Ignorance In A Good Man Is Hard To Find

She intentionally lies about the house having a secret panel just to get the kids interest so that Bailey would be more likely to stop and visit. The grandmother is also portrayed as being very loud and outgoing. When the family stops at the restaurant, she carries on a conversation with a complete stranger. She also wants to get up and dance.

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.

I believe that the cat was the only thing that showed her love and attention. Her only son, had a family of his own, her grandchildren were older now, and she felt like she was not important to them anymore, and the children?s mother was involved with the baby. By bringing the cat, she felt like she would not be lonely. The reader can also tell that the woman is extremely prejudice. She refers to the black child as a ?cute little pickaninny? and a nigger.

When this story started off the grandmother jumped right into selfish mode. Her son Bailey had planned a vacation for his family to Florida, but the grandmother did not want to go so she tried to get Bailey to go to Tennessee instead. After that, the grandmother did not want to leave her cat so she decided to hide it in the car, not even caring about if the cat can go or not. Since the grandmother decided to take her cat it caused them to have an accident when the grandmother had kicked the basket. That made Bailey run off the side of the road because the cat jumped on him.

This is the lie that lead her and her family to their inevitable demise. If the grandmother had told the truth, they would have continued on their way to Florida instead of encountering the Misfit and his crew. The grandmother had a horrible thought come to her head and was too embarrassed to say anything right before the accident. The narrator later explains, “The horrible thought she had had before the accident was that the house she had remembered so vividly was not in Georgia but in Tennessee” (O’Connor 125). The grandmother, who puts herself before anyone else, should have said something when she realized the plantation was in Tennessee and the family could have turned around. Rather she did not want to feel like a halfwit to her family so she kept it to herself. Had the grandmother told her son she was mistaken instead of having an embarrassing moment and keeping it to herself, the accident could have been avoided all together.

The next day, the family begins the journey. The grandma is the first person in the car, and she sneaks her cat, Pitty Sing, in a basket with a black valise. She refuses to leave the cat behind because there is a possibility that the cat would, “brush against one of the gas burners and accidently asphyxiate himself,” which is one of the many mentions of death that sits in the back of the reader’s mind (10). The grandma makes an effort to appear ladylike, and her outfit greatly contrasts the clothes of those around her. While the grandma wears, “white cotton gloves…[and] a navy blue star sailor hat with a bunch of white violets on the brim and a navy blue dress… [and] a purple spray of cloth violets containing a sachet [on her neckline],” her family members wear casual clothing such as slacks and kerchiefs (12). The contrast in clothing symbolizes the grandmother’s selfishness and her lack of concern for others. The grandma explains that she dresses the way she does, “In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she [is] a lady,” (12),

She doesn’t know that she isn’t where she thinks she is, so she gives directions, then they get into a car crash, which is due to her obliviousness of her surroundings. In addition, to her obliviousness the crash was also due to her manipulative behavior. The whole reason they go to the plantation is because she manipulates her son into taking everyone. She does this by enticing the kids on how exciting and wonderful the house and land were, so the children were super excited and Bailey didn’t want to ruin the trip so he takes them, even though he does not want to go. While he drives up they then have the car crash into a ditch, which the grandmother then remembers how this isn’t even the state of where she would visit the old plantation, but decides to keep that to herself (O’Conner pgs. 410-412).

The grandmother tells the children a story about an old plantation that is along the route they are travelling. However, while searching for this plantation, the grandmother realizes that the “horrible thought she had had before the accident was that the house she had remembered vividly was not in Georgia but in Tennessee” (O’Connor 12). She is too vain to admit her mistake and this caused the family to be in a horrible accident which leads to even more

But bailey says he would never do something like that. So, when this doesn’t work she goes on to mention how the children have already been to Florida. The rest of the story is about the grandmother doing the same. The grandmother, later on, wants to visit

In Flannery O'Connor's eccentric short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” the reader is introduced to her fundamental theme of Identity through a typical southern family. O’Connor’s exceptional use of fictional elements such as characterization, point of view, and setting further develop this theme in her work. She does so by familiarizing the use of violence, humor, and salvation along with point of view and setting to create a deeper connection between her work and the reader.

Finally, the cat caused the accident. Baily is the father and a son for the grandmother in the story. He tried to avoid all gestures and question coming from his mother. He just wants to go to Florida despite his mother harassment. Finally, He follows his mother’s request to take a detour.

Shortly after, the family is about to set off for Florida. After a brief conversation, Bailey forbids his mother from bringing the cat along for the ride. Once again, the Author expresses her view of her self-absorbed, callous mother through the grandmother. Going against her son’s orders, she decides to bring the cat anyways, for fear it may miss her too much or, in a freak accident, asphyxiate itself on on the gas burners. An utterly selfish action for nothing more than getting what she wants, just because she wants it. This action would prove to be disastrous in the end, showing the self destructive behavior of a woman unfit to be called a “mother” by O’Connor.

The grandmother also kept her secret quiet due to embarrassment. When she realized that the house she was talking about was in Tennessee not Georgia, she was too embarrassed to say anything. "The thought was so embarrassing that she turned red in the face and her eyes dilated and her feet jumped up. . .the cat, sprang onto Bailey's shoulder." (163) Because the grandmother chose to keep her secret quiet, it cost her family their lives. Bailey got scared, the car wrecked,

“A Good Man Is Hard to Find” is a short story about family planning a vacation. Everyone wants to go to Florida except the grandmother's wants to go to Tennessee. She told the family to not go to Florida by saying there is a killer by the name The Misfit “Here is the fellow that calls himself The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed to Florida”(O’Connor 616). However the son Bailey, his wife, and the three children ignore her and they go to Florida. Grandmother took her cat with her, but she didn’t tell them and she hid it under her seat. The traveling was the same as with traveling with children, they play and sometime, they fight. Then the family stops to eat at “The Tower”. After that grandmother starts talking with the owner

The narrator finds this cat to be out of place, and she uses the sight of this cat to take her text in a different direction. Losing her train of thought is an exercise in allowing the reader to experience what it might feel like to be a woman writer. Although the narrator goes on to make a valuable point about the atmosphere at her luncheon, she has lost her original point. Women, who so often lack a room of their own and the time to write, cannot compete against the men who are not forced to struggle for such basic necessities.