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Christianity is the most popular religion in the world. Consisting of over two billion followers worldwide, it has been around for over 2,000 years. Religion plays a significant part of many individuals’ lives. Various authors utilize literary elements to resemble religious ideas. The short stories, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor and “Sweat” by Zora Neal Hurston, sublimely portrays the lives of a false Christian and a true Christian. O’Connor’s main character demonstrates the life of a false Christian, while Hurston’s main character demonstrates the life of a true Christian. “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” illustrates the nature of a fallen Christian or, a false Christian. The main character, the grandmother, indicates irreligious …show more content…
Hurston’s protagonist, Delia, a common African American woman living in the South, possesses a strong faith in God. Delia is a victim of marital abuse yet she trusts in God to bring her through it all. Her husband, Sykes, is completely opposite of Delia. He has an additional affair in which he uses all of Delia’s funds to provide for the mistress. In the beginning of the story, Delia allows the white clothes to soak while she sorts the rest. The soiled white clothes resemble Delia as a Christian. God has washed her in the blood of the Lamb in order to be valuable and useful. Delia must wash the soiled clothes in order for them to remain valuable and useful for the customers. As the plot continues, Sykes tortures Delia with her biggest fear, snakes. He brings the ruthless creature into the home without Delia’s consent. Delia constantly begs for Sykes to get rid of the snake. After being denied of her wishes, Delia expresses her resentment when calmly stating, “Ah hates you, Sykes (Hurston 7). Despite the message, the calm behavior indicates the peace Delia retains. Such behavior shows God provides peace in the midst of the storm. The storm in this case is the mistreatment from her husband. Upon returning from church one evening, she discovers “the snake in the basket” (Hurston 8). In fear, Delia scurries outside on to the hay barn for safety. Right before she falling asleep, Delia proclaims “If things aint right, Gawd knows taint mah fault”(Hurston 8). In other words, she is innocent in God’s eyes. Later in the night, Sykes returns home and the snake kills him. The snake symbolizes the serpent in the biblical story of Adam and Eve. Its deceitful manner leads to negative consequences. In this case, Sykes reaps what he sown. This divine order is what Delia had faith in all along. She believed God would take care of everything and He did. In the end, Delia allows her faith
Nearly everyone is familiar with the character of Christ. While understandings of Christ as a figure of faith may vary, he is universally recognized as a historical figure. The world knows that Christ was called “Son of God,” he called people to love, and he died a painful death on the cross. He has become such an important figure that images of him show up frequently in literature. Thomas Foster, author of How to Read Literature Like a Professor, outlines a wide range of characteristics common in Christ-like figures. In his list of descriptors, Foster suggests characters might be Christ figures if they have wounds reminiscent of the crucifixion, suffer in agony, or are self-sacrificing—and this is only the beginning of his list (126). Readers repeatedly identify Christ figures in literature, both because of the well-known characteristics Foster describes in his chapter on Christ figures and because readers find them through their own understandings. In Yu Hua’s
The grandmother character in A Good Man is Hard to Find is the Christian icon of the story, while the Misfit represents all that is evil. True to her southern roots, ...
Certain objects and situations in the story suggest the influence of religion. The white clothes Delia washes in the story are symbolic of her character. White represents her virtue and saintly tendencies as she humbly tolerates Sykes' torment. The religious association of snakes and evil is prevalent in two instances in this story. Sykes at one point uses a whip to scare Delia by rubbing it on her and making her think it was a snake. Also, later in the story, Sykes places a real snake just outside the door of their house for the sole purpose of scaring Delia. These two examples could be seen as a biblical allusion as in the story of Adam and Eve when Satan took the form of a snake. The symbolism of snakes in "Sweat" subtly and cleverly illustrates Sykes as being an evil antagonist character.
