ipl-logo

A Good Man Is Hard And Find

689 Words3 Pages

Imagine being in a car with an annoying grandmother with two rude kids on each side. The grandmother is an odd person and the family is very quiet except the kids, the family goes on a trip and ends up into trouble. This happens in the story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O 'Connor, David Sedaris 's “Us and Them” illustrates similar grotesque characters and suspicious moods. Both stories have sassy and rude characters. For instance, the grandmother, from “ A Good Man is Hard to Find” is being selfish by wanting to drive to East Tennessee. She had been making up excuses, like for example, “Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is… headed toward Florida… I wouldn’t take my children in any direction with a criminal like …show more content…

In “A Good Man is Hard to Find” ,O’Connor displays The Misfit as a suspicious character. He is sneaky and cunning. In the scene where he talks to the family, he is not letting on what he is going to do, which displays a suspicious mood. For example, he says, “...but it would have been better for all of you, lady, if you hadn’t of reckernized me” (O’Connor 7). The grandmother is pleading for her life and asks if the Misfit will shoot her, he says, “I would hate to have to” (O’Connor 7) On the other hand, while David is spying on the Tomkeys, he thinks, “Because they had no TV, the Tomkeys were forced to talk during dinner. They had no idea how puny their lives were, and so they were not ashamed that a camera would have found them uninteresting” (Sedaris 720). He is also setting a suspicious mood on what he is going to do next. His choices are to tell the Tomkeys that their lives were puny and insignificant or he can tell them nothing and be their friend. He is also a suspicious character because reader are unknowing of his plans. For example, he informs the reader,”It occurred to me that they needed a guide, someone who could accompany them through the course of an average day” (Sedaris 721). The reader does not know if he is going to point out all the thing the Tomkey children don’t know or if he is going to stay quiet and let them figure it out by themselves. In summary, there can be different types of moods,

Show More
Related

  • A Good Man Is Hard To Find

    336 Words  | 2 Pages

    This week’s topic was very helpful to me because when I’m writing stories I found it challenging to create characters, I could never get a good grasp on how to make my characters “real”. In the text reading, I found that having a character with flaws leads to them being “real” or round and having a character who is perfect is leads to them not being real because no one is perfect not even a fictional character. I have always admired O’Connor work because her characterization is done very well. In the story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” the grandmother untrustworthy shines through when she constantly lies to her children and the people around. For example, in the text it states “She knew that Bailey would not be willing to lose any time looking

    Read More

  • Foreshadowing In A Good Man Is Hard To Find

    915 Words  | 4 Pages

    The short story “A Good Man Is Hard To find” by Flannery O’Conner, was published in 1955. It was written in third person limited point of view. The story takes place in the 1940s after world two, family takes a road trip traveling to Florida, but their journey takes an unsuspecting turn. O’Conner uses foreshadowing, verbal and situational irony and symbolism that illustrates the theme of the effect of the selfishness of the grandmother upon the family. The first character introduced in the story is the protagonist, the unnamed grandmother.

    Read More

  • A Good Man Is Hard To Find Psychopath Analysis

    1097 Words  | 5 Pages

    The grotesque psychopathic nature of the characters in Flannery O’Connor’s, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” ironically shows how a good man does not truly exist through the revelation and proclamation of what characteristics a good man possess. In the story The Misfit shows characteristics of a psychopath by escaping prison and killing an innocent family. However, The Misfit isn’t the only character in the short story to show psychopathic tendencies. The grandma also shows some characteristics of a psychopath because she does not care or show remorse for her family who was brutally murdered

    Read More

  • Literary Analysis: Flannery O Connor

    1068 Words  | 5 Pages

    In “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” that moment of grace arrives when the prominent criminal points his gun at the grandmother. In spite of the fact that in the story she has spent most of the time picking at people while luxuriating in her own particular goodness, she has an epiphany. She takes a gander at the Misfit and thought of her child, realizing that two of them are not so unalike. She is silent and her hat that she is so fond

    Read More

  • Gender Roles In A Good Man Is Hard To Find

    1208 Words  | 5 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Violence In A Good Man Is Hard To Find

    1393 Words  | 6 Pages

    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.

