The balance of what is good and what is bad is a rather controversial topic in the story "A Good Man is Hard to Find". Most notably, the characteristics of both the Grandmother and the Misfit. The Misfit portrays an immoral personality and seems to be the evil in the story while the grandmother is the innocent lady seeking to be the good in this story. However, the religious virtues effect both personas and in itself draws the line around them mutually as sinners. Both characters have a particular relationship with Jesus, a physical crisis crossed with a spiritual crisis and different conceptions of reality; thus, revealing how the portrayal of these characters are not what may seem. Both religion and Jesus have a key role and influence …show more content…
As opposed to the Grandmothers constant change of morals to favor certain situations, the Misfit has morals that are set in stone and adhere to his past, present and future. As the two characters converse, religion sparks an interest in the Misfit because it is something he is interested in understanding but knowing it must not be true. He believes that he must see it with his own eyes to prove the existence. His concept of reality also relates himself to Jesus, so much so as to believe he is a realistic representation of Him. He goes on to tell that the only difference is between the crimes committed and the proof held against him. The reality between the Misfit and the Grandmother are very different and from this viewpoint it seems as if the Grandmother is a more dishonest and unfaithful person when it comes to selfishness. The Misfit does not express selfishness, rather he equally treats himself as he would with the people that he murdered. With two distinct differences in reality, both show similar signs of …show more content…
The grandmother uses Jesus as a scapegoat to show how she is a child of God while the Misfit tells of how he really perceives Jesus and that there is no justification of his actions. In the event of the car accident, the Grandmother was left with a physical crisis that quickly showed as her family was sent off into the woods to be killed one by one. This soon transitioned to a spiritual crisis both between the Grandmother and the Misfit as she uses Jesus's name to try and escape her fate. This spiritual crisis leads the characters to express their personal conception of reality and how they perceive the revelation of the situation that they are in. The Grandmother has a sense that reality should revolve around her and that she should manipulate tools such as religion to benefit her outcome. The Misfit is seen as being a part of reality and only believing what he sees with physical evidence. He also stays true to his morals of what he believes is right and wrong, especially when it comes to showing the equality of no mercy among the family members. Both characters reveal their use of Jesus, the spiritual battle that inhibits them and their concepts of reality. All of this gives insight to how there are no good or bad characters at the finale of this story. The battle of morality between the two characters only shows the
In the short story A Good Man Is Hard to Find by F.C she illuminates on the point of Faith vs. Dought. When Grandmother was talking to the Misfit by convincing him not to kill her,but the Misfit was Grandmother 's obstacle to upholding Grandmothers strong belief,so the grandmother doubted her faith by not believing. In the illuminating moment when the grandmother fell into the ditch, it was revealed that her faith became a questionable option. The grandmother began to recognize that maybe Jesus didn’t rise from the dead like she believed.
Misunderstandings As represented in the story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” by Flannery O 'Connor, a good man was hard to be and had different ideas of how to pursue it. Going through the journey with the grandmother and son and learning about the Misfit, the audience can witness the actions being made by different characters to witness their fall and/or their triumph. When looking into the grandmother more deeply, the audience can detect the intensity of her self absorption. She would consider herself a lady with high standards of herself.
When the religious grandmother wants to take a trip to Tennessee to see her roots with her son and his family, she does all she can to persuade them to go instead of traveling to Florida. The grotesque short story, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”, by Flannery O’ Connor involves a gruesome ending, where the Misfit, who escapes federal prison, ends up murdering the grandmother and her family. The Grandmother believes the Misfit has the potential to be a good person even if he has made mistakes in his past by committing crimes. O’ Connor does not want the grandmother to be looked at as a saint or witch, but does not want the Misfit to be seen as the devil either (Wynne). Irony is used in the story because the Grandmother and Misfit are similar characters,
Redemption is the act of being saved from acts of evil and sin. The debate of whether human nature is redeemable or not has been one to plaque religious scholars. In Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, this question continues in the interactions between the characters; the most notable being the Grandmother of a rather horrible family and the Misfit, a murderer. While on a road trip, these two characters’ paths collide and lead to a rather unfortunate end where the Grandmother and her family are killed. While many readers believe the ending creates and overall negative tone of the story, some believe that there is a hope for redemption; the story’s author O’Connor who is a devoted Catholic included.
The Misfit and Arnold Friend both provide to be effective authoritative predators in persuading their victims to follow their directives which ultimately lead to their unfortunate deaths and abduction. Both characters in each of these short stories also exhibited insinuated religious implications that related them mainly to two major figures in religion, Jesus and the Devil. After analyzing The Misfit and Arnold's relationship with their respective main characters, many differences were also noted that separated them as individual manipulators that each performed their own tasks to get what they
In the short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, the author, Flannery O'Connor, demonstrates how a family vacation can quickly face a violent end, caused by a criminal known as “The Misfit.” Looking at the short story through a feminist point of view, one can quickly gather that O’Connor uses the traditional gender roles right from the beginning of the story. As reading the title, it automatically suggests the men in this short story are untrustworthy, not prevalent, and dangerous. With that being said, the female characters in this story are viewed in the eyes of how a woman should act.
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.
The Role of Family in “A Good Man is Hard to Find” “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, written by Flannery O’Connor is a short story that brings out mystery and cruelty. Manipulation plays a big role in this story by the grandmother. She tends to manipulate her family and tends to get her way by playing with them. Although the author wanted to give many perspectives of the grandmother, we as reader got our own views of her.
Grandmother creates the families down fall by forcing them down a memory, which doesn 't exist. "The thought was so embarrassing that she jumped up...the house she
“The misfit ‘didn’t see no sun, but don’t see no cloud either.” (oconnor) Humanity is not perfection, it’s the complete opposite. The misfit is not necessarily good in any sense, but at some point in his life, he must have been. It also wouldn’t be accurate to describe him as demonic either, due to his genuine politeness and *niceness**?. “In a way, all of O’Connor’s characters are ‘misfits,’ marginalized by their own limits and refusal to welcome God’s grace…”
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
She interprets the idea as if the reader does not believe on a God. O’Connor also carefully draws out her characters. O’Connor made the Grandmother a women so that any reader felt lower than and feel below in authority. The grandmother is shown as a pushy woman with characteristics of selfishness. These characteristics show when she insisted on going to the old house.
In “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” the grandmother is a small-minded, selfish, and capable of foolish remark that transitions into a kind and righteous lady. She is drawn as a hypocritical, superficial and self-absorbed due to the fact that she does not take care or take any consideration of other people’s feelings. The grandmother grows, changing her character, attitude from the beginning of the story. The events which takes place in the story will illustrate that she is a dynamic character.
In another quote the grandmother implies that the misfit is a good man by stating, "Yes it's a beautiful day," said the grandmother. "Listen, " she said, "You shouldn't call yourself the misfit because I know you're a good man at heart. I can just look at you and tell" (421). The grandmother doesn't know the misfit from Adam, yet she already gave him a persona that he has to match. Besides the grandmother has already called Red Sammy a good man, and by now it is already apparent that its feigned.
The Misfit 's mind is one of the most complicated of any villain in O 'Connor’s stories and in all literature. His mental state is most evident in "the scene between the Grandmother and the Misfit at the climax of the story" (Walls 3) This recent escapee 's psyche can be described as "tails short of the athlete’s morality, for he plays by no one 's rules except his own" (Fike). This mental state is typical of most criminals but the Misfit’s perception on religion is not so conventional. Usually, when a person commits a heinous act and if the person is spiritual they will say God told them to do it.