A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor

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A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor

"A Good Man is Hard to Find" is an extremely powerful commentary that elucidates Flannery O'Connor's opinions about religion and society. Like the majority of her other works, " A Good Man is Hard to Find" has attracted many "interpretations based on Christian dogma" (Bandy 1). These Christian explications are justified because Miss O'Connor is notorious for expressing Catholic doctrines through her fiction. Once she even remarked "I see from the standpoint of Christian orthodoxy" (Kropf 1). This longstanding reputation compels every critic of O'Connor to expose the religious convictions encrypted within her stories. The grandmother's final gesture towards the Misfit is not a moment of grace but rather an extremely selfish act intended to save her life at any cost. Therefore, the grandmother's final gesture symbolizes society's lack of genuine spirituality.

Further evidence that supports the notion that "A Good Man is Hard to Find" is a commentary on society's lack of spirituality is its parallelism with Geoffrey Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales." The stories conform so closely to one another that one must consider the possibility that Flannery O'Connor used the "Canterbury Tales," or more specifically the "Pardoner's Tale, as an outline for her own commentary about society's lack of genuine spirituality. Notably, "A Good Man is Hard to Find" and the "Canterbury Tales" seek "to define the good man and good woman of their age within a Christian context" (Blythe & Sweet 1). The stories use a journey as a tool to determine and define a good man or woman. Pardoner's and O'Connors parties encounter death because of their avarice of treasure. The Pardoner's message "radix mal...

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...llection. Farming Hills, Mich.: Gale Group. December, 2000. http://www.galenet.com/servlet/DC/ Document Number: CD2112200084

Ochshorn, Kathleen G., "A Cloak of Grace: Contradictions in 'A Good Man is Hard to Find'," in Studies in American Fiction, Vol. 18, no. 1, Spring, 1990, pp.113-117. EXPLORING Short Stories. Gale Research, 1998. Reproduced in Discovering Collection. Farmington Hills, Mich: Gale Group. Decmber, 2000. http://www.galenet.com/servlet/DC/ Document Number CD2112200082

O'Connor, Flannery. "A Good Man Is Hard to Find." Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing. Laurie G. Kirszner and Stephen R. Mandell eds. Fort Worth: Harcourt, 2001. 254-259.

Owens, Mitchell., "The function of signature in 'A Good Man is Hard to Find'," in Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. 33, no. 1, pp. 101-106. EXPLORING Short Stories. Gale Research. 2001. Document Number A19638482

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