The irony

“A good man is hard to find”, a short story written by Flannery O’Connor, is a story about good and evil and divine grace. Much irony is found throughout this story: The story starts out with a family planning to take a vacation but ends with all of them being killed. In addition, being good does not relate to being kind. Instead, it relates to what the grandmother thinks is moral.

The irony can be seen spotted at the very beginning of the story, when O’Connor gives us the reason why the grandmother is getting dressed up for the vacation: “In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady” (4060). Ironically, the grandmother actually ends up dead. In addition, by just reading that sentence alone, one might think that the grandmother was actually a classy woman. However, this doesn’t mean that the woman was a lady. As the story develops, the old woman turns out to be rather rude, racist and obnoxious. She contradicts herself often and she judges people without recognizing her very own shortcomings: “Children were more respectful of their native states and their parents and everything else. People did right then. “Oh look at the cute little pickaninny!” (406). Here, the grandmother is talking about being respectful, but she also uses the word “pickaninny” which is a racially offensive term used to refer to black children. That is not very respectful or ladylike in my opinion. When June Star noticed that the little boy didn’t have any britches on, the grandmother replied: “Little niggers in the country don't have things like we do” (406). Again, the woman who was depicted as a lady in the beginning of the story proves to be quite the opposite. In fact, she sounds ignorant....

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...nature of the Misfit due to the politeness that he had shown earlier. She thought he was nice simply because he was talkative. She began feeling sympathy for him when she thought he was going to cry: "Why you're one of my babies. You're one of my own children", she said unto the Misfit while reaching out to him (414). The Misfit, however, reacted by shouting her three times.

A situational irony happens when a wicked man, The Misfit, causes the old woman to become sympathetic. Her enlightenment allows her to redeem herself by casting off her selfishness and reaching out to the serial killer. The Misfit's felony led to the old woman's redemption.

Works Cited

Frost, Robert. "The road not taken". Barnet, Sylvan, William Burto, and William E. Cain. Literature for Composition. 9th. Bloomington: Longman, 2011. 404,405,406,407,408,409, 410,411,412,413,414. print.