The Effective Use of Tone in Flannery O'Connor's A Good Man is Hard to Find

In "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," Flannery O'Connor represents her style of writing very accurately. She includes her "themes and methods - comedy, violence, theological concern - and thus makes them quickly and unmistakably available" (Asals 177). In the beginning of the story O'Connor represents the theme of comedy by describing the typical grandmother. Then O'Connor moves on to include the violent aspect by bringing the Misfit into the story. At the end of the story the theme changes to theological concern as the attention is directed towards the grandmother's witnessing. As the themes change throughout the story, the reader's perception of the grandmother also changes.

An interesting story is “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor which combines a sarcastic humor with a fictional event that could teach us how a little unexpected moment would destroy their precious treasure of life, the family. Through the story the author applies foreshadowing, strong characters, and particular settings to keep the attention of the reader.

There is a saying, “expect the unexpected.” This turns out to be true in many works of literature, and to some, it may seem so in “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” However, the author, Flannery O’ Connor, subtly provides hints that foreshadows the tragic demise of the family. Through the grandma choosing to have the vacation in Tennessee instead of Florida, the grandma’s fancy ladylike outfit, the descriptive scenery, and the drive during the trip, O’Connor foreshadows the family’s fatal encounter with The Misfit.

The grandmother is the master manipulator in this story. She tries to get anything she wants even if it means putting others’ lives in danger and by manipulating others to make her point. The grandmother after several attempts of trying to get attention from her son, Bailey and her daughter in-law, but to no avail, she decided to go see a plantation knowing that Bailey would not pay attention to her, she then turns to the children and lies about a secret panel, “There was a secrete panel in this house, and the story went that all the family’s silver was hidden in it when Sherman came through but it was never found” (O’Connor 312), she knows if she lies to the kids it will cause them to throwing a fit in the car which will in turn draw Bailey’s attention to

The story starts off with a family of 6 prepping for their trip to Florida. However, the Grandmother within the first couple of lines shows how against it she is because of the escaped convicts known as the misfits. The reader is told that the Misfit is an escaped convict that is known as a notorious killer and is somewhere in Florida. Looking at the Grandmothers character and reasons for bringing this up the externally makes the Grandmothers pleas seem reasonable and the thought process of the rest of her family to be less reasonable but when examined thoroughly and internally there is more fault to the Grandmothers character than is let on.

Irony is a useful tool for giving stories unexpected turns and twists. In Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," irony is used as a very effective literary tool; to guide the story in and out of what we think will happen. O'Connor uses irony in this story to contradict statements and situations to expose a truth very much different from what "we" the reader would think to be true. O'Connor use irony in several different forms, situational irony, dramatic irony and verbal irony to make the story unpredictable and interesting to read. In most every aspect of the story from beginning to end there is some type of ironic twist. The title itself is some what

In most of Flannery O’Connor’s short stories a number of characters have a hard time seeing an ultimate reality in their life. They tend to have a distorted grasp on reality but not all in the same way. In the story “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” the Misfit and the Grandmother are prime examples. The actions and the way of life of the Misfit and Grandmother are mostly due to the fact that they are living in an false reality where they are in their own little world, where in the Misfit’s world everything goes with no worry of repercussion in the Grandmother’s case she can do no wrong because she has a false perception of what is right.

In the twentieth century, Flannery O’Connor was recognized for his characters to be lacking in spirituality. In the story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” this is portrayed by the grandmother who revealed the caution of the Misfit. However, it was the grandmother’s actions that foreshadowed the gory ending to the story. This novel takes place In Georgia in the 1940s and in the second part it takes place in a ditch in the middle of nowhere where the family has a car accident. Flannery O’Conner uses foreshadowing in a Good Man Is Hard To Find to clue the reader about future events caused by the misfit.

