Flannery O’Connor: A Good Man is Hard to Find Flannery O’Conner’s short story “A Good man is Hard to Find” is written with a strong religious undertones. “The trees were full of silver-white sunlight and the meanest of them sparkled” (O’Connor 377). This is pretty obvious that the "silver-white sunlight" is supposed to be imagery, the reader associates with Heaven. However, when she uses the word “meanest” it is perplexing to understand how something heavenly would highlight the meanest one. This is O’Connor warning the reader of something cruel to come. Another warning comes when “They passed a large cotton field with five or six graves fenced in the middle of it, like a small island” (O’Connor 377). This becomes very apparent since …show more content…
The grandmother is trying to connect with The Misfit because she could sense the inner struggle he was experiencing, which is revealed in their conversation. The grandmother is not in the least concerned with God at this point, but tries to connect with the Misfit any way she can. The grandmother recognizes the Misfit as one of her own children and reaches out to touch him. It’s the moment of grace for her anyway. She reaches out because she has been touched by the Grace that comes through him in his particular suffering (Hendricks 207). After feeling like all hope was gone, “She found herself saying, "Jesus. Jesus," meaning, Jesus will help you, but the way she was saying it, sounded as if she might be cursing” (O’Connor 384). It seems that the grandmother is displaying a good Christian spirit, but she's 'taking the name in vain', putting her further into the category of the damned. O’Conner, further strengthens the grandmother’s façade of Christanity, when she instantly forms into a real believer, “If you would pray,” the old lady said, “Jesus would help you” (O’Conner 384). O’Conner also suggest the possibility of dramatic transformation in a person. Having just lost all of her family and threatened with death herself, the Grandmother appears to undergo a sudden and miraculous change of heart: she reaches out lovingly to the …show more content…
He not only rejects the touch of the Grandmother, but also the world she represents. O’Conner, illustrates, the Grandmother is spiritually dead and has been for all her life, but when she is shot in the chest and dies, then she became alive spiritually, which further strengthens the religious symbolizm that she died and was born again. O’Connor explores the evil nature of mankind and although evil abounds, so does grace, which every person needs and every person can have. The Misfit gave her a moment of grace just before her death, showing she knew what "good" was in some form. And in the end, even though he murders them all, he is very solemn about it, and at one point even mentioned that he'd prefer not to kill anyone if he didn't have to, which leaves the reader with the impression that he took "no real pleasure" in what he does. The philosophical reversals in the ending demonstrate that The Misfit is changing—a prerequisite to his becoming a prophet. ( Bethea
The Misfit is a complex character created by Flannery O’Connor. He is talked about first when the Grandmother reads his criminal background at the breakfast table. Right when the Misfit meets the family the Grandmother starts questioning his faith and past, and through the Grandmother’s persistent behavior that you find out the truth behind the Misfits hard exterior. The reader understands that the Misfit was brought up by parents who were the “finest people in the world” (O’Connor 1312). With this type of background, how can one expect the Misfit to be such a cold blooded killer? Because of his kind nature in the beginning of the story, it’s almost impossible to understand how he could just kill. Through deeper analysis one can characterize the Misfit with a heart of gold, but the mind of a villain. This characterization is true because somewhere along the line he was wrongly accused of murdering his father and was brutally punished and he was mistreated by the justice system. The Misfit knows he was innocent and neither Jesus nor the justice system could rid him of the punish he received. It’s not because he is an evil person, he says himself “I never was a bad boy that I remember of… but somewhere along the line I done something wrong and got sent to the penitentiary. I was buried alive” (1314). The Misfit states he was never the worst person, but he also says himself that he was never good either, so the reason behind the Misfit’s homicidal condition is not because he is an evil person but due to his distrust in Jesus Christ and the justice system.
