Flannery O'Connor's A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Raymond Carver's The Cathedral

The car “turned over once and landed right-side up” (O’Connor 191). The family suffers from minor injuries after the wreck. The family is not aware that they are being watched at the time of the accident. Out of an approaching car hops three men with guns. The grandmother recognizes one of the men as The Misfit, the escaped convict. Once the grandmother identifies The Misfit he has no choice but to starts killing members of the family. The grandmother ends up being the only family member left to be killed. She tries her hardest to talk The Misfit into not killing her like he did the rest of her family. Stuck in a difficult situation, the grandmother pulls religion into her conversation with the Misfit. She relies on her southern roots to soften the cynical beast in front of her. She rambles on and on telling The Misfit to pray. She tries to gain The Misfit’s trust so she can manipulate him into thinking letting her go is a good idea. He seems to reevaluate his life as he squats in front of her. Moments before her death, the grandmother tells The Misfit that he is “one of my own children” (O’Connor 196). Thinking she has fully gained The Misfit’s trust, the grandmother “reached out and touched him on the shoulder” (O’Connor 196). At this moment, The Misfit shoots her in the chest three times. The idea that The Misfit trusts the grandmother is eliminated and so is the entire

The grandmother believes The Misfit is “good” because he will not shoot a lady, which is a denial in her faith to keep her moral principles. Her theory proves to be false. The only thing “good” about the Misfit is his uniformity in living out his moral cipher of there is no pleasure but meanness in life.

Flannery O’Connor has long been criticized for her blatant incorporation of religious symbols into sinister, dark stories. In the short story “A Good Man Is Hard To Find,” the dark and apathetic Misfit is said to portray, in an allegorical sense, a Christ-like figure. However, through the interpretation of the inversions of divine characteristics, his repulsion of Christ’s very existence, and the denial of any powers beyond the observable realm, we find that the Misfit is actually representative of the Anti-Christ.

In “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, Flannery O’Connor uses grotesque and flawed characters to reflect her own faith on the Roman Catholic Church. Set in the rural South during the 1950s, O’Connor takes readers on a journey from a satiric family comedy to a brutal cold blooded murder. An analysis of O’Connor’s use of religious symbolism and foreshadowing through characters and setting will be conducted in order to better understand her views and faith of the Catholic Church. This paper will also argue the belief that religious wisdom is the key for moral guidance.

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.

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

Both the Misfit and the Grandmother are living in a false reality and just cannot seem to see the ultimate reality of the world, no matter how many times that they have been shown that the way they do things is not the right way. They both may be considered as very different people by appearance, but in actuality they are both living in a false reality where they always think they are right and nothing they ever do is wrong in their minds. She tries to make him pray and tells him he is

Southern gothic is a type of literature that focuses on the harsh conflicts of violence and racism, which is observed in the perspective of black and white individuals. Some of the most familiar southern authors are William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, and Cormac McCarthy. One author in particular, Flannery O’Connor, is a remarkable author, who directly reflects upon southern grotesque within her two short stories, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and “Revelation.” These two short stories are very similar to each other, which is why I believe that O’Connor often writes with violent characters to expose real violence in the world while tying them in with a particular spiritual insight.

Brutality, humor, religion, and violence are a few themes portrayed throughout many of Flannery O’Connor’s short stories. In many of her short stories, O’Connor exposes the dark side of human nature and implements violent and brutal elements in order to emphasize her religious viewpoints. In the short stores “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” and “Revelation”, O’Connor explicitly depicts this violence to highlight the presence and action of holy grace that is given to a protagonist who exudes hypocritical qualities.

Once the car gets to the accident scene, out come three men with guns. She recognizes one to be “The Misfit.” The man says it’s not good that she recognized him. Bailey gets upset can starts swearing at the grandmother. Worried, the grandma say that he should not call himself the misfit because she knows he is a good man, the Misfit agrees and says that his parents were good parents.

Before the grandmother realizes who it is that has stopped to assist them, she states, “We turned over twice!” (126), trying to gain sympathy from the men by lying about their predicament. However, this only last a few moments until she finally realizes exactly who the man is, she seals her family’s fate by blurting out “You’re the Misfit!” without even thinking about what may happen to them if she does (Walters). To this the Misfit states, “Yes’m, but it would have been better for all of you, lady, if you hadn't of reckernized me” (127). Though the Misfit is one of the only characters in this short story with any idea of what it means to ask morally serious questions and decided whether or not he should kill this family he now feels he has no choice in the matter (Bonney). Due to the grandmother’s outburst the Misfit feels he has no choice but to end the lives of the family because he cannot risk being caught. Thus, making it so that once again the grandmother’s inconsiderate ways are causing the family more troubles then she is

In “A good man is hard to find”, revelations” and “Everything that rises must converge” by Flannery O’Connor clearly portray a theme of racism based on selfishness, pride and grace. All three main characters undergo a prophecy like moment that eventually leads to the loss of their dignity and selfish attitude and in turn they each achieve grace. This paper will provide a detailed analysis on how all three main characters go from being selfish to eventually self-analyzing themselves and in turn they mature and gain grace and change the way they view others. My investigation of these stories will show how each protagonist had to experience some form of tragedy in order to become self-aware of the way people perceive them. O’Connor presents in these stories how each main character and also in reality people in life need to be brought to a tragic like moment in life that causes them to not continue in the ways they are accustomed to.

Flannery O 'Connor is a Christian writer, and her work shows Christian themes of good and evil, grace, and salvation. O’Connor has challenged the theme of religion into all of her works largely because of her Roman Catholic upbringing. O’Connor wrote in such a way that the characters and settings of her stories are unforgettable, revealing deep insights into the human existence. In O’Connor’s Introduction to a “Memoir of Mary Ann,” she claims that Christians live to prepare for their death. This statement is reflected in her other works, including her short story “A Good Man is Hard To Find.” After reading “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” many questions remain unanswered

The story centers on this one’s family vacation trip to Florida that is cut short due to murder. The main characters in the story are Baily, his grandmother, his wife and children and the Misfit. The different character interactions between each other are what drives this story and explains to the reader what the different characters are thinking or how they feel.