Symbolism In A Good Man Is Hard To Find

In this part of the essay, I will show how O'Connor made use of symbolism through her characters to symbolise an abstraction of class-consciousness. The issues of class consciousness was brought up through the rounded character of the

Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is the story of a family’s vacation tragically ended by The Misfit and his gang. On the way to their vacation spot in Florida, the Grandmother remembers a plantation in Georgia she used to visit when she was a young lady and desperately wants to see it. She tells her son, Bailey, what road it is on and everyone is excited to see it. After a while, the grandmother realizes that she was wrong about where the plantation was and becomes so upset at herself that she knocks things over in the car which causes a car accident. A passing car stops to help the family but the Grandmother realizes that one of the men is a murderer, nicknamed, The Misfit. While one of

The short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” by Flannery O’Connor, is bombarded with symbolism. In short stories symbolism is the literary element that helps the reader depict the picture and actions in their own minds. Whether it be from characters’ names or the designs on the characters’ shirts, every detail in this story has a purpose.

In "A Good Man is Hard to Find" the Grandmother is a main character that symbolizes a savior. O' Connor

“She would have been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life”(O’Connor 11). In A Good Man Is Hard To Find, the grandma was at gunpoint, about to get shot by the Misfit, but she forgives him for all of the bad things he has done. This means that she could have been a good person if there was someone there to shoot her every second of her life because it was when she was about to be shot that she became a good person. In general throughout many of O'Connor's works, including A Good Man is Hard to Find, Revelation and A Late Encounter With the Enemy she uses the theme of darkness to show how people react and who people are when in great conflict, just like in the example above. Throughout O'Connor's stories, she uses the theme of darkness to show how people really are in times of greatest conflict.

In today’s society, several individuals have come across a point where they were on the verge of the death. Murder is constantly being thrown across headlines, news reports, and social media throughout America. It has become a disastrous factor throughout many individual’ lives. Viewing families suffer from their lost loved ones, as well as the murder of innocent lives have been tremendously relevant in today’s society. What many individuals fail to understand, is what actually happens during their last seconds on earth. Throughout the short story, “A Good Man Is Hard To Find,” O’Connor uses a Grandmother to convey to the readers the actually value of goodness an individual tends to gain when confronted with death. Just as revealed in the short story, violence frequently triggers an individual’s actions when presented with death. In “A Good Man Is Hard To Find,” Flannery O’Connor uses theme, conflict, and religion in order to portray the false acts of goodness projected by the grandmother.

Exploring the idea that all men are born sinners, O’Connor demonstrates immoral indulgences entertained by various characters. Readers are introduced to grandmother, an elderly woman whose consistent unscrupulous behavior exhibits her inner motives. Grandmother uses subtle, indirect confrontation to get her way until she is faced with The Misfit, a runaway criminal who believes that crime is a justifiable. In “A Good Man Is Hard To Find,” Flannery O’Connor uses characterization to display a loss of morals, imagery to portray evil in society, and symbolism to emphasize the struggle of obtaining grace to prove how life is nihilistic without religion.

     Flannery O’Connor’s “ A Good Man Is Hard To Find” depicts a family’s encounter with a criminal escaped from a federal penitentiary and their essential relinquishment of life. The family that the story surrounds has planned a trip to Florida for a family vacation. Knowing but unconcerned about the criminal at large, also known as the Misfit, the family voyages onward towards their destination until the trip is abruptly stopped by a totally unnecessary exploration down an unkempt, hilly and dangerous road. The dangerous road combined with the unsuspecting attack of the driver from the grand mothers cat, Pitty Sing, lands the family in a ten-foot deep ditch and in need of help. The

James E. Faust once said, “In this life, we have to make many choices. Some are very important choices. Some are not. Many of our choices are between good and evil. The choices we make, however, determine to a large extent our happiness or our unhappiness, because we have to live with the consequences of our choices.” In “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, Flannery O’Connor discussed the difference between good and evil within the characters of the short story. The Misfit has his henchmen kill the family, and the grandmother ultimately only thinks of herself and not the rest of her family. In “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, Flannery O'Connor shows the readers multiple meaning of symbolism throughout the characters relations to faith, places, and outlook on their surroundings.

The symbolism present in “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” by Flannery O’Connor conveys the importance of living with moral integrity and not living your life at gunpoint. Many of the characters present in this portray how important moral integrity really is. The articles shown in this paper help prove that living your life at gunpoint is not only a horrible quality, but also a statement towards all human beings. "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" shows how it is not until our final moments that we find ourself and at that point, it is too late.

Throughout the short story, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” a grandmother goes on vacation in Florida with her son and his family. She is wary of an escaped criminal who may possibly be there, but no one takes her worry into consideration. The family eventually comes face to face with the criminal and lose their lives because of it. In “A Worn Path,” an elderly woman begins a long and tiresome journey in an effort to reach a town to acquire medicine for her sick grandson. The stories “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” written by Flannery O’Connor, and “A Worn Path,” by Eudora Welty, have distinctly different writing styles that impact the story and how they utilize certain literary devices throughout them. The setting, point of view and imagery

Throughout O’Connor’s story, each character is distinctly individualized through gender. According to the NCTE, "Language plays a central role in the way human beings behave and think," furthermore, "[w]ord choices often reflect unconscious assumptions about gender roles" (“Guidelines”). O’Connor, through careful yet effective word choice, characterizes each individual accordingly. O’Connor’s utilization of characterization through stereotypical traits offers the readers a sample of humor and reality. For example, the grandmother is simply characterized as an old “cat woman.”

In many works of literature authors present more than one conflict to express the overall theme of their literary work. In A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O’ Connor, she writes about a dysfunctional family and how human nature is portrayed through the characters to present the conflict for the theme of Good versus Evil. Human nature is defined as characteristics and traits that all humans share and cannot control ("What is Human Nature? - Definition, Theories & Examples").The Good versus Evil contrary portrays a constant struggle between people wanting to do good but always end up doing bad. The author uses different characters like the grandmother and the misfit to demonstrate the conflict they have with human nature.

The action takes place in the south of the USA in the state of Georgia. The head of the family, Bailey wants to take her children - the eight-year-old son of John, the daughter of June, the wife with the child and her mother in Florida. But Bailey's mother, the grandmother of the children, is trying to dissuade the family from going there. First, they were already there last summer, and secondly, and most importantly, the newspapers write that the criminal from the federal prison ran away on behalf of the outcost, who is traveling to Florida. All the exhortations of the grandmother are useless, the whole family gets into the car and leaves Atlanta, the day is beautiful, the grandmother talks about her youth, shows the sights of the region and

“The Mother” by Gwendolyn Brooks is written to portray the harshness and reality of life choices. The narrative voice establishes a tone of emptiness created by a woman who cannot accept what she has done. “Abortions will not let you forget” explains the lifelong impact abortion has on an individual (231). Brook’s poem is powerful because of the imagery, use of second person voice, and the tone the speaker uses to convey the ramifications of abortion.