A Good Man Is Hard To Find The Storm

765 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: The importance of moral character development

A Good Man Is Hard To Find The Storm Of the two stories I read, one being The Storm by Kate Chopin and the other being A Good Man Is Hard To Find by Flannery O'Connor, I found that each had characters with moral dilemmas. In both, the setting played a role in these dilemmas but in different ways. In The Storm, the bad weather was the set-off to and unpredicted intimacy while in A Good Man Is Hard To Find, the setting seems to be focused around a family's vacation and their encounter with a criminal. In the following paragraphs, I will go on to explain how certain characters have moral dilemmas and how the setting helps to support my interpretations. The Storm is based around a woman by the name of Calixta who is left home alone while a threatening storm blows up suddenly. Her husband and son are stranded at a local store until the weather calms down. While she is preparing for the worst, a man visitor appears at her doorstep needing a place of shelter. This man turns out to be an old sweetheart of hers, Alcee. As the story goes on, Calixta and Alcee, unleash themse...

Show More
Related

  • Flannery O Connor Grandmother

    1168 Words  | 3 Pages

    A brilliant storyteller during the mid-twentieth century, Flannery O'Connor wrote intriguing tales of morality, ethics and religion. A Southern writer, she wrote in the Southern Gothic style, cataloging thirty-two short stories; the most well known being “A Good Man is Hard to Find.”

    Read More

  • Mistakes In A Good Man Is Hard To Find

    604 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” written by Flannery O’Conner in 1953, a family goes on a trip. Everything other than the original idea of going on a trip is directed by the grandmother. She forces the family to go on a detour to find a house that she wants to see, she causes a crash when she realizes the house is in a completely different place—Tennessee, instead of Georgia, and finally she identifies The Misfit, and exclaims to his face that she knows who she is. The grandmother is the cause of almost everything that happens in the story, and her mistakes eventually fatally doom the family. She constantly annoys and holds back the family, and is selfish, only caring for herself.

    Read More

  • Feminine Sexuality in The Storm

    710 Words  | 2 Pages

    The title of 'The Storm'; gives the reader a peek into the underlying meaning of the story. It obviously portrays feelings of sexual energy, passion, and explosiveness, but the storm refers to nature, which historically has a feminine association. The storm takes on the personification of a deep, rumbling cloud of feminine sexuality and passion waiting to explode. Throughout the story, the intensity of the storm is symbolic of the intensity of Calixta's passion.

    Read More

  • The Two Storms in Kate Chopin’s story “The Storm"

    610 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Kate Chopin’s story “The Storm” it talks about love and lust. It speaks of two kind of storm that occurs. These two storms I find to be the central part of the story, and is being represented as a symbol within the story. The first storm is the most obvious one that Bibi and Bobinot are faced with. The second storm isn’t that visible for it involves Calixta and Alcee. Just as like most storms they come and pass.

    Read More

  • The Storm Symbolism Essay

    546 Words  | 2 Pages

    The storm is the major factor of getting Alcee and Calixta back together. If the storm would not have hit, Calixta’s husband and son would have been able to return home, and Alcee would have not had a reason to come by the gallery where Calixta was. Also, while Alcee was waiting on the storm to pass at the gallery, he gave readers reason to believe that the two of them had been lovers before. A line in the story that was said by the narrator was “She had not seen him since her marriage and never alone.”, this symbolizes that Alcee and Calixta have had some type of relationship before the two of them married other people, and she does not trust herself alone with him. When things started to get intimate between the two, Alcee said “Do you remember in Assumption, Calixta?”.

    Read More

  • A Good Man Is Hard To Find”

    2773 Words  | 6 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • A good man is hard to find paper

    1365 Words  | 3 Pages

    O’Connor’s uses contrasting elements of literature to make the story “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” mysterious yet predictable, and undeveloped yet totally defined. Her use of third person unknowing keeps the reader wondering but her use of foreshadowing gives the reader insight to what may occur next. The use of these two elements together keeps the reader predicting, therefore leading to an involvement with the reader and the story. The narrator lets the reader know that a criminal is on the loose, “Here this fellow calls himself The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida and you read here what it says he did to these people” (302). The next sentence reads, “ I wouldn’t take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn’t answer to my conscience if I did” (303) which foreshadows what is to come later in the story. O’Connor also leaves many of the characters in the story very undefined except for the main two, The old woman, or the grandmother and the Misfit. O’Connor spent more time depicting the grandmothers outfit in the beginning of the story than she did with all of the undefined characters in the whole story combined, which gave insight to the way the grandmother was, the way she viewed herself and the way her family viewed her; an old, prude, egotistical woman. She did care for her family, but her intentions at heart were only for herself. The...