“In A Good Man Is Hard To find” the Grandmother is portrayed as a main character that symbolizes a savior. O’Connor portrays the Grandmother as a savior with grace, who is
In the short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, by Flannery O'Connor, every object including the characters are symbols. The Grandmother for example is the one and only dynamic character, represents all of us who have had to feel grief or needed to ask for forgiveness. As Flannery O'Connor has suggested, the story is a spiritual journey because of the Grandmother's quandaries. In the beginning of the story the Grandmother is obsessed with everything worldly and superficial. She cares only about how others perceive her,
The novelist with Christian concerns will find in modern life distortions which are repugnant to him, and his problem will be to make them appear as distortions to an audience which is used to seeing them as natural; and he may be forced to take ever more violent means to get his vision across to this hostile audience. When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax a little and use more normal ways of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the blind you draw large and
Hurston’s creative writing approach is the major factor to make the story more appealing and believable. The major turning point of the story occurs when Sykes died of a snake’s bite. At this point, it can be relatable that Sykes death is because of his karma. It’s the consequences of his injustice to Delia. Although Delia saw Sykes struggle and hears his scream, she sits in the shade of Chinaberry tree and waits for Sykes to die. “A surge of pity too strong to support bore her away from that eye must, could not, fail to see the tubs” (Hurston pp. 1030). Delia’s unwillingness to help Sykes is because she desperately wants to release from him. Linda Wagner- Martin stated, “Later Sykes brings a snake to the house, still trying to frighten her away from the valuable property; but the resolution of the narrative lies in the way the snake works justice upon Delia's husband”. Hurston beautifully ends up the story with the reptilian match and penalize for wrongdoing. Sykes is punished exactly what he deserves to get. It is the result of his laziness, exploitation, betrayal, and unhuman activities. Finally, the justice is given to victimized Delia, who is paid off for her loyalty and hard
The reason I responded to “Sweat” by Zora Neale Hurston is because of the message of the short story goes back two biblical quotes
In the short story A Good Man Is Hard to Find, written by Flannery O’Connor, the theme that the definition of a ‘good man’ is mysterious and flawed is apparent. The reader must realize that it is difficult to universalize the definition of a good man because every person goes through different experiences. Thus, these experiences affect his or her viewpoint and in turn flaw ones view on a good man. O’Connor conveys this theme through her excellent use of diction, imagery, foreshadowing, and symbolism as well as through a creative use of repetition and an omniscient point of view.
The authors Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey's essay is credible because they both have knowledge and experience regarding the topic and researched various parts of the topic using reliable sources. Along with this essay, Charles Colson has written thirty books which have received much praise among the Christian community. He has also received many awards including the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion in 1993, the Presidential Citizen's Medal
Being a devout Catholic, O’Connor’s “faith consciously informed her fiction. The difficulty of her work, she explained…is that many of her readers do not understand the redemptive quality of ‘grace,’ and, she added, ‘don’t recognize it when they see it. All my stories are...
“A Good Man is hard to find,” a short story written by Flannery O’ Connor, is one of the most interesting stories I’ve ever come across to in my life. Born as an only child into a Catholic family, O’ Conner is one of the most “greatest fiction writers and one of the strongest apologists for Roman Catholicism in the twentieth century (New Georgia Encyclopedia).” She was a very strong believer in her faith and she used her stories as a tool to send the reader a message that were most likely ignored and almost never uttered out loud. The story revolves around a grandmother who believes to be high and mighty around others. This results in her downfall later on.
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.
A Good man is Hard to Find" focuses on Christianity being filled with sin and punishment, good and evil, belief and unbelief.
"A Good Man is Hard to Find" is certainly a very special story which teaches many valuable moral and religious lessons through O'Connor's explicit use of symbolism to exhibit concerns of the lack of spiritual faith and the class consciousness amongst people. We saw how O'Connor specifically used the grandmother and June Star's character to highlight the people's lack of spiritual faith and class-consciousness. O'Connor also used other symbols such as the colour white, images like clouds and objects like the purple spray of cloth violets to represent various abstractions, which is being discussed this essay, specifically issues on the lack of spiritual faith and class-consciousness that exist in human.