Compare And Contrast A Good Man Is Hard To Find And Everything That Rises Must Converge

Thesis with Plan of Development: Option 2

Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” (1953) and “Everything That Rises Must Converge” (1965) both describe specific personality traits through faulty characters and irony to similarly examine what qualities an actual “good person” possesses.

Rhetorical Précis 1: In her essay “A Cloak of Grace: Contradictions in 'A Good Man Is Hard to Find'” (1990), author Kathleen Ochshorn asserts that “Flannery O'Connor was often shocked to find how people interpreted her stories” based on the responses from her readers (Ochshorn par. 1). Ochshorn supports her assertion by comparing and contrasting readers' interpretations of the story to O'Connor's intentions and reasons for writing it through her letters and lectures she wrote that details the characters and theology of “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”. The author’s purpose is to point out to readers the reasoning for specific characters as explained by Flannery herself, in which Ochshorn points out that O’Connor’s claims “...religious feeling has become, if not atrophied, at least vaporous and sentimental" (Ochshorn par. 4) in order to show that

1). Renner supports his claim, by examining and describing the trials and newspaper articles of the time that could closely relate to the book and its plot. His purpose is to show that the story had a much greater impact on people than what O’Connor had originally intended in order to show that there is a deeper, non-religious meaning to “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and that the main characters’ redemption can be seen as a way to somewhat save the dysfunction in modern society. Renner’s persuasive tone assumes an educated audience that understands events surrounding the publication of the