    Read More

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

    1371 Words  | 6 Pages

    and they are all planning a trip to Florida. Although it has been decided that they are going to Florida, the grandmother is frustrated and tries to convince her son and his family that they should go to Tennessee instead since more family lives there and there are sights to see there. She also argues that going to Florida would only put the family in danger as there was a serial killer on the loose who goes by the name of “Misfit”. This, in itself, already raises a red flag for readers since they just so happen to be travelling to a place where a serial killer is running loose. Despite the grandmother’s protests against their trip to Florida, they all get in the car and begin their journey.

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast Good Man Is Hard To Find

    255 Words  | 2 Pages

    In a "Good Man Is Hard to Find" by Flannery O 'Connor, the contrast of good and evil is not as evident as it appears on the surface. The road that the family in the story travels symbolizes good up until the point the grandmother all but forces the family to make a detour onto a dirt road that leads to their demise. She is the unlikely antagonist in the story. A serial killer named, The Misfit, is the protagonist despite his homicidal actions. Both characters in the story help to illustrate how a relationship with God is perceived good and sacrilegious behavior is perceived evil.

    Read More

  • A Good Man Is Hard To Find Selfishness Essay

    1559 Words  | 7 Pages

    In “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor, the author portrays the grandmother as self-centered, dishonest and prideful woman. The grandmother is an old, southern, Caucasian woman who describes herself as a good woman. Throughout the story, O’Connor shows how the grandmother’s pride, and selfishness leads her to unappreciated her family. She does not care about them, she only cares about herself and what will benefit her. The grandmother’s selfishness, judgmental actions, dishonesty put the family in danger.

    Read More

  • Southern Gothic Elements In A Good Man Is Hard To Find

    844 Words  | 4 Pages

    The misfit gains awareness of human morals when he kills the grandmother and he says, "She would have been a good woman...if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life" (O 'Connor 1020), he then realized that she wasn 't all that good. O 'Connor did a good job of interpreting the grandmother as a way to put away the values of the old Southern America; she also interprets the Misfit as a type of common man who is defiantly not perfect which can a realistic version of the new Southern America. In "A Good Man is Hard to Find", the irritating grandmother cares more about matters such as her appearance and manners, she dressed her best for the car ride and the reason for her doing this is so that "In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would at once know that she was a lady." (O 'Connor 1010). The grandmother is a very selfish woman, the first thing she said to the Misfit is "You wouldn 't shoot a lady, would you?"

    Read More

  • Symbolism In A Good Man Is Hard To Find

    1254 Words  | 6 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • The Grandmother And The Misfit's A Good Man Is Hard To Find

    1601 Words  | 7 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Distortion In A Good Man Is Hard To Find

    1466 Words  | 6 Pages

    The short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is revolved around many distortions that the author O’Connor creates to build meaning within the story. The novel presents characters that are characterized through many different symbols that result in an uncanny feeling for the reader. O’Connor’s “place” is the distortion in the story that causes conflict, creating the uncanny feeling in the story. O’Connor’s “place” also represents a different variety of symbols, creating the necessary meaning of the psychological realism. O’Connor utilizes distortion to create meaning in the story within her characters who represent the conflicts within the Catholic Church and dramatizes it with a complicated sense of humor.

    Read More

  • A Good Man Is Hard To Find And Cathedral Analysis

    1288 Words  | 6 Pages

    In the stories “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and “Cathedral”, Flannery O’Connor and Raymond Carver use unexpected figures and characters as a way to change the main character’s personality and thoughts. In both stories, the authors create characters that are introduced in order to change the main character’s thoughts. In “A Good Man is Hard to Find”,

    Read More

  • Good Man Is Hard To Find Response

    1016 Words  | 5 Pages

    The story opens with a man named Bailey who is going on a trip with his family to Florida. However, his mother had other plans and becomes the "manipulative grandmother lecturing her apathetic son" (Sparrow). At first she tries to convince her son to change the trip destination saying ""(O 'Connor). It might be inferred that she meant well by warning Bailey about the prison escapee traveling in the same direction. Unfortunately, later in the story the reader finds out that .

    Read More

More about A Good Man Is Hard And Find

Open Document