A Good Man Is Hard For Find By Flannery O ' Connor

In the exposition, O 'Connor immediately presents the characterization of the overbearing Grandmother. This introduces the conflict that the Grandmother is set on getting her way above the family’s wishes. The reader needs to understand this characterization because it helps understand why the ending is so significant when she offers grace to the misfit and redeems herself. The author, O 'Connor, develops her plot chronologically, immediately stating the initial conflict of The Grandmothers manipulative tendency. The reader discovers there is an escaped criminal on the loose, the Grandmother uses this in her favor, she says, “Here this fellow calls himself the misfit is loose from the federal pen and headed toward Florida and you read here what it says he’d do to these people. Just you read it. I wouldn’t take my children in any direction with a criminal like that a loose in it. I couldn’t answer to my conscience if I did,” (O 'Connor 470). Her manipulation disconnects her from the reader in order to convey the theme when she changes in the end. If she started as a good person and was a likable character in the story, O 'Connor would not be able to get her purpose across that bad people can redeem themselves.

“A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” by Flannery O’ Connor, is about a family going on a trip from Georgia to Florida. The grandmother, who is old-fashion in her beliefs, tells her grandchildren stories on the road trip; one story leads them down a dirt road to find a house on an old plantation, which produces an unpleasant outcome. The author uses the grandmother’s voice and language to give an old southern appeal to the story, which causes the impression that those who live like her are considered more acceptable.

Flannery O’Connor’s short story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” and a movie called “No Country for Old Men” have striking similarities as far as their portrayal of fate working in the lives in humans. They illustrate how the present and the future is left up to chance and is directly correlated with past actions. Both the short story and the movie portray the inevitability of fate to naturally dictate the outcome of people’s lives.

In Flannery O’Connor’s short story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”, O’Connor tells the story mainly on the emphasis of the grandmothers prospective. The grandmother was never named in the short story, only leaving the reader to guess if this story was how O’Connor portrayed a feeling toward society and religion. In order for the reader to understand the point of view of the story, the reader must look at the back ground of the author. Born in Georgia, where the story takes place, O’Connor was raised a devout Roman Catholic in the largely Protestant South. Due to O’Connor’s Catholic religion and conservative upbringing in the protestant south it is easy to see her obvious disapproval with society and others religious values. O’Conner died at a young age from an illness, an illness that had taken her father’s life when she was just a teenager. During her short time of writing she only published two novels and a collection of stories. The title story of the collection, “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” is O’Connor’s most famous. (Larson) O’Connor’s uncanny blend of wicked humor, brutal violence, and religious concepts produced the unmistakable literary voice of one of the most important short story writers of the 20th century. (183)

Flannery O’Connor’s Southern Gothic short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” is one of sudden violence; although, it begins rather uneventful (Kaplan 1). Bailey, his wife, and their children, John Wesley, June Star, and a baby boy, are all looking forward to a trip to Florida. Grandmother, Bailey’s mom, wants to go to east Tennessee to see her relatives, not Florida. She uses an article in the newspaper that tells of an escaped criminal, the Misfit, which is headed to Florida to try to persuade her son into not going there. Her attempt at persuading her son fails, and so the adventure begins. While the grandmother and the Misfit are the central figures of Flannery O’Connor’s short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” Bailey, John Wesley, and June Star prove to be instrumental characters because they are used to show a change in the mood of the story.

Some people go through life with the preconceived notion that they are better than everyone else. They base their opinions on the way people look and how they act. Some people believe that if they have more material things than another person, that makes them superior. These narcissistic individuals are only concerned with the popularity and superiority that they have on this Earth, but they fail to realize eventually we will all be the same: a pile of skull and bones six feet under. No matter a person 's race, attractiveness, social or financial class, every single human being will be the same in the end. God is the number one ruler and only He can judge us. American writer, Flannery O’Connor, makes known in her short stories, “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” and “Revelation,” “that the meaning of life is centered in people 's Redemption by Christ” (Shinn 59). In both stories, the main characters believe that they are superior to everyone else. The main characters face violent or traumatizing situations or events that push them into a moment of crisis that awakens or changes their faith and in the end God grants them grace.

In “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”, Flannery O’Connor presents to the readers an uncanny encounter between a murderer named “The Misfit” and a grandmother. The two characters when first introduced seem to be antithesis of each other. This “misfit” is described as a murderer who seems to have no morals or feelings, while the grandmother seems to embody a good Christian woman. Throughout the plot, it is known that the misfit is not much of a believer and the grandmother is. Due to the fact that O’Connor wrote a lot about religion, it is not hard to figure out the connection she tries to make between the characters and religion. In “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”, Flannery O’Connor uses both the misfit’s and the grandmother’s circumstances and behavior in order to show the readers how the old and new generations feel towards religion. Throughout the plot she uses the Misfit to portray the new generation and uses the grandmother to portray the older generation. O’Connor talks about the generations in such ways that show that the older generations seemed to believe heavily in religion but in the wrong way, and the new generation is misguided with little to no religious affiliations.

