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Short Story A Good Man Is Hard To Find

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Fiction Assignment The short story "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" written by Flannery O'Connor has some very shocking murders. A whole family was murdered, which included two small children and one baby. The killings in the story are surprising not by the fact that they encounter The Misfit who decides to kill them, but by the fact that the grandmother only begs for her life and not the life of her three grandchildren or her son and his wife. 1 "You wouldn't shoot a lady, would you?" (421). The grandmother questions the intention The Misfit might have by questioning if he plans on killing her, but she never mentions her family, who are also at the mercy of this stranger. The grandmother is only trying to negotiate for her own life without including the rest of her family. It is shocking because it makes the grandmother seem like a selfish and coldhearted individual that she would save her own life and live with the fact that she did not try to talk The Misfit out of killing the rest of her family.
I believe that the title of the story helps one understand the story slightly better that a good man is hard to find because you can reason with one. At the beginning of the story, the grandmother tries to reason with her son as to why they should not travel to Florida by speculating a possible encountered with a dangerous criminal. 2 "The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida. 3 I wouldn't take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose

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