In Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” she uses writing skills such as symbolism and imagery to get across her different themes to the reader’s with plenty of room for self-interpretation. Though O’Connor’s work could be defined as cynical, she does an excellent job of writing in the third person with her uncomplicated structure of sentences leaving plenty of room for her character 's thoughts, feelings, and actions to get across the realism of our world. "A Good Man is Hard to Find" is a battle between a grandmother with a rather artificial sense of goodness, and a criminal who symbolizes evil. The grandmother treats goodness as having good manners, and coming from a family of higher class, but at the end of the story comes to …show more content…
The peculiar conditions—the sky is cloudless and sunless—is also mentioned numerous times after the car accident creating another symbol within the story for the readers to pay attention too. The Misfit mentions that there wasn 't “a cloud in the sky. Don 't see no sun but don 't see no cloud neither" (363.) This unusual sky is also mentioned by the narrator after the grandmother was shot. The Misfit’s henchmen, Hiram and Bobby Lee, had returned from the woods and “stood over the ditch, looking down at the grandmother who half sat and half lay in a puddle of blood with her legs crossed under her like a child 's and her face smiling up at the cloudless sky.” (366). The sky is an indistinct image and can be thought about in two different ways by the reader. In one way, there is something bleak and grim about the cloudless, sunless sky because it 's empty. You could see this emptiness as a reflection of the family 's extreme circumstances at the end of the story: they 're being killed by the Misfit in the middle of nowhere, without anyone to help or hear them. The family also probably felt empty themselves as they start to lose their lives one by one realizing what was actually happening. You could also say that the sky matches the character of The Misfit himself. The Misfit being "empty" inside—he 's lost all sense of what is good, but isn 't keen about being evil either. The Misfit is also the character who, unlike the grandmother, isn 't worried about appearances and …show more content…
When the grandmother reaches out to touch The Misfit in her "moment of grace" and says to him, “Why you’re one of my babies. You’re one of my own children!” (366). She seems to be filled with love and understanding towards him. Her moment of grace allows her to see the Misfit as a fellow human being in pain and feels obligated to love him, just like the Bible asks you to: “love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.” (6:27). O 'Connor presents both the view of the Misfit as a fellow human being in pain, and the feeling of love for him, as a gift from God. The grandmother as a human being, is prone towards evil and selfishness, so she could never have come to feel such love without God 's help, as this man was going to kill her. This moment of grace is incredibly important in the story. The Misfit kills the grandmother, withdrawing from her and what seems foreign to him (human compassion), but the grandmother already had her moment of redemption. The grandmother grew in that moment of death more than she ever did in the little parts that we read about her life, and she dies in peace. Her actions may have even changed the Misfit too. At the end, he says “she would have been a good woman if he 'd been there all her life to shoot her.” (366). This line confused me the first time reading it, but the second time around it made more sense. The grandmother felt redeemed by confronting the “evil” in the Misfit and finding the capability within herself to
Her care for how she will be observed after decease reveals that she is troubled with the presence of respectability more than the fact of being ethical or “proper.” The grandmother’s hat also makes it visible that she does not precisely clasp the extremity of dying. While the Misfit thinks that the extremity of death makes all Earthly efforts ridiculous and unmeaning, the Grandmother takes into a more accepted look of mortality—focusing on appearances and not thinking too closely around the fact of death. It is no coincidence that the grandma ’s hat is then destroyed when the family does get into a car wreck.
(O’Connor) The grandmas impression of solace is twisted by recollections and beliefs ruminating in her subliminal mind as she always searches for and sticks to signifiers that mirror the world she wants, one in which goodness as she would like to think still exist and can be characterized along certain lines that enable her to fit into it. This is the part of her struggle, the battle between her cognizant and intuitive personalities. As the story advances, nonetheless, the reader starts to comprehend that it's not goodness that has been consumed, but rather the thoughts against which the grandma has constantly characterized as goodness, leaving the grandma attempting to accommodate a perspective that does not reflect reality, which is a very serious situation, and which is eventually the wellspring of her torment. Along these lines, the agony from which the grandma looks for alleviation does not originate from the world, but rather from her view of it.
As you can see her stories are surrounded by her belief. In today’s world societal morals and values have drastically crumbled making the world an unacceptable place. Flannery O’Conner’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” moves from a family comedy into a brutal revelation while on a family vacation. While on the way to find the homestead where grandmother grew up, she puts them down the wrong path right into a murderer’s escape route.
To try and find any good with a murderer is a task no one could do yet, the grandmother tried desperately to. The violence is never with any passionate emotions much as though it is something that everyone goes thru. This is expressed when O’Connor explains the last murder “... and shot her three times through the chest” (pg. 459). The relaxed, mindless way the murders are presented to the reader sets the tone that the homicides are nothing more than a character's exit, thus blurring the definition of what defines a good man, illustrated when the grandmother's hope of calling the Misfit good, would stop him from murdering her but, the misfit was unfazed and actually rebutted the statement.
