A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flanney O'connor

Literally Analysis

The story “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, by Flannery O’Connor, is about nuclear family in the 50’s who decided to go to East Tennessee for vacation instead of Florida. The grandmother said that the way Tennessee opposes the Misfit, a criminal who escaped from jail, was one of the main reasons for her choice. On the way, the grandmother suggests going to an old mansion she once visited by deceiving the kids to force Bailey to seek out the place but the grandmother made a mistake with the location. Embarrassed, the grandmother jerks her feet and Pitty Sing, the cat, escapes the basket and surprises Bailey, who wrecks the car. Later, the family meets the Misfit and his partners and the Misfit kills them all after the grandmother recognized his face. According to the Christian religion, God’s grace and forgiveness is eligible to everyone even the ones who are least deserving of it. Therefore, the two characters, the grandmother and the Misfit, are able to receive grace from God despite their sins and flaws. Although, the grandmother gives the reader a sense of her goodness and her strong ties with Christianity, O’Conner leads the reader to see that the grandmother is more entitled to the outward appearance of Christianity rather than real inner beliefs and the purpose of it. Also, many readers may see the Misfit as a worthless character to receive God’s grace due to his dreadful actions throughout the story; however, O’Connor reveals the clarity and, most importantly, self-awareness that the Misfit experiences at the end of the story.

In the story, the grandmother is more concerned with her outlook and pays a lot of details to her dress to make sure she is recognized as a woman, so that “anyone seeing her dead on...

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... the Misfit is open to receive grace. Although the Misfit claimed that there is “no pleasure, but meanness” in life, at the end, he denies that there is any pleasure in life at all and that killing has failed to bring him happiness. Therefore, when his two partners return and reminding the Misfit of how fun is to kill, the Misfit shuts them up and says “it’s no real pleasure in life”.

In conclusion, the author points out that God’s grace is available to anyone and it is never too late to ask for forgiveness. O’Connor shows that even the battle between good and evil could be misleading because there is always good in people even those who mislead the way can always ask for clarity from God.

Works Cited

O’Connor, Flannery. “A Good Man Is Hard To Find.” Cengage Learning. Jan Zlotnik Schmidt and Lynne Crockett. Boston, Massachusetts, 2013. 760-70.Print