “Good Country People” are two short stories written by Flannery O’Connor during her short lived writing career. Despite the literary achievements of O’Connor’s works, she is often criticized for the grotesqueness of her characters and endings of her short stories and novels. Her writings have been described as “understated, orderly, unexperimental fiction, with a Southern backdrop and a Roman Catholic vision, in defiance, it would seem, of those restless innovators who preceded her and who came into prominence after her death”(Friedman 4). “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” and “Good Country People” are both set in the South, and O’Connor explores the tension between the old and new South. The stories are tow

Manley Pointer, the antagonist of Flannery O’Connor’s “Good Country People,” is a character of multiple dimensions. He is considered a “good country people” by many of the characters in the beginning of the short story, including Hulga. However, by the end, it is revealed that he is not a reputable person, and is rather the opposite of the persona he portrays himself. Manley believes that he must act this way in order to make a living. There is a root cause to his flawed rational that must be uncovered, although some would argue that he is only a simple character and has no root cause to explain his behavior. However, Manley’s past is extremely influential to his actions and the person he claims to be.

Flannery O’Connor was born on March 25, 1925, in Savannah, Georgia. She was an American writer. O’Connor wrote two novels and 32 short stories in her life time. She was a southern writer who wrote in Southern Gothic style. In the Article, Female Gothic Fiction Carolyn E. Megan asks Dorothy Allison what Southern Gothic is to her and she responded with, “It’s a lyrical tradition. Language. Iconoclastic, outrageous as hell, leveled with humor. Yankees do it, but Southerners do it more. It’s the grotesque.”(Bailey 1) Later she was asked who one of her role models was and she stated that Flannery O’Connor was one she could relate to. One of O’Connor’s stronger works was “Good Country People” which was published in 1955.

Flannery O’Connor uses his description of characters to show that people are not who always who they say they are. When we start reading the story we are introduced to Mrs. Hopewell, who is the mother to Joy/Hulga, who is stuck up and thinks that she is superior to everyone else and is an independent woman. She is a patronizing woman that does not care about anybody except for herself. She is a rude lady that is two faced when it comes to new people that she is meeting. Then we meet Joy who is thirty-two-year-old woman with a doctor's degree in Philosophy, who changed her name to Hulga at the age of twenty-one, she lives at home with Mrs. Hopewell because she has health conditions that have to deal with her heart and she needs to be taken care of. Also, with her health conditions she has a fake leg that got shot off in a hunting accident. Hulga always thought of herself superior to everyone because she had a doctor's degree and because she went to school to get an education. She thought that she could outsmart everyone that she lives with because she reads many books and has a lot of knowledge. Next is Manley Pointer, who is a traveling Bible salesman, he is portrayed as a good country folk with good intentions. He plays an act and tricks everyone into thinking that he is a nice and kind person, but him selling Bibles and believing in God is what catches Hulga’s and Mrs. Hopewell's attention because Hulga does not believe in anything but Mrs. Hopewell does believe in God. Lastly, we have Mrs. Freeman, who has worked for Mrs. Hopewell for the past few years because her husband is the farmer. The story does

O'Connor's use of violence holds a similar yet restrained quality in "Good Country People", although there is a shift in its use and context. Hulga, like the grandmother, has her anti-social qualities, which, in Hulga's case, protect her from the world in which she feels vulnerable. The conflict/resolution to "Good Country People" comes at the end, when Hulga leads the Bible salesman to an abandoned barn with the hopes of seducing him. Little to her knowledge, the salesman is not a "good country" guy as she would like to believe. Hulga receives the salesman's kisses with no real passion, but as kind of a bitter curiosity. As the old saying goes though, ‘curiosity killed the cat.' Hulga indulges in Manley Pointer's apparent ease by responding to his requests of her to say "I love you." This allows the Bible salesman to confirm Hulga's overconfidence and take advantage of the weakest point in her life, her leg. The

Authors in America have been using realism since the 19th century. They are going against the literacy normalcies of romantic views for stories. American authors take a realistic approach to their story lines by using irony, placing heroes in realistic situations, or not having a hero in their story. Realism is often used in the form of which common people are portrayed; average people or poor people are usually the focus. Flannery O’Connor also used realism in her short stories yet she a much different style to express realism. O’Connor was born in 1925 in the deep southern city of Savannah, GA. She grew up a single child and her father died when she was still young. O’Connor grew up well off and lived in a historical house. She learned about late 19th century southern culture while she was among the wealthy that she used later in her literature (Baym 436). These childhood events lead O’Connor to base a lot of her writing on the Deep South and took a very grotesque approach to her stories. “A Good Man is Hard to Find” was written by O’Connor, published in 1953, and is one of her most famous works. Flannery O’Connor