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Good and evil in literature
Good and evil in literature
Good and evil in literature
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Flannery O’Connor’s short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, is tale about a grandmother who unknowingly steers her family to a fatal meeting with a fugitive. The chance encounter with the murderous fugitive ultimately costs the grandmother and her family their lives. Sticking with the Southern Gothic genre, O’Connor takes odd characters and mixes in dark encounters to produce a story packed full of hidden meanings and foreshadowing (Language and Literature, 2). At first glance, it seems easy to identify the character that represents evil in the story, the murderous outlaw. However, things are not always, what they seem; a closer look will reveal that the murder might not be the evilest character in the story. The story opens with a portrayal of a family in their home discussing a planned road trip to Florida. The family consists of a married couple, their three children, and the husband’s mother, the children’s maternal grandmother. The grandmother, who is never named in the story, begins the story by attempting to convince her son, Bailey, that they should change the destination of their road trip to avoid running into a convict who had escaped. While this might seem reasonable, the grandmother’s intentions are self-serving and foreshadow events to come in the story. She makes a few remarks including, "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. I couldn't answer to my conscience if I did" (O’Connor, 1). Her suggestion to change destinations is met with resistance from the rest of the family members; Bailey and ... ... middle of paper ... ...ognize. Sometimes what is truly evil is hidden under auspice of righteousness. Works Cited "Flannery O'connor." Language and Literature (10576037) 29.(2004): 1-27. Academic Search Complete. Web. 12 Apr. 2014. Bethea, Arthur F. "O'connor's A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND." Explicator 64.4 (2006): 246-249. Academic Search Complete. Web. 12 Apr. 2014. Desmond, John. "Flannery O’Connor’s Misfit And The Mystery Of Evil." Renascence 56.2 (2004): 129-137. Academic Search Complete. Web. 12 Apr. 2014. Hendricks, T. W. "Flannery O'connor's "Spoiled Prophet." Modern Age 51.3/4 (2009): 202-210. Academic Search Complete. Web. 12 Apr. 2014. Nester, Nancy L. "O'connor's A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND." Explicator 64.2 (2006): 125-127. Academic Search Complete. Web. 12 Apr. 2014. O'Connor, Flannery. A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories. New York: Harcourt, 1955. Print.
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
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.”
The Flannery O’Connor story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” illustrates a parallel between the Misfit and the grandmother, showing that good and evil are not mutually exclusive in an individual. The grandmother and the Misfit display a flowing, changing state of character, representative of this shift. Flannery O’Connor develops these two characters on the surface as simply being a good person and a bad person. However, there is more to each character than the surface level, as they exhibit traits that wouldn’t ordinarily seem fitting in regards to what would be expected. It is this complexity in human characteristics that O’Connor takes the time to develop and show the audience the depth of humanity.
Flannery O'Connor once said of her writing, "All my stories are about the action of grace on a character that is not very willing to support it, but most people think of these stories as hard, hopeless and brutal." This statement is especially true when matched with O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find," in which character plays such an essential role within the story. Through her characters, particularly the Grandmother and the Misfit, O'Conner manages to inject many elements; the characters embody symbols and themes such as O'Brien's message of Christianity.
O’Connor, Flannery. “A Good Man is Hard to Find." Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing. 8th ed. Laurie G. Kirszner and Stephen R. Mandell. Boston: Wadsworth, 2013. 228-237. Print.
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...
As I read Flannery O’Connor’s short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, I find myself being completely consumed by the rich tale that the author weaves; a tragic and ironic tale that concisely and precisely utilizes irony and foreshadowing with expert skill. As the story progresses, it is readily apparent that the story will end in a tragic and predictable state due to the devices which O’Connor expertly employs and thusly, I find that I cannot stop reading it; the plot grows thicker with every sentence and by doing so, the characters within the story are infinitely real in my mind’s eye. As I consider these factors, the story focuses on two main characters; that of the grandmother, who comes across as self-centered and self-serving and The Misfit, a man, who quite ingeniously, also appears to be self-centered and self-serving. It is the story behind the grandmother, however, that evidence appears to demonstrate the extreme differences between her superficial self and the true character of her persona; as the story unfolds, and proof of my thought process becomes apparently clear.
A Good Man Is Hard To Find is a southern gothic short story by Flannery O’Connor.
Occasionally, the grandmother will tell stories from her past, but otherwise the timeline is straightforward and easy to follow. The story can be divided into four main parts: the short conversations in Bailey’s house, the time spent in the car, the family's lunch at Red Sam’s, and the car wreck until the end. Most action takes place in the fourth part, near the end of the story. The conversation between the grandmother and The Misfit is especially notable; it reiterates the grandmother’s stubborn and controlling personality and exposes the reader into the mysteriously diabolical demeanor of The Misfit.
Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is filled with tension and excitement from the beginning. The story begins with a small family deciding where to journey to on their vacation. Some say one place; others say to go to another. In the end, it was decided that they would all travel to Florida. But, unfortunately, a criminal by the name of The Misfit has escaped from the nearest penitentiary. On the car
In the beginning, the grandmother attempts to persuade her son to abandon his idea of traveling to Florida, as she disagrees in his plan to take his family to Florida because there is a criminal simply called The Misfit on the loose and has reportedly been seen around those parts. However, even when considering this, Bailey, the son, persists
Reading between the lines of Flannery O’Connor’s work “A good Man is hard to find” leaves the reader puzzled and engrossed as their minds remains onto the setting of the story. The story begins with a bad mood, and the reader keeps waiting for good to prevail over it, but unlike most stories, the ending is a captivating draw.
The story begins with the grandmother trying to persuade the family not to travel towards Florida but perhaps go to Tennessee instead. This is based on the grounds that “the Misfit”, a 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.
Bailey, his children, wife, and his mother are planning a short family trip to Florida; the grandmother refuses to travel towards Florida as there is a killer roaming known as 'The Misfit'. "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.". The grandmother only wanted to visit her connections in East Tennessee and drew her son's attention to a newspaper headline to persuade him in that direction. This is the readers first
O'Connor, Flannery. A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977. Print.