In Flannery O'Connor’s A Good Man is Hard to Find, a family trying to go on a trip to Florida plans and lives come to a tragic end because of one person in their family: Their manipulative Grandmother. Even though she says in the beginning “I wouldn't take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it” (O’Conner pg), she does the complete opposite of her word and leads them all in to the way of danger; The hands of the criminal, The Misfit. If she would have just stayed home, no one would have died in the end and the trip would have went as smoothly as it has before. Yet, the tragedy of their grandmother’s choices and commitment of many of the deadly sins are what lead them to their fates, and the grandmother to her moment of divine grace. She proves that “good” people are hard to find, until in the sense of danger or a violent act wakes them up to receive and learn their purpose in life. The grandmother’s first sin was lust, an intense desire. Her intense desire was for control, getting her way, no matter what the cost was or the manipulating act she would have to commit. In the beginning of this short story it starts “The grandmother didn't want to go to Florida. She wanted to visit some of her connections in east Tennessee and she was seizing at every chance to change Bailey's mind.” (O’Conner pg). This start gives you a hint of her manipulating ways and desire for control. However her son Bailey, is immune to his mothers ways and chooses to ignore her. Next, she tries to manipulate the other part of the family. She tries everything from announcing "The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida [...]” to using the three children of Bailey and his wife as an excuse not to go by s... ... middle of paper ... ...eive divine redemption and moments from God. Works Cited Bruccoli, Matthew J., and Judith Baughman. Student's Encyclopedia of American Literary Characters. New York: Facts On File, 2008. Print. Michael Clark, “Flannery O’Conner’s ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’ : The Moment of Grace,” in English Language Notes, Volume XXIX, No. 2, December, 1991, pg. 66-9. Print. Piedmont-Marton, Elisabeth. Short Stories for Students. Vol. 2. Detroit: Gale Research, 1997. 106-09. Print. "O'Connor on "A Good Man Is Hard to Find"" O'Connor on "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" Ed. Thomas Votteler. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Mar. 2014. O'Conner, Flannery. "A Good Man Is Hard to Find." The Norton Introduction to Literature. 11th ed. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2002. N. pag. Print. Oschorn, Kathleen G. Ed. Katleen Wilson. Short Stories for Students. Vol. 2. Detroit: Gale Research, 1997. 110-13. Print.
In Flannery O’Conner’s, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” the story begins with the family going on a road trip to Florida. The Grandmother who is very critical, selfish, judgmental, forgetful, and dishonest and almost enjoys manipulating others to get her way. The Grandmother holds herself in very high regard and
It’s not about her, she implies, it’s about taking “them somewhere else for a change so they would see different parts of the world and be broad.” (O’Connor 1) It’s amazing how her manipulative words can actually make it seem like she genuinely cares for the children when in reality, she is doing it so that she can get whatever she desires. It shows that the grandmother is so used to getting what she wants when the author states, “the next morning the grandmother was the first one in the car, ready to go.”(O’Connor 2) First of all, Baily never agreed to changing the destination of their trip, so why was she so eager to leave already? It is obvious the grandmother had thought about new ways to manipulate the rest of the family members overnight. That is why she was so eager to be the first one in the car to make it seem as if she was actually excited about the trip when she was actually excited about using her sinful
O'Connor, Flannery, "A Good Man is Hard to Find", The Norton Introduction to Literature. Portable Tenth Edition, Booth, Alison, and Mays, Kelly J., New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc, 2011.
O'Connor, Flannery. "A Good Man Is Hard to Find." 1955. Literature: Reading Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and the Essay. 4th ed. Ed. Robert DiYanni. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 1998.
Works Cited Bandy, Stephen C. "One of my babies": The Misfit and the Grandmother in Flannery O'Connor's short story 'A Good Man Is Hard to Find'. Studies in Short Fiction; Winter 1996, v33, n1, p107(11). O’Connor, Flannery. The Complete Story of the. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
One of the most memorable lines from “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” comes from the Misfit when he says, “She would have been a good woman if it had been someone there to shoot her for every minute of her life (O’Connor 309).” Flannery O’Connor’s depiction of Christian faith can be seen in almost all of her works. Inevitably, the plots in all of O’Connor’s stories end with a shocking conclusion, and this leaves the reader with freedom to interpret the central idea. From the endless list of themes that O’Connor embeds into her stories, “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” is largely influenced by divine grace, hypocrisy, bitter reality, and white supremacy.
Charters, Ann. The Story and Its Writer – An Introduction to Short Fiction. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. Print.
O?Connor, Flannery. ?A Good Man is Hard to Find.? Literature: An introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 8th ed. New York: Longman, 2002.
O'Connor, Flannery. "A Good Man Is Hard to Find." The Story and Its Writer An Introduction to Short Fiction. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford / St. Martin's, 2011. 1042-053. Print.
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 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.
Since the beginning of the story, the readers have come to known the grandmother as a spiteful old lady due to her repulsive and deceitful attitudes toward others. Right from the start, we can see the grandmother using her manipulative tactics on her family. “The grandmother didn't want to go to Florida. She wanted to visit some of her connections in east Tennessee and she was seizing at every chance to change Bailey's mind.” (O’Connor 1) This initial quote shows an early indication that the grandmother is determined to obtain whatever she wants and will not allow anything to get in her way, even if it means manipulating her own family. This line already suggests that the grandmother may have sly motives concealed in her mind. “Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is a loose from the Federal Pen a...
Flannery O’Connor’s short story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” is about the misfortunes a family experiences while embarking on a vacation, but it goes further to depict the divergence between the superficial conflict in everyday life and the true battles in life threatening situations. O’Connor’s use of tone, syntax, and diction helps to develop the characters and illustrate the struggle of good versus evil, shedding light on the harsh reality of the prevalence and depth of real evil.
This is based on the grounds that “the Misfit”, an escaped criminal, is on the loose somewhere in Florida. The ironic part of this is that the grandmother is the only family member to conceive of bad things happening to the family. She bases this solely on the fact that they were traveling in the same direction as the Misfit. This negative thinking quite possibly could have led to the eventual rendezvous between the convict and the family. The following day, the family heads off to Florida.