In her short story "A Good Man is Hard to Find” Flannery O'Connor's seems to portray a feeling that society as she saw it was drastically changing for the worse.
O'Connor's obvious displeasure with society at the time is most likely a result of her
Catholic religion and her very conservative upbringing in the ‘old south.’ She seems to depict her opinion in this particular story by using the character of the grandmother to show what she saw was happening to the times. Evidence of society's "demise" is woven into the story, and presented through an interesting generation gap between the grandmother and her family.
The grandmother is representative of devoutness and Christianity which O'Connor apparently believed to be more prevalent in the "glamorous" Old South. Attention to prim detail separated the grandmother from the rest of her family who seemed to be living in a different world than she. As she organized herself in preparation for the trip, her family was described as rather common people living in a frusturated middle class world.
O’Connor described the old woman as she settled herself comfortably, removing her white cotton gloves and putting them up with her purse on the shelf in front of the back window.
The children's mother still had on slacks and still had her head tied up in a green kerchief but the grandmother had on a navy blue straw sailor hat with a bunch of white violets on the brim and a navy blue dress with a small white dot in the print. Her collar 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.
The parents pay little attention to the grandmother and when they do, they are often quite rude. The unruly children are representative of the breakdown of respect, and discipline, and are consequently a forecast of future generations. They constantly demean the grandmother and at one point, June Star even complains that her grandmother has to go everywhere they go right to her face. O’Connor seems to be illustrating not only how times are changing, but how the future generations have no respect for thier precedents.
The Misfit represents evil. At one point the Misfit likens himself to Christ, in that they both were punished for crimes they did not commit. Christ accepted death for the sins of all people, however. The Misfit is in a constant battle against his fate that he sees
The Grandmother often finds herself at odds with the rest of her family. Everyone feels her domineering attitude over her family, even the youngest child knows that she's "afraid she'd miss something she has to go everywhere we go"(Good Man 2). Yet this accusation doesn't seem to phase the grandmother, and when it is her fault alone that the family gets into the car accident and is found by the Misfit, she decides to try to talk her way out of this terrible predicament.
In the beginning of the story the negative characteristics of the grandmother are revealed. She is portrayed as being a very egocentric person. The grandmother is very persistent about getting her way. She appears to be very insensitive of the feelings of the other family members. She consistently tries to persuade the family to go to Tennessee rather than to Florida. Also, she rebelliously took the cat with her on the trip when she knew the others would object. As a result of her selfishness the family had to make a detour to stop and see the house that she insisted upon visiting.
The Black Codes were very controversial in the North and in the South they were accepted and prominent. One reason why they were so controversial in the North was because they would try to persuade many African Americans to quit their jobs before their contracts would expire. In certain states where there were more African Americans than whites such as, Mississippi or South Carolina the Black Codes were harsher than in any other states. For example, in Mississippi a rule that if anyone without any type of job before January 1 of 1866 would be arrested if they could not pay a fee of 50 dollars. Many Congress members during Johnson’s time if office disliked his plan for Reconstruction in the South because it seemed like it was to “restore defeated and discredited Confederates to power in the South” (209).
After the Civil War, white southerners had to figure out ways to continue feeling superior to their former slaves. Anxious to regain power over former slaves, southerners created the Black Codes of 1865. These codes were different from state to state, but most held similar restrictions. If blacks were unemployed, they could be arrested and charged with vagrancy. White Southerners believed blacks were to only work as agricultural laborers so the laws also restricted their hours of labor, duties, and behavior. Additionally, the codes prevented the raising of their own crops by black people. They were prohibited from ent...
...nspired by medieval Italy. It then became a popular trend for brides to copy. The dress was also loose on waist and hip, and have comfortable short sleeves. It did not have any undergarments for support.
This story takes place in the South somewhere around the 1940’s or 50’s; thereby, providing the reader with a plot rich in historical, cultural, and social aspects. Throughout the narrative, many other places are mentioned and the characters’ insights on them are explained, thus an emotional attachment to places like Tennessee and Georgia are evident. However, the importance relies on what each character’s emotions and reactions reveal about themselves and about the society at that time. In “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” Flannery O’Connor uses symbolism and diction to contrast the good and evil nature of humans through a hypocritical, morally-driven old lady and a criminal that embraces his evil acts by placing the blame on society.
O'Connor, Flannery. "A Good Man Is Hard to Find." Literature: Approaches to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. By Robert DiYanni. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2004. Print.
