Society today is a mismatch of ideas and people from every walk of life and as diverse in thinking as grains of sand on the beach. This portrayal of a diverse society is so vivid in Flannery O’Connor’s short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find”. The characters in the story can are a functioning society with each person bringing to light a specific negative trait of society, but no other name than the one given to the escape convict strikes the very soul of every reader. By comparing the characters of the short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” to society, and analyzing the term Misfit as it reflects society today.
Each character in O’Connor’s short story brings to surface the bitter way society functions today. Take for instance the grandmother, shows how manipulative society can be when things do not go their way through out the story the grandmother manipulates her way to bring the trip to a halt and in to trouble and even when she knows she is lost she reaches out and surprises everyone by trying to side with the convict “Why your one of my babies. Your one of my own children!” (O'Connor 238-248).This quote is. A direct representation of how manipulative the grandmother can be in the story, and in many ways how society is today. Society will manipulate anything from the news to information to better fit a cause and the excuse given is that it is done to better civilization.
The mother in the story a nameless figure with very little description and almost no voice what so ever. She is a bitter reminder of how society views some woman. They are seen as a permanent stature of a home but not necessarily a figure in society. The kids both very loud and annoying portray a selfish, rude, an almost ignorant way of society such as Jo...
... middle of paper ...
...t that at times do not fit crimes as the Misfit in the story says it best when he states “Because I can’t make all I done wrong fit all I gone through punishment” (O'Connor 238-248). Flannery O’Connor sends a chilling message capturing the core of civilization in just a few lines the Misfit in the story is none other than every other college student trying to find himself, or someone taking the wrong turn somewhere in life. However, the truth is we all have a little bit of every character in us even the Misfit if not the talent to dream. It is the sympathy towards the value of life as he states “it’s no real pleasure in life” (O'Connor 238-248).
Works Cited
O'Connor, Flannery. ""A Good Man is Hard to Find"." Literature: An Introduction to
Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing, 5th Ed. Ed. Kennedy, X.J. and Gioia,
Dana. New York: Pearson/Longman, 2007. Print.
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.
The mother is a selfish and stubborn woman. Raised a certain way and never falters from it. She neglects help, oppresses education and persuades people to be what she wants or she will cut them out of her life completely. Her own morals out-weight every other family member’s wants and choices. Her influence and discipline brought every member of the family’s future to serious-danger to care to her wants. She is everything a good mother isn’t and is blind with her own morals. Her stubbornness towards change and education caused the families state of desperation. The realization shown through the story is the family would be better off without a mother to anchor them down.
Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man Is Hard to Find is one of the most well-known short stories in American history. A Good Man Is Hard to Find is a disturbing short story that exemplifies grace in extremity as well as the threat of an intruder. The story tells of an elderly grandmother and her family who embark on a road trip to Florida. The grandmother is a stubborn old woman with a low sense of morality. While on the trip, the grandmother convinces her son to take a detour which results in a broken down car and an encounter with a convicted fugitive, The Misfit. Although the grandmother pleads for mercy, The Misfit kills off the rest of her family. Through the grace she finds in her extreme circumstance, the grandmother calls The Misfit her own and implores him to spare her life. The Misfit does not oblige her and states after her death, “She would have been a good woman if it had been someone to shoot her every day of her life.” Through Flannery O’Connor’s disturbing and shocking display of the grandmother’s demise, she gives the reader a sense of the threatening power of an intruder and the idea of extreme situations bringing about a state of grace. The reason for such a powerful work may have resulted from Flannery O’Connor’s religious upbringing as well as the state of the nation at the time.
...te to Mother Courage as she too is a single mother and is working for the family’s survival. In everything that one reads that uses the family dynamic as a theme, it is quite simple to be able to tie at least one of their situations to one’s own family life. This further solidifies how important the family is in almost everyone’s lives, whether in real live or in a piece of literature.
Flannery O’ Connor’s story: “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is the tale of a vacation gone wrong. The tone of this story is set to be one irony. The story is filled with grotesque but meaningful irony. I this analysis I will guide you through the clues provided by the author, which in the end climax to the following lesson: “A Good Man” is not shown good by outward appearance, language, thinking, but by a life full of “good” actions.
...ther is losing her daughter to time and circumstance. The mother can no longer apply the word “my” when referring to the daughter for the daughter has become her own person. This realization is a frightening one to the mother who then quickly dives back into her surreal vision of the daughter now being a new enemy in a world already filled with evils. In this way it is easier for the mother to acknowledge the daughter as a threat rather than a loss. However, this is an issue that Olds has carefully layered beneath images of war, weapons, and haircuts.