"Adversity defines the essence of who we are and who we desire to be!" This can be best realized in the rural southern regions of the United States during the late 19 forties and early fifties. Without a specific location of long-term concentration, this story finds three generations of a family taking a vacation (planning at least) to Florida despite objections from the grandmother. Factor in her impatient son (Bailey), his wife, and two smart-ass children have marginal respect for their grandmother resulting in a crew of authoritative, uncertainty, distant, and manipulative people about to engage on a trip that ends with certain doom for all with a twist indicative of self preservation and ironic irritation.

Bailey, the son of the character known as the Grandmother, decides to go to Florida anyway. Along their way to Florida with Bailey’s wife, the baby, and the two disobedient children; June Starr and John Wesley, the Grandmother is characterized as a senile, racist woman of bad judgment. This can be seen when along the ride she sees an African-American young boy and states, “Oh look at the cute little pickaninny!...Little niggers in the country don’t have things like we do. “ (O’Connor 12). The climax of the story occurs as the family leaves Red Sammy’s Famous Barbecue and gets in a car accident with the Misfit himself. It is then safe to say that the assumption of the senile Grandmother is accurate due to the thought that runs through her mind, “A horrible thought came to her…the house that she had remembered so vividly was not in Georgia, but Tennessee,” (19). The Grandmother’s forgetfulness is in turn the direct cause of the accident and run-in with the Misfit.

While the family is together in the beginning, we can see the grandmother trying to persuade her son to go to Tennessee rather than Florida, “You ought to take them somewhere else for a change so they would see different parts of the world and be broad. They never have been to east Tennessee.” (page 443). These attempts failed, and although this mention may seem very insignificant, a later one can almost be considered the cause of this families demise. While the family is continuing their trip to Florida, the grandmother can be seen telling her grandchildren a story about an old plantation she visited in what she believed, at the time, was Georgia. The children and the grandmother convinced Bailey to visit the plantation, so they end up going down a dirt road to get to it. It’s not until they’re halfway down the road when the grandmother realizes that the plantation was not in Georgia, but instead is in Tennessee. “The grandmother decided that she would not mention that the house was in Tennessee.” (page 450). Though this may be seen as nothing, it can also be seen as extreme foreshadowing due to the wreck that happened when the grandmother realized she had been wrong about the

“A Good Man Is Hard To Find” by Flannery O’Connor who is a Southern American novelist and short story writer, O’ Connor’s career expanded in the 1950sand early 60s, a time when the South was dominated by Protestant Christians.O’Connor was born and raised a Catholic. She was a fundamentalist and aChristian moralist whose powerful apocalyptic fiction is focused in the South.Flannery O’Connor was born March 25, 1925 in Savannah, Georgia. O’ Connorgrew up on a farm with her parents Regina and Edward O’ Connor. At the age offive, she taught a chicken to walk backwards. O’Connor attended Georgia StateCollege for women, now Georgia College, in Milledgeville, majoring in

Throughout the story, the characters face many consequences. These conflicts mainly begin when the children want to see the house with the secret panel that the grandmother mentioned, but Bailey refuses. O’Connor writes,

Flannery O’Connor was born on March 25, 1925 in Savannah, Georgia. She was an only child. Her father Edward F. O’Connor was a real estate agent, and her mother Regina Cline was a homemaker. When O’Connor was six, she became famous because the Pathe News filmed O’Connor with her trained chicken and showed the film around the country. When O’Connor was a teenager her father died of systemic lupus erythematosus. She attended the Peabody Laboratory School, graduating in 1942. She then entered Georgia State College for Women in an accelerated three year program, graduating in 1945 with a Social Sciences Degree. In 1946 she was accepted into the prestigious Iowa Writer’s Workshop at the University of Iowa, where she first study journalism. As an adult she was a devoted roman catholic and after battleing lupus like

The family stops at a restaurant to get a bite to eat, and we find out that the two parents, Bailey and his wife, do not really care for the Grandmother. The Grandmother asks Bailey to dance, but he just declines and ignores her. Bailey’s wife does not seem to care either. They then continue on the road, and the Grandmother begins to tell the story of a house that she really enjoyed passing. She really wanted to go there, so she persuaded the children to want to go as well. After a long time of complaining, they finally convince their father to head back toward this house. They go down this road when all