Good Characteristics in a Man is Hard to Find

“A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor is the prime example of a southern family vacation gone wrong. The Character flaws of the grandmother, children, and Bailey when combined caused the family to crash from the highway and have a run in with the epitome of evil, The Misfit. After the entire family is done away with by The Misfit’s gang members, the grandmother is left to face reality alone. Her fragile and previously wandering mind is soon brought back to the realization that she is in fact the same as The Misfit. Flannery O’Connor was able to covey her defining of a good man through irony, religious undertones, and symbolism.

Irony can be found all throughout “A Good Man is Hard to Find”. Character irony can be greatly seen through the grandmother. As the family is preparing for their trip she is continually trying to manipulate them to go to Tennessee instead of Florida while trying to make it seem like she doing it for the protection of the family from The Misfit and not for her selfish needs “Here this fellow that 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. Just you read it. I wouldn’t take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it.” (O’Connor 369). As the story progresses the irony in her character is revealed. She wanted to make sure her clothes were perfect and she wore the nicest things to travel incase of an accident so that other people that saw her body would know that she was a lady. Despite her superficial appearance and religion internally she was not any better than the others. It was her lies that caused the family to crash their car.

“They attempt to define the good man and good wo...

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...ok into their own morals and religious values.

Works Cited

Blythe, Hal, and Charlie Sweet. "O'connor's A Good Man Is Hard To Find." Explicator 55.1 (1996): 49. Academic Search Premier. Web. 12 Nov. 2013.

Link, Alex. "Means, Meaning, And Mediated Space In "Good Man Is Hard To Find.." Southern Quarterly 44.4 (2007): 125-138. Academic Search Premier. Web. 12 Nov. 2013.

O’Connor, Flannery. “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” Kennedy, X.J., and Dana Gioia. Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. 11th ed. New York: Longman, 2010. 369-379. Print.

SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2007. Web. 30 Oct. 2013.

Yaghjian, Lucretia B. "Flannery O'connor's Use Of Symbol, Roger Haight's Christology, And The Religious Writer." Theological Studies 63.2 (2002): 268. Academic Search Premier. Web. 12 Nov. 2013.