Hypocritical Religion

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Everyone has their own feelings when it comes to religion. Some people are big on worshiping God, while others could care less about believing in a God or not. Flannery ‘o Connor, who was a zealous Roman Catholic, wrote stories with the underlining mean that Catholics work harder for their beliefs than any other religions. She uses her writing to vent about Christians singly using God when their life gets difficult, instead of living by the Christian faith. A story she wrote called “A Good Man is Hard to Fine” gives the perfect example of her expressing her anger with people who claim to be religious along with people only using God as a crutch rather than live for him. The story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is about a nagging grandmother who doesn’t want to go on a family trip to Florida because a killer, who calls himself The Misfit, has escaped from prison. As a result of her not wanting to go she makes the trip miserable for her son. She over dresses, brings the cat, and gets the children excited about a house with secret treasure. When driving along, the very frustrated dad cashes the car. Everyone get out safely, and just in time to see a truck coming their way. The family feels a glimmer of hope until the grandmother recognizes one of the men to be the misfit himself. When she realizes this she begins to beg for her own life, but after a deep conversation between her and the Misfit, she, along with the rest of her family end up dead. Flannery ‘o Connor was passionate about her religion, even when she was losing her battle with lupus, she would still attend mass every Sunday (New Georgia Encyclopedia). When looking at her writing, one can see her anger towards Christian’s and how she feels they flaunt their religion... ... middle of paper ... ...rustrated because she was a faithful Catholic, and she still had terrible things in her life, like her father’s death. She always felt she could never be good enough for God, therefore as a Roman Catholic she always felt guiltily for not being good enough. Her anger toward all these things can be seen in her short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find”. She uses the characters, not only to prove her point about Christians, but to secretly show the world how she was really feeling about her illness. What she doesn’t realize is, by telling these stories about how unpleasant Christians are, she becomes like them. Flannery ‘o Connor cast out a judgment on how these other religions worship God. With all the different religions and people in this world, Flannery ‘o Connor shows that in a way we are all alike with questions about what to believe or even when to believe it.

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