While reading Flannery O’Connor “A Good Man is Hard to Find” we read that a family of five are on a roadtrip to Florida where they go every year. We have The Grandmother who derailed her family from the actual road to see a house she thought was in those parts of town. When all of a sudden her helpers are the murders she is afraid of. The murder “The Misfit” kills off the rest of her family and leaves her to dwell in her sorrow that she will be next. The Grandmother tries to maneuver her way out of dying by sweet talking The Misfit into thinking she can love him as her own child and that he doesn’t have to kill anymore. When she tries to reach for him he moved back and shot her. The Grandmother didn’t want him to be violent anymore and thought
After the accident that the grandmother had unintentionally caused by manipulating the image of a nonexistent house into her family’s head, they run into the Misfit. No one else in the family knew who he was or anything about him. They all thought someone had come to their rescue and was going to fix the car, but nothing gets over on the grandmother. Blatantly putting the whole family in danger she blurts out, “’You’re the Misfit!’…’Yes’m…but it would have been better for all of you, lady, if you hadn’t of reckernized me’” (192). At this point in time, she knows that she is going to die, trying to save herself and not caring about the rest of her family clearly as she has witnessed the Misfit’s goons kill off her whole family, she tries to manipulate him. She brings up that he is a “good man at heart” (192) and telling him if he “would pray…Jesus would help” (194). That was just simply her trying to plea for her life, but when she realized she was getting nowhere her “head cleared for an instant” (196), she knew this was an opportunity to try and manipulate the Misfit into letting her go, to make him feel like he didn’t have to be a killer anymore, to comfort him “she reached out and touched him on the shoulder” (196). The Misfit jolted away and shot her three times in the chest because he saw through her manipulative ways which if clear when he
According to Ellen Douglas, the "evil in human hearts, and the possibility of grace, the gift of love, are made terrifyingly and magnificently real" when the grandmother, at gunpoint, admits that The Misfit really is, in her standards, a good man at heart (381). He is better able to express his beliefs about religion, but she has no firm foundation. When he says, "She would [have] been a good woman, if there had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life," he is revealing the fact that her pride, instead of her faith, has carried her through life (O'Connor, "A Good Man" 392). She has merely acted out the life of a typical Southern lady of he...
To buttress this she pointed out that even at the grandmothers death misfit confirmed her to be a good woman in his statement “she would have been a good woman if she was to face death every minute of her life” (437). In contrast to her opinion Stephen Bandy a notable literally critics in one of his articles “One of my babies “: The Misfit and the Grandmother” he compared the characters of both and argued that despite the fact that O`Conner claimed the grandmother was merely filled with “prejudice” of her time, He described the grandmother as racist, busy body and utterly self-absorbed. When she saw that her child and grandchildren was been killed tried to manipulate Misfit to spare her own life whereas she was the one that lead them to their death.
In A Good Man is Hard to Find, the author made a lot of references to heaven and hell. O’Connor writes, “The trees were full of silver-white sunlight and the meanest of them sparkled” (354). She was referencing heaven in this statement. Heaven to everyone in the world is this big beautiful white place. It is said to be in the clouds which are white. O’Connor also states, “The old lady settled herself comfortably, removing her white cotton gloves and putting them up with her purse on the shelf in the front of the back window. The children’s mother still had on slacks and still had her hair tied up in a green kerchief, but the grandmother had on a navy blue straw sailor hat with a bunch of violets on the brim and a navy blue dress with a small white dot print. Her collars and cuffs were white organdy trimmed with lace and at her neckline she had pinned a purple spray of cloth violets containing a sachet. In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once she was a lady” (354). This foreshadows what happened at the end of the story, but also makes sure the reader notices the use of all of her white attire. This also is a big part of the story because the grandma is not a lad...
She knows that she is going to die. She reaches out to The Misfit and tells him “Why you’re one of my babies. You’re one of my own children!”. She doesn’t literally mean that he is her child but that they are both human, both children of God. The Misfit, being completely amoral and totally cut off from his own humanity, recoils from her touch.”The Misfit sprang back as if a snake had bitten him and shot her three times through the chest.” At this moment of her death, the Grandmother is more genuine than she’s ever been in her life. At the very end of her life she achieved a state of grace. The Misfit too, also undergoes a transformation. He realizes there’s “no real pleasure” in the way he’s been living his life. That’s not to say that The Misfit would stop killing. Only that, like the Grandmother, he realized a truth about
In A Good Man Is Hard to Find, Flannery O’Connor utilizes foreshadowing, characters and symbolism to impart her lesson of mortality and salvation. We observe minor details within the story making the reader continue on to see how the story will end. The knowledge that evil exists in the world, and that stories like this is not unheard of, brings to mind thoughts of my own mortality and salvation. Does this accidental meeting with the grandmother and her family lead to personal and spiritual growth of The Misfit? The ability to recognizing and applying literary tools when reading stories can greatly enhance a reader’s
The symbolism in “A Good Man is Hard to Find” truly represents Flanner O’Connor’s writing style and underlying theme. O’Connor exhibits the theme of religion in many of her works as she has written a majority of her stories “in the depth[s] of her Christian faith” (419). Having a strong Catholic background, O’Connor displays aspects of religious symbolism combined with her fascination of “grotesque incidents and characters” (420). In “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” Flannery O’Connor embodies the theme of religious symbolism through the setting as well as the main characters of her work, the Grandmother and The Misfit, as a glimpse of hope in a gruesome, sinister story.