In the stories “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” by Flannery O’Connor and “Where Are You Going Where Have You Been,” by Joyce Carol Oates, the authors illustrate the attitudes that people possess toward death. O’Connor is considered to be motivated by religious appeal, whereas Oates writes to depict the temptation of death. Those that have no choice in their death see it as a punishment, while those that choose to die see it as a blessing. Through the use of symbolism, diction, and comparisons, O’Connor and Oates shed light on the differing perspectives of death.

Perceivable in virtually all aspects of life, the Christian faith and its values are embedded deep within worldly establishments and ideals. Whether it’s the “In God We Trust” displayed on American buildings and currency or the numerous countries who mention God in their national anthem, belief in Christianity is a trait shared amongst people worldwide. Appropriate with the vital impact Christianity has on many lives, authors often glance at Christianity and its followers through the actions and decisions of their characters. Revered as one of the most prominent Christian writers, Flannery O’Connor delves deep into her Catholic faith in nearly all of her works; she is quoted with saying that “[she] write[s] with a solid belief in all the Christian

Flannery o 'Connor. Known as the southern United States, the second after Faulkner writer. "A good man is hard to find" the religious fable story, the story is very simple, an elderly woman with her son a family trip to Florida, due to the old woman wanted to see a supposed to be on the way but somehow thought in Tennessee plantation in Georgia, and the way for the old woman with a bad idea to turn over a car, then the escaped from prison that inappropriate happens by men, finally killed all of them a six people, including the baby.

This transition out of the grandmother’s comfort zone is paralleled by the change in tone from humorous and light to dark and serious. The grandmother encourages the Misfit to see in himself his virtue and true goodness. The violence initiate an epiphany for the grandmother and she is able to look past the surface of the intimidating serial killer and delve into the reasons and motivations of his actions and the ways in which God has left them in uncertainty with how to act and behave. The grandmother’s attempts to reconcile with the Misfit are fruitless and she is shot and killed. The grandmother’s moment of grace does not go unnoticed to the Misfit as he mentions the grandmother’s potential to be a good woman if she was constantly at

“A Good Man is Hard to Find” is written by Flannery O’Connor. O’Connor was known to be a religious man, and many of his works surrounded his beliefs. Because of his faith, the theme of morality in his short story is very prominent. The theme of morality in “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is found through the symbolism of the grandmother’s hat, the sky, the old house, and the dirt road.

Even though the grandmother lives her life with old values, she believes everyone can live that way, including the misfit. The misfit who had a hardness about him due to all the encounters that he had to face over his life, still opened up to the grandmother, as he tried explaining the reasons he did what he did. This was also proven by John Desmond in his analogy of “A Good Man is Hard to Find” that Good Vs. Evil is the main theme of the story, and spoken through the grandmother and the

"A Good Man is Hard to Find" is a showdown of between a grandma with a fairly shallow feeling of goodness, and a criminal who encapsulates genuine insidiousness. The grandma appears to regard goodness for the most part as a component of being respectable, having great conduct, and originating from a group of "the correct individuals." O 'Connor 's prevails to draw out his contentions in this short story to total up the inclination that in this day and age, societal ethics and qualities have definitely disintegrated making the world an inhabitable place. One inquiry that surfaces in the story is the thing that the meaning of a decent man is and how there is so few of them cleared out on the planet. A significant number of the characters in

The two stories I chose were "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" by Flannery O 'Connor and "Young Goodman Brown" by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Both of these stories have characters who acknowledge their lives changed by taking a risk on evil. The main characters, Goodman Brown and the Grandmother, believe they are good Christians who will receive glorious rewards when they pass. While Hawthorne analyzes the Puritan/Calvinistic beliefs that are confusing and harsh, Goodman can 't find restitution. O 'Connor allows her character the opportunity for poise to regain herself. In the beginning, however, both Goodman Brown and the grandmother set ahead on their trips convinced that they are honest people. Brown 's attempts on an adventure into the forest, telling his wife Faith he must go just one more time; even though his wife Faith pleads with him to stay. For he feels he must meet evil and test himself so he can come back with insight knowing that he is, actually, saved. Brown represents humans confronted with the temptation or trying to satisfy their curiosity. After traveling through the forest, Brown is unable to return to the life he once knew. He became "a stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man...from the night of that fearful dream" (273). In the end Brown loses his wife Faith, and his religious faith. The grandmother is a judgmental, egotistical person who is absolutely unaware of her own flaws until shes faced with death. The evil road taken by