Deciphering Goodness: Analysis of 'A Good Man is Hard to Find'

What Makes a Good Man So Hard to Find: An Analysis “…in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart” –Anne Frank (Frank 237). Frank, a young Jewish girl who, among many, suffered terribly during the Holocaust still believed in the good in people. She believed, after being forced to hide in an attic and being taken to a concentration camp (where she would eventually die), that people are really good at heart; but what does it take to be good? The short story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor confronts us with what it means to be “good” through the use of the characters, plot, setting, and theme. The story gives us a wide variety of characters, each bringing in their own definition of what being “good” is. The grandmother, the protagonist, sees herself as good, due to her status as a lady. She is a very judgmental character, who could find fault in anything and anyone, minus herself. She criticizes Bailey, her son, for his choice of vacation stating “I wouldn’t take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it” (O’Connor 422). She snaps at John Wesley for his distasteful remarks against Georgia, and even the mother for not agreeing to go toTennessee (O’Connor 424). In addition, she deems her life more valuable than others and that The Misfit would and should spare

O’Connor brings in characters that often feign religious beliefs for their own gain as in this work and in O’Connor’s ”Good Country People.” The grandmother is seen as a “Christian” woman, but from our perspective we see she how vile she is; this plays on the often mocked notion that all Christians are good people solely because they call themselves as such. When the grandmother tries to reason with the Misfit, he ignores her call to prayer and gives his own ideas as to what religion means to him, thereby rejecting the notion of “good