The granny and the misfit are two completely opposite characters that possess two different beliefs. The grandmother puts herself on a high pedestal and the way she calls the misfit ‘a good person’ based upon his family background gives the reader an idea of what the grandmother acknowledges to be considered as ‘good’. Self absorbed as sh...
O’Connor is known for putting her characters in violent situations to redeem them or to give them a moment of grace that questions their moral stance. The grandmother in “A Good Man” has her moment of grace right before she is shot by the Misfit. It is just when the grandmother encounters death that she starts to change her views. Armond Boudreaux states that “For the grandmother, however, we can feel only pity at best, and when her moment of beatitude and her ecstatic last words signal that she has received the grace she has lacked all her life—“You’re one of my own children!”—we may quite rightly feel bewildered or even outraged” (151). He feels as if the grandmother’s moment of grace was not worth the lives of her family and that she should
Never once as the Grandmother was begging for her life, did she stop and beg for the life of her family. Her tactic to save herself went from “You wouldn’t shoot a lady would you?” (O’Connor), to “You’ve got good blood! I know you come from nice people” (O’Connor), then lastly to “If you would pray, Jesus would help you” (O’Connor). Yet to every beg the Grandmother made, the Misfit was completely honest with her, admitting that he would hate to have to kill a lady, but he would do it, admitting that he did come from good people but that he is not good, and admitting that he does not want Jesus’ help, that he is perfectly fine alone. Because the Misfit was so honest and open about who he was and his flaws, the Grandmother realized that she is not a “Good Man”. That she has been lying to herself and the people around her. The Misfit allowed the Grandmother to come to terms with who she really is a person. The Misfit giving her this eye opening realization before taking her life gave her the redemption she needed so
Flannery O 'Connor utilizes multiple biblical references, such as Jesus raising the dead, to create a foundation for what the Grandmother and Misfit believe in terms of morality. The Grandmother references Christianity in a positive and redeeming sense while the Misfit claims that “Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead, and He shouldn 't have done it. He shown everything off balance” (O’Connor 151). Her reality before the incident was the people such as the Misfit were evil, while those similar to her who grew up in the classic traditions of the south were better off. Although she was raised in a highly religious and proper setting, she does not realize the fault in her logic until she is staring down the barrel of a gun. The grandmother attempts to use this religion to save her life by telling the Misfit about prayer and salvation. By asking the Misfit "Do you ever pray?" and then repeatedly saying “pray, pray, pray”, she is attempting to show him the fact that he does not have to do evil acts because of his past (O’Connor 149). Because the Misfit does not view himself as evil, his reality is that his actions and beliefs are morally
She also implies that she is in church when she asked him multiple times if he prays. The last part of her character that is revealed all throughout the story, from the beginning to the end, is that she's very talkative. Toward the end of the story she is trying to appeal to him and she continues to talk to him even after her son rudely hushes her. This is ironic because after she is shot the misfits states, "she would've been a good woman if it had been someone there to shoot her every minute of her life" (page 12). This shows the Misfits misogynistic character trait because he does not value the opinion or voice of women. His statement clearly shows how he would prefer a woman that is seen and not
Flannery O’Connor’s religious background influenced almost all her stories. She received criticism for her harsh representation of religion. Richard Giannone describes “A Good Man is Hard to Find” as “God’s transforming love by confronting the reader with a condition of true goodness amid the stark brutality of serial murder” (46). In “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, Flannery O’Connor frequently references religious symbols to describe the characters and their actions. Toward the end of the play the grandmother frantically tries to persuade The Misfit to pray and that Jesus would help him. The Misfit replied stating, “Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead, and he shouldn’t have done it. He thown everything off balance. If He did what He said, then it’s nothing for you to do ...