Analysis of Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard To Find and Raymond Carver's "What We're Talking About When We Talk About Love

Family vacations are almost always stressful, but in Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard To Find," stress turns to outright horror for Bailey and family, for no better reason than a chance encounter following a car accident. Early in the story, Bailey's mother relates to him the story of a dangerous escaped convict, but only so that he might alter their course from Florida -- the direction in which the fugitive was known to be headed -- to eastern Tennessee, where grandmother herself hailed from. It is in their eventual encounter with that same fugitive, known to all as The Misfit, that provides us with a stark, yet brief, look at one of the odder characters In O'Connor's collection.

In Literary and Cultural Theory, Donald Hall introduces us to two contrasting looks at psychological development that are nonetheless equally regarded in the field. While the work of Sigmund Freud has been highly regarded for decades, Hall shines light on some glaringly absurd (from a more modern, "enlightened" perspective, at least) assertions that were central to Freud's work: the inferior female's envy and resentment of male "completeness" is one that stands out particularly (Hall 104). As a counterpoint, Hall also introduces us to Jacques Lacan, a French psychoanalyst whose own body of work was developed in almost direct, proportional response to Freud's. Looking at the two of them side by side, and not as contrasting viewpoints gives, I feel, a rather broad and comprehensive understanding of the key principles laid out by Hall as a framework.

In particular, it is Hall's third point that bears on my understanding of The Misfit. Everyone seems to know that the development of a person's mind throughout childhood and into adulthood bears ve...

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...ent, and the many pathways the mind takes to arrive at its eventual, yet forever changing state, it is important to remember and respect the complexity of the process, and recognize that to a certain degree, definitive answers on the subject may be impossible (Hall 110). The futility in ascribing concrete analysis of both psychology and literary value cannot be achieved through a singular lens. My own read on both The Misfit, and on Mel and Terri's pre-dinner party are subject to my own mental history (which certainly doesn't bode well for any of them). But stories, like the minds that create and enjoy them, are not as easily compartmentalized and classified as, say, genus and species groups in biology, or even the historical periods of the English empire. That complexity, much like the elusive love in Carver's story, is simply too deep to be painted with one brush.