Violence In A Good Man Is Hard To Find

Joy-Hulga plans to seduce Manley Pointer into being intimate with her. She assumes he is gullible because he is a young boy; seducing him would be like taking candy from a baby. Joy-Hulga is the victim of an bewildering accident; she now plans to make Manley Pointer a victim of her seduction. Joy-Hulga joins her young prey in the loft of a barn. This is her opportunity to have Manley Pointer all to herself. She falls victim to his first tactic of getting her to tell him she loved him. He proceeds by persuading her to show him how take off her wooden leg. “Without the leg she felt entirely dependent on him (O’Connor 184). This is the moment that the tables turn and Joy-Hulga becomes the victim of Manley Pointer’s manipulation. Mr. Pointer runs off with Joy-Hulga’s artificial leg and she is left sitting there in the loft. Joy-Hulga learns that there are good country people in the world and then there are some people like Manley Pointer who are no good at all.

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.

   Good and bad. Right and wrong. Guilty and Innocent. These are just a few of the many themes that surround everyone's life. Everyone has their own opinion about certain issues, and they depend on their values, judgment, and beliefs to see them through their difficulties. Flannery O'Connor was quoted as saying "I see from the standpoint of Christian orthodoxy. This means the meaning of life is centered in our Redemption by Christ and that what I see in the world I see in relation to that" (Contemporary Authors 402). These themes are present in O'Connor's story "A Good Man is Hard to Find." The story is about a grandmother, a "good" woman who goes on

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.

Violence and the indefinable definition of a “good man” are two major themes utilized by O’Connor throughout the short story. Violence is a huge factor across America as much as it was when “A Good Man is Hard To Find” was published. Although during those times most individuals were against violence and murder and reacted negatively. People during those times reacted negatively and believed those who committed crimes should be sentenced to death or to cruel punishment. In the short story,

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.

The violence over the main character is very usual in Flannery O'Connor stories in order to experience conversion. The most important purpose of O'Connor was to shock her smug protagonists, like Mrs. May, out of their complacency and bring them violently into an awareness of their inadequacy before the eyes of God. The violence which accompanies the revelation of God's grace and the agent of this grace (the bull) is not a penance; for O'Connor, this violence is more similar to a blessing.

     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

In addition to “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” O’Connor’s purpose in her use of violence can

Flannery O'Connor uses many of the same elements in almost all of her short stories. I will analyze her use of violence leading to the main character experiencing moral redemption. The use of redemption comes from the religious background of Flannery O'Connor. Violence in her stories is used as a means of revelation to the main character's inner self. The literature of Flannery O'Connor appears to be unbelievably harsh and violent. Her short stories characteristically conclude with horrific fatalities or an individual's emotional ruin. In all three of the stories, "Good Country People", "A Good Man Is Hard to Find", and "Revelation" the main characters experience some

Fortune’s selfish determination to create his own image in Mary Fortune causes him to lose the one member of his family that he ever truly cared for. Throughout the entire story, Mr. Fortune praises his own viewpoint and life mindset over the Pitts’, who of course are portrayed as an unlikable family. Like Julian, Mr. Fortune seems to gloat in his own enlightenment and takes pride in disagreeing with the Pitts. Once again, while Mr. Fortune has good intentions to try and “save” Mary Fortune from the Pitts by trying to turn her into a Fortune, his selfishness in his “fight” against the Pitts versus Fortune mentality ends up leading to the loss of Mary herself. Mr. Fortune doesn’t consider how Mary feels personally when he wants to sell the lawn, but sees it as if he is attacking Pitts himself and becomes angry when Mary agrees with her father. As Mary continually throughout the story begins to identify more and more with the Pitts name, Mr. Fortune’s selfish notion to fight against the Pitt’s mentality leads him to attack Mary as he metaphorically kill the Pitts attitude. Once Mary stopped representing him and his ideas, Mr. Fortune began to see her as something to fight against, and harbored no evident guilt for his

In Flannery O'Connor's A Good Man is Hard To Find, one is struck by the unexpected violence at the end of the story. However, if you re-read the story a second time, you will see definite signs that foreshadow the grotesque ending. The story begins with the typical nuclear family being challenged by the grandmother who doesn't want to take the vacation to Florida. She has read about a crazed killer by the name of the Misfit who is on the run heading for Florida. Unfortunately, she is ignored by every member of the family except for the little girl, June Star, who can read the grandmother like an open book. The fact that she admonishes Bailey, her son, of this Misfit

The story I read is '' A good man is hard to find" . While exploring this story, I noticed that the author of the story exploit the theme of the story through the actions of it's characters. And the authors ideas in this story are some of the things that we face in society today. Just as in the story, in our society today most young people show a lot of disrespect to their elders and also do not listen to advises from seniors. Furthermore, the plot also shows how evil the misfit is, just as it said in the theme of the story" A good man is hard to find". I was thinking that the misfit was going to pardon the granny and her kid and grand kids due to the fact that the just had an accident, well but he did not probably because the granny was able

In life there is events that changes the whole perspective of viewing life. Flannery O’Connor gave her characters this moment of shock and realization in her stories, she uses her style of putting the characters in a threatening situation that brings them to a grace state. O’Connor was someone who did not liked labels she says “labeling a writer or their work, with such titles as Southern or grotesque, limits what readers and critics expect upon reading their works”, but readers of her stories claim otherwise proving that her writings support this argument when showing such violence. “Good country people” and “A good man is hard to find” by Flannery O’Connor are stories that have characters with grotesque persona’s in which as the stories develop they experience a series of violent and traumatic events. This affairs made characters like, Hulga and the grandmother develop their identity and help them as a salvation of their egocentric way of seeing themselves.