Black codes were state, or county laws used in what was known as the solid south as a way to keep the newly freed slaves from having real freedom. Most of these laws were completely ridiculous, and violations of these laws would lead to jail. An example of a black code was that black people were not permitted to be out at night past a certain time however white people were not bound to these rules, and regulations. Many people would unintentionally break these rules since many African Americans at the time were traveling from county to county to find work they were often not aware of the laws of the county they were in. Since farmers had lost free workers after the civil war most people who violated black codes, instead of going to jail would have to work on farms, or get involved with chain
The Black codes were the predecessor too, and served as a blueprint for, the Jim Crow Laws. With the emancipation recently freeing thousands of slaves from bondage, whites Americans were now worried about what they would do about the enormous loss of manpower. Having no previous work experience, men and women didn’t know how to function without the slaves and servants they had become so accustomed to. (Wormser) Men were particularly worried about the loss of manpower in their fields. (Wormser) With cotton still the driving crop of the South, farmers needed hundreds of able-bodied men to be able to harvest enough cotton to meet the rising demands. In the home, women were terrified of losing their house slaves. Having no previous experience living home without servants or maids, wives and mothers did not know how to cook, clean, or even take care of their children. (Wormser) To combat this, the Black Codes were enacted to make sure that, regardless of their recent emancipation, African Americans were never really free (fofweb.com). The "… codes were based on an assumption that freedmen were immature and unable to make d...
In” A Good Man is Hard to Find” there are many factors that can be the theme. The theme can be about a family as a whole that lacks love for the grandmother, or about a family that goes on a trip that wound up having an accident, which puts them at the wrong place at the wrong time. Both of these themes are obvious to any reader, but it does not quite seem to match this author’s depth style way of writing. In a brief write up on Flannery O’Connor, it says “O’Connor is a moralist, she focuses an uncompromising moral eye on the violence and spiritual disorder of the world.” By knowing this about the author O’Connor we can look deeper into this story and find morals of two characters as the theme. The two characters are the Grandmother and the Misfit. Even though they are both different as night and day, they both have morals and stands by their morals no matter what.
Black Codes was a name given to laws passed by southern governments established during the presidency of Andrew Johnson. These laws imposed severe restrictions on freed slaves such as prohibiting their right to vote, forbidding them to sit on juries, limiting their right to testify against white men, carrying weapons in public places and working in certain occupations.
Flannery O’Connor was born in 1925 into “a prosperous Catholic family in Savannah, Georgia” (404). She wrote her first novel in New York, called “Wise Blood” in 1952. At only the age of 39, she became ill with an immune system disease called lupus and eventually died in 1964. Although she wrote a few novels, Flannery was “best known for her short stories collections”. Her short stories, like James Joyce, is seemed to be characterized in the theme “of gothic, grotesque tales,” but to some readers, she is a Christian writer. One of her short stories that she wrote that falls into the category of a Christian writing is “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”. As a reader, it is told that all humanities have sins but they are allow redemption through Jesus Christ. In other words, “God has the power to allow even bad people to go to heaven, which does by granting them grace” (Sparknotes.com). “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”, thus falls into the category theme of Grace, Good and Evil.
Lessons are learned through mistakes and experiences, but to completely understand the lesson, a person must be smart enough to profit from their errors and be strong enough to correct them. However, this was not the case for the main character in the short story; A Good Man is Hard to Find written by Flannery O’Connor. In this tale of manipulation and deception, O’Connor depicts the main character, the grandmother, as a shrewd self-centered woman, who considers herself morally superior than the other individuals. Throughout the entire story, she is seen using her manipulative tactics on everyone, which brought her to a sinister ending. O’Connor expertly portrayed the grandmother as a character that did not correct her negative characteristics throughout the story. To prove this statement, the use of time will be applied to help focus on the main idea of the grandmother not changing her deleterious ways throughout this story.
Murder of women, children, and even a baby is a harsh image used by Flannery O’Connor in “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” The imagery is an effective literary device used to convey ironic tragedy, the struggle of female characters, and the family unit. The story follows a family on a trip to Florida when their journey, interrupted by an ill-fated detour resulting in a car wreck, ends in murder after they cross paths with an escaped convict. Family dysfunction, female struggles, and tragedy are common themes in the stories written by Flannery O’Connor, and her characters often referred to as grotesque. In her story “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” she displays the relationships between a dependant mother and a resentful indifferent son, between an impotent grandmother and her insolent grandchildren, and the family’s interaction with strangers to promote the idea of shared human struggles with the meaninglessness of self-absorption and the dangers of impetuous behavior.
She is already showing her daughter that her thoughts do not matter. She is setting a cycle that is going to repeat itself over and over again. The speaker had to learn all these “ how to’s”from someone, most likely her mother. The speaker’s mother didn’t let her speaker her mind or even let be open to the thoughts of having a career or embracing her sexuality as a woman. She only let her daughter learn out clean, cook, and be a good wife. Women are more than what we do or cook, we are the providers and carriers of