Elmore Leonard once said “I don’t judge in my books. I don’t have the antagonist get shot or the protagonist win. It’s just how it comes out. I’m just telling a story.” “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”, written by Flannery O'Connor, is one of the most interesting stories that we have read in this class. The protagonist in this story is the grandmother and the antagonist is The Misfit. In any other short story, the protagonist and the antagonist would not have much in common, but that is not the case in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”. The three major similarities between the grandmother and The Misfit is that they are both the oldest one in their groups, they are both hypocrites, and they both are missing important spiritual relationships.
In the short story, “The Good Man Is Hard to Find” the grandmother describes a “good man” vaguely. The grandmother pertains the label “good” broadly, putting a shadow over the definition of a “good man” until it loses its meaning completely. She first applies it to Red Sammy after he furiously complains of the universal untrustworthiness of people. Red Sammy states, “Two fellers come in here last week, driving a Chrysler. It was an old beat-up car but it was a good one and these boys looked all right to me. Said they worked at the mill and you know I let them charge the gas they bought? Now why did I do that?” (1,045). The grandmother said he did this because he is “a good man.” She next relates the label “good” to the Misfit. After she identifies him, the grandmother asks, “You wouldn’t shoot a lady, would you?” (1,049). Even though he hates to admit it, The Misfit says, “I would hate to have to” (1,049). Because being a lady is such a meaningful part of what the grandmother believes as being ethical, the Misfit’s answer confirms to her that he does not share the same moral principles as she does. The grandmother begins to desperately call him a good man and that he comes from ...
The theme that has been attached to this story is directly relevant to it as depicted by the anonymous letters which the main character is busy writing secretly based on gossip and distributing them to the different houses. Considering that people have an impression of her being a good woman who is quiet and peaceful, it becomes completely unbecoming that she instead engages in very abnormal behavior. What makes it even more terrible is the fact that she uses gossip as the premise for her to propagate her hate messages not only in a single household but across the many different households in the estate where she stays.
“A Good man is hard to find,” is about a family who decide to go on a trip to Florida. The story revolves around a self absorbed grandmother who loves to talk about how everything used to be back in her day and takes the time to dress herself so that “In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady (358).” She sneaks the family cat with her despite her son’s disapproval of bringing the creature along violating her boundaries to how a lady would act. The family encounters an accident along the way and happens to come across ‘The Misfit,’ a runaway criminal. Using ‘The Misfit’ as a tool, O’ Connor sends a message to her readers of how hypocritical a person can be when it comes to belief.
In “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” the readers are lead to believe that the Grandmother is a good Southern woman who lives her life by God’s grace, and the Misfit is a horrendous, murderous, mad man that believes in nothing. Although these first impressions seem spot on at a first glance, the actual characteristics and traits of these characters are far more complex. The Grandmother and Misfit have a very intriguing conversation before he murders her, but in the short time before her death, the readers see the grandmothers need for redemption and how the murderous Misfit gave her the redemption she so desperately needed,
In 1960, Marilyn appeared in George Cukor's Let's Make Love (1960), with Tony Randall And
"A Good Man is Hard to Find presents a masterful portrait of a woman who creates a self and a world through language." At least that is what Mary Jane Shenck thinks of the Flannery O'Connor story. Several different people have several different views of this controversial and climatic work of O'Connor's. In this paper I will take a look at these different views of different situations and characters in this book.
“A Good Man Is Hard To Find” was written in 1953. The story demonstrates a broken family who can barely tolerate each other, going on a trip to Florida. Coincidentally, The Misfit has escaped from prison and is headed in the same direction as them. The grandmother continually attempts to persuade Bailey, her son, to go to destination that is not on their agenda. The only exception to their deviation of their route leads to The Misfit, who is a symbol of the grandmother’s salvation and the reality of everyone’s death. An individual’s misconstrued truth about their identity can falsify and taint their religion, therefore, leading them to beg for salvation. For example, in “A Good Man Is Hard To Find”, the grandmother manipulates everyone, compares the past to the present, and believes so passionately in her “lady hood” that it becomes her religion.
In Flannery O 'Connor 's short story, A Good Man is Hard to Find, the theme of good vs. evil unravels throughout the series of tragic events. The Grandmother’s epiphany introduces the idea of morality and the validity is left to the interpretation of the reader. By questioning the characteristics of right and wrong, morality and religion become subjective to personal reality and the idea of what makes individuals character good or bad becomes less defined.