The short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, written by Flannery O 'Connor is a southern gothic heavily imbued with multiple themes. The short story revolves around a family taking a road trip to Tennessee. The short story, written primarily in third person direct discourse, gives the reader clear insight into the characters’ heads. Opening up with the grandmother imploring her son, Bailey, to take her along on the road trip with the rest of the family, the reader becomes acquainted with the insolent grandchildren. Flannery does well to construct a character list with diversified personality.
O’Connor’s view, the grandmother’s meeting with The Misfit grants her with the final assessment and the chance that people can face her death, also, comes through the agency of an apparently free and unfathomable evil. Her ability to receive such a death is therefore the final test of her faith. That the grandmother at the minute of death truly clinches the Christian secret is her great achievement. In Christian terms, such a instant is always a talent, it is one for which the receiver has organized during the course of her life. The grandmother’s most important quality is so not her meddlesomeness or her arrogance, of which there has been substantial evidence through the story, but her motherly concern, and it is through this motherly love
From beginning that she is introduced to the final breath she takes, she only considers her own ego. She causes the collision by bringing the cat in the car and thus allows the family to be caught by the misfit. During her encounter with the misfit she only begs mercy for her own life. It is not until the gunfire sounds in the woods that she calls for Baily. With the final moments of the grandmother’s life she recites many times of Jesus and the power that prayer can bring to misfit’s life.
In “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” Flannery O’Connor creates a story where the roles of good and evil blend together. In the short story, a family in the rural South gets caught up with a criminal named the Misfit after their wreck and they end up getting murdered. The clash between the grandmother and the Misfit highlights the religious aspects of the story and also O’Connor’s beliefs. Her stylistic traits of violence, distortion, and religion are used to convey a corrupt world that needs salvation. O’Connor’s trait of violence is used throughout to reveal the corrupt and criminal world that emanates the need for salvation.
Now she throws this term out there in an attempt to save her own life which it does not. The grandmother is very narcissistic. When she is shot the Misfit says “She would have been a good woman, if it had been some-body there to shoot her every minute of her life.” (O’Connor,
The relationship between the grandmother and the misfit is what Renner claims that it give the secular interpretation and not the religious and spiritual view. First we have to understand the reason for the grandmother actions. O’Connor shows her as the perfect picture of the southern lady like
The Misfit deflects blame from himself and refuses to accept the consequences of his actions. On the other hand, the grandmother constantly claims to be a “lady” though she is evidently not the so-called lady that is pictured within the society based on her actions and attitude, and it does not help to be entirely to blame for the so-called murder of her family. To continue with this crazy roller coaster rides within these characters, whenever the misfit comes along she begs for her life but never asks The Misfit to spare her family 's lives. In fact, the grandmother does not even recognize that The Misfit has taken her son’s shirt after killing him. Staying with the theme of hypocrisy, this is another great example that follows the grandmother’s previous agreement with “A good man is hard to find” (pg.411) because she is all about herself and only worried about her and a good man would not do that they would worry about his family and she states this to try and spare her life like it says above to try and manipulate the misfit so she can live but he did not want to be saved so he did what was right in his
The talk the grandmother and The Misfit have between them is mainly about religion, and what was done in the past, the talk leads to the grandmother having sympathy for him. The grandmothers moment of grace causes a terrible reaction from The Misfit. After The Misfit kills the grandmother he says “It’s no real pleasure in life,” which I think shows that the grandmother may have had some kind of impact on him in there discussion. In the final moments of life, redemption could always be reached.
Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” tells of a family who takes a vacation down to Florida and encounters a wanted serial killer nicknamed The Misfit. While the story appears to revolve around The Misfit himself, it actually is about the true misfit of the story, the grandmother. The grandmother is the true misfit due to her inability to cooperate with her family, her inability to let go of racist tendencies, and her inability to live in the present. Right from the get-go, the grandmother is straining the relationship she has with her family by being uncooperative.
Throughout the piece, the unnamed grandmother is shown to be an annoying and deceitful person. The Grandmother 's "selfish focus" has made the people around her miserable particularly her son (Brown 2). Bailey 's relationship with his mom is rocky but it is never shown just how long it had been deteriorating. In later paragraphs, the grandmother is revealed to be
Not Your Average Grandmother (A Character Analysis from “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”) The first time I read, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”, I was immediately drawn to the grandmother. She reminded me of the old southern women I have run across in my own small town in Georgia: judgmental, proud, and in denial. Throughout the whole story she never once admitted she was wrong, which consequently killed her and the rest of the family.