Analysis Of A Good Man Is Hard To Find By Flannery O Connor

A Good Man is Hard to Find: Response “Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days. ”-Flannery O’Connor Flannery O’Connor’s (A Good Man is Hard to Find) is a great American Southern Gothic published in The Avon Book of Modern Writing, 1953. This type of Gothic writing was not popular at the time, however O’Connor thrived as a writer during this time, with her grotesques satire on poor and middle-class southern whites.

“The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” written by Katherine Anne Porter, is about a grandmother who is in denial that she is about to die. And “A Good Man is Hard to Find” written by Flannery O’Connor, is about a family that goes to visit family in Tennessee but are brutally murdered before they get there. These two stories share many similarities and differences in both the characters, and conflict.

Today, I’ll be introducing you to a couple of foreshadows in the story, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” by Flannery O’Connor. For those that don’t know what foreshadow means; it means to give hints to what’s going to happen later on in the story. Also, I’ll be explaining the tension and suspense in the foreshadows. The First foreshadow I’ll be talking about is when the grandma didn’t want to go to Florida.

A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor is a short story that expresses the many different literary devices. The ones that appear throughout are symbolism, foreshadowing, and irony. O’Connor shows how there is always more to the words that are spoken than just what the ear allows to be heard. Through these devices, O’Connor reveals to the reader the deeper meaning behind the words and how the words express grace that then leads to salvation. O’Connor really tests the audience’s focus with her symbolism techniques because she makes the reader have to find the truth and go beyond the text.

In short story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” Flannery O’Connor gives her views about what we generally use to identify a person as either being good or bad. In the story, O’Connor uses the grandmother’s view of what a good person is, providing a vague definition of what differentiates a good man or woman from the rest. She is suggesting in this case that the qualities of a good man or a good woman include being respectful, polite and truthful, which are qualities identifiable with the Christian way of life that much of O’Connor’s works allude to (Ochshorn, 1990; Kirszner and Mandell, 2012). Although Red Sammy fakes being friendly, the grandmother still describes him as being a good man. Red Sammy has faked this friendliness and had created nostalgia to help his business (Curley, 2013).

In order to decide which of these two characters are least sympathetic, the definition must be entirely understood. According to Dictonary.com, "characterized by, proceeding from, exhibiting, or feeling sympathy," moreover, sympathy is defined as, "harmony of or agreement in feeling, as between persons or on the part of one person with respect to another" (sympathetic). In the stories, "A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor and "The Cask of Amontillado" by Edgar Allen Poe; the least sympathetic character between The Misfit and Montresor is undoubtedly the Montresor. Both characters are incredibly cold and Poe and O'Connor included a lot of symbolism that develops the character.

At the end of ¨A Good Man is Hard to Find” there is the strange scene where the Grandmother says to the Misfit, “Why you're one of my babies. You're one of my own children!” (O'Connor 30) and then she reaches out and touches him. He “sprang as if a snake had bitten him and shot her three times through the chest.

“A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’ Connor, after studying this story I found many interesting aspects of the story. First off, I was fascinated by how the grandmother consistently talked about how she met with a “good man”, and how changed as the story went on. At the beginning of the story, the grandmother spoken to the restaurant owner that he was a “good man” after letting two men charge their gasoline on credit and not paying directly for it. In this case, her definition of “good” seems to include poor judgment and unsuspecting, none of which are really “good” traits for a man to have.

In Flannery O’Connors “A Good Man is Hard to Find” the reader is introduced to a family who undergoes a tragic incident that would have been avoided. As the grandmother of the family got her son, wife, and three children to agree on a road trip which they thought would be fun. But it was not until the grandmother realized they were not where she thought she was in Tennessee and they suffered through a brutal car accident. The family managed to be okay up until the murderer on the news known as the Misfit shows up to where the car accident occurred. The Misfit and his two other partners then choose that they will execute the family since they had the opportunity handed to them.

Throughout time, the idea of what a good man is has changed. It used to be centered on the church – either you were a good man who went to church, or you were a heathen. During the time period of this story, the mid-nineteen fifties, everything was changing. While the new generations were beginning to award the “good man” or “good woman” titles to people that actually went out of their way to help others, the older generations were still stuck in the eighteenth century. In this short story titled “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” Flannery O’Connor makes it a point to show the difference between proclaiming to be a good man, and being one.

Among the many authors who have made an immense contribution to the development of American literature and shaped its landscape, it is impossible not to mention Flannery O'Connor. Her excellent writing manner and the fierce, often ironic, and to a certain extent comic works reflected the nature of life in the South with its darkness, religious beliefs, and even fun. While the works by the author were to a large extent impacted by her health condition and the life she had to lead as a result of it, she used to deny the fact. Nevertheless, her short stories, such as “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” contain a reflection on her condition, starting from the history of their creation and to the manner in which those works are written. Under such considerations,

The Purpose of Psychopaths in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” In the short story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” a family of six meets their demise on the side of the road in Georgia after a gang of convicts lead by The Misfit brutally murders each member of the family. The story starts off in an upbeat tone and sets up a seemingly happy plot about a family going on vacation to Florida. However, the grandmother does not listen to her son about taking her cat on the trip and her disobedience ultimately leads to all of their deaths. The author changes the tone of the story at the end when the family gets into a wreck and faces a gruesome death by a crazed armed killer on the loose (O’Connor#).

Second of all, the theme of hypocrisy is present in the story. In the beginning, she tells her son about the criminal known as “the Misfit,” who is on the loose in Florida. She even says the following: “I wouldn 't take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn 't answer to my conscience if I did.” When her son ignores her comment, she decides to try a different approach, telling her grandchildren’s parents that they “ought to take them somewhere else for a change so they would see different parts of the world and be broad” and that “they never have been to east Tennessee.”

The children become excited and begin to beg to see the house with the secret panel. From this view the grandmother seems a bit selfish and will do whatever she can to get her way even if it means pleasing herself by undermining those she loves. Bailey, the only son of the grandmother, is also the father to June Star and John Wesley. He is also the person doing all the driving for the family trip. So in his head he is the one in charge and he does not allow anyone to forget that.

In "A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O’Connor is about a family going to Florida, but there will be lesson that they will learn is their personal lives. One main thought that surfaces in the story is how there is so few of good men left in the world and how does a decent man treat others. The characters in the story see themselves as incredible people in light of moral codes that they stay by. These ethical codes are significantly flawed regardless, leaving each character blinded by their own particular gaudiness. O'Connor shows the character of the Misfit, an escaped executioner.