    Read More

  • Kate Chopin's A Storm Within The Storm

    401 Words  | 1 Pages

    There are two storms in Kate Chopin’s “The Storm.” The first happens as Bobinot (Calixta’s husband) and Bibi (Calixta’s son) are at Freidheimer’s store. Unable to walk home in such a downpour, they remain there waiting for the storm to pass. Meanwhile, “Calixta, at home, felt no uneasiness for their safety” (108). Preparing for the storm, Calixta goes to gather the clothes on the line outside. “As she stepped outside, Alcee Laballiere rode in at the gate. She had not seen him very often since her marriage, and never alone” (108). As they both took refuge in the house from the storm outside, the second storm begins to brew.

    Read More

  • Empathizing with the Characters in The Storm by Kate Chopin

    805 Words  | 2 Pages

    She sets the scene with the storm approaching and Calixta at home working while her husband and her son, unbenounced to the storm that is brewing inside the house, are out at the store. He husband shows his sin the storm talking about its sinister intention. Making it obvious to us readers that it is a threatening and dangerous storm. This also gives the storm a human like trait, a consciousness if you will add to that the threatening roar and now the storm takes on a more animalist feel, like a lion roaring when its hunting to make its presence known.

    Read More

  • A Good Man is hard to Find

    1579 Words  | 4 Pages

    “Adversity defines the essence of who we are and who we desire to be!” This can be best realized in the rural southern regions of the United States during the late 19 forties and early fifties. Without a specific location of long-term concentration, this story finds three generations of a family taking a vacation (planning at least) to Florida despite objections from the grandmother. Factor in her impatient son (Bailey), his wife, and two smart-ass children have marginal respect for their grandmother resulting in a crew of authoritative, uncertainty, distant, and manipulative people about to engage on a trip that ends with certain doom for all with a twist indicative of self preservation and ironic irritation.

    Read More

  • Good Man Is Hard To Find Heroism

    1420 Words  | 3 Pages

    In every good story there is a hero and a villain. Traditionally the villain will be defeated by the hero and the day will be saved. In every Great story the villain is redeemed and grace and forgiveness is identified. Flannery O’Connor’s short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is not a traditional heroic story. In fact, her story is honestly tragic at first glance. Once you move past the deaths and horrific predicaments the characters of this story are consequently in, the story holds a greater meaning. Looking specifically at the grandmother, a self-centered, manipulative, prestigious human being, finds herself and her family on the side of the road in Georgia after a car accident. The grandmother and the rest of the family is being held

    Read More

  • Critical analysis on "A good man is hard to find"

    2348 Words  | 5 Pages

    This paper will present a rhetorical context for the use of violence in the short story, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” as she presented in her essay “The Element of Suspense.” The form of classical tragedy in this story will also be analyzed from the critical theories of Aristotle and Longinus. Tolstoy will be used to examine the use Christian symbolism. Nietzsche will provide a more well-rounded universal conclusion to the uses of tragedy and spiritual elements in this classic story.

    Read More

  • Full Of Silver-White Sunlight In A Good Man Is Hard To Find

    1128 Words  | 3 Pages

    Flannery O’Conner’s short story “A Good man is Hard to Find” is written with a strong religious undertones. “The trees were full of silver-white sunlight and the meanest of them sparkled” (O’Connor 377). This is pretty obvious that the "silver-white sunlight" is supposed to be imagery, the reader associates with Heaven. However, when she uses the word “meanest” it is perplexing to understand how something heavenly would highlight the meanest one. This is O’Connor warning the reader of something cruel to come. Another warning comes when “They passed a large cotton field with five or six graves fenced in the middle of it, like a small island” (O’Connor 377). This becomes very apparent since

    Read More

  • Literary Elements of The Storm by Kate Chopin

    885 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...way that the story is being interpreted and how the storm influences the story as a whole. Sometimes people need a wakeup call or a 'storm' to make them aware of how good they have things. In this short story Alcee and Calixta both come to realization of how good they have things with their spouses and how that they already found the ones that they love, which weren't each other. This made me aware of how we as people can take things for granted or believing we know what’s best for us. In reality we don't always know what’s best until something occurs and shows us that what we already have is the best.

    Read More

  • The Storm

    724 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Storm The title of this story suggests a metaphorical connection between the storm outside and the storm of emotions going on in the individuals Calixta and Alcee. The intensity of their sexual act inside the house follows the pattern of the storm outside. Their passion climaxes and diminishes with the storm. They are left replenished and fresh just like nature.

    Read More

More about A Good Man Is Hard To Find The Storm

Open Document