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A Good Man Is Hard To Find

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Evil is a label seldom used, unless it is a truly unspeakable act. There are many things that symbolize something evil. Whether a person or an act, symbols can tell us a lot about the story. While some symbols have dual meanings and can be left to interpretation with the story line, others are definitive in what they stand for. A color that is typically depicted as having a negative connotation is black, however in Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” this color can be interpreted in many ways in relation to evil. Black also symbolizes death. The “big black battered hearse-like automobile,” (O’Connor 189) speaks to death and sorrow. These emotions are prevalent during the abrupt killing of the family. Another instance where black symbolizes the idea of evil is Joyce Carol Oates’, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Black is most prevalent in the character Arnold Friend. …show more content…

Night and darkness are both heavily involved in the overall mood of the atmosphere in “Young Goodman Brown.” The farther away he gets from his faith and the closer he gets to the ceremony the darker the surroundings get. Then once at the location of the ceremony there are pine trees surrounding the altar. Pine trees are dark green and provide shade from even the moonlight. Around the altar is the darkest and most evil spot in the whole forest and story. So it is no coincidence that while he is questioning where his faith is that is when he sees the darkest and most evil part in the forest. In “A Good Man Is Hard To Find,” the forest where the family gets shot is also dark. They disappear into the darkness before they get shot. In both stories the darkness is where the evil act is committed or where the characters come to a large realization. Such as the grandmother realizing her son was dead and Young Goodman Brown becoming unsure of his

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“A Good Man is Hard to Find” is one of the short story written by Flannery O’Connor. The story opens as a man named Bailey wants to take his family (his wife, a baby, and two kids, John Wesley and June Star) for a vacation to Florida but the grandmother (bailey’s mother) wants to go to east Tennessee instead of Florida to visit some of her connections. She tries to persuade her son to change his mind using the news of escape of the Misfit, a prisoner who has escaped from the prison and headed to Florida. Bailey does not take her seriously as he understand her motives and he refuses to go to Tennessee. The next morning, the grandmother gets ready in her best outfit and secretly brings her cat, Pitty Sing.

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A convict and a grandmother are more alike than the common one may think. In Flannery O’Conner’s story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”, demonstrates a similarity between the Misfit and the grandmother showing that good and evil are not the same in all individuals. O’Conner uses these certain characters to show the difference between good and bad, but in the end both the grandmother and the Misfit show a change in character. Flannery O’Conner’s catholic background has influenced all her stories. O’Conner’s family was one of the first to live in her hometown of Milledgeville, Georgia she also attended parochial school.

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Web. 2 May. 2012. The research of “Young Goodman Brown,” explains the various images found in Young Goodman Brown. Some of them clarifies the author criticisms are the Salem Village, the pink ribbons on Faith’s hat, the fellow traveler, the staff, and using of the term “faith”, and the forest.

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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.

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