For the vast majority of the public, the Grandmother in Flannery O’Conner’s A Good Man Is Hard to Find may seem, by all accounts, to be dissimilar in relation to the Misfit, yet in this exposition, their characters will be comparable in their religious thoughts and principles. The Grandmother is a character quite striking on her own, and O’Conner’s is able to bring her more to life with the characters that she writes to interact with the Grandmother. She is a mother, a religious woman, who is not afraid to speak her mind. She holds high standards for her family, calling out her son for wanting to take them down to Florida where the Misfit has been known to be, she is critical of her daughter-in-law, and even her own grandchildren she chastises. However, while she holds high standards for them, she herself is at fault for sneakily hiding the cat in the car, which is the catalyst for the car accident. She lies to her grandchildren about the secret panel in the house, and she hides the fact that she misremembered where the house was. When the Misfit endangers their lives, the Grandmother only pleads for him to spare her life, with her being a “lady,” not even attempting to intercede for her son and his family. In some ways, readers are meant to judge this character whose secret thoughts we are made privy to. Nevertheless, contrary to reasoned …show more content…
Who threatens and yet blusters. His name speaks clearly as to his past. He believes that he has been misidentified by his past crimes. In addition, while he might have been falsely accused for the first crime, it is clearly shown that he is not afraid to inflict pain upon his victims. When the Grandmother asks him about prayer he shows that he believes that there is no need for prayer, that he is doing “all right by [himself].” The Misfit is clearly knowledgeable about the scripture, showing that at one time he, himself, had a spiritual
With the grandmother being early to the car, she was able to hide “a basket with Pitty Sing, the cat, in it”(354). This proves that the grandmother makes decisions without consulting the family. She believes that her decisions are superior and are to execute. The clothes she decided to wear includes “a navy blue straw sailor hat with a white violets on the brim [...] In case of an accident, anyone seeing her would know at once that she was a lady” (353 -354).
William Martin Professor English 15 April 2017 A Good Man Is Hard To Find: What Is “Good”? In this work by Mary Flannery O’Connor, the protagonist, referred to as “the grandmother,” tries to persuade her son to take the family to East Tennessee. Her son, Bailey, wants to visit Florida instead and so she tries to change his mind.
In this moment, the grandmother realizes that she has a commonality with the Misfit, and that they both truly do have some good in them. Her observation that his face was momentarily like hers causes her to see the emotion that the Misfit is experiencing, and she makes the connection between his emotion and hers. She finally is transformed by this realization and her own actions of kindness, as she died and “her face [smiled] up at the cloudless sky” (212). The goodness that the grandmother had been seeking throughout the entire story had at last been realized through her own actions of kindness toward the Misfit, who was also momentarily affected and taken back by her grace towards
In her short story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” Flannery O’Connor is brutally honest in confronting her audience, which presumably differs from her staunch Catholic point of view. Using elements of distortion and exaggeration, O’Connor points out the atrocities of the world she and her audience live in—America in the 1950s and 60s. Racial tensions and political decisions proved divisive, corrupting and splitting America. O’Connor believes that her audience was part of the self-righteous, judgmental, and morally corrupt divisions of America—divisions embodied by the main character: the grandmother. O’Connor writes with great conviction to convey the idea that even the most unlikely of people, including those with great obstacles to salvation,
The story begins with a seemingly normal plot about a family’s road trip to Florida, and a stubborn Grandmother who stirs up trouble along the way. Before the trip, the Grandmother becomes fearful of meeting a recently escaped convict, the Misfit, and begs to take a trip to Tennessee instead of Georgia (O’Connor 177). However, the family believes that she is having irrational fears and proceeds with the trip as planned. After a while, the the talkative Grandmother remembers an old house she one visited, and manipulates the family into going. However, the house turned out to be in Tennessee, not Georgia, and upon realising the mistake the startled Grandmother jumped up and disturbed her bag and basket that the cat lye in (O’Connor 182).
O’Conner includes symbolism by using weather and the sky to describe the characters’ mood. Ultimately, the short story A Good Man Is Hard To Find by Flannery O’Conner shows the constant unusual behavior of the family and the experiences they go through prove the critical lens
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
The Grandmother is a well-dressed and a proper southern lady. She is also the center of action in the short story, "A Good Man Is Hard to Find". The grandmother seems very suspicious at first, and thinks her son Bailey will be forever small and has to abide by her rules. In her eyes she is never been wrong but knows it all. When we become up-close and personal with the grandmother we see that she's this bad person, which she appears to be old-fashioned, manipulative, and self-serving as a whole.
In her short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” Flannery O’Connor tackles the issue of grace, showing that no matter the person, everyone can attain and earn grace. The grandmother and the Misfit, though they appear to be quite different people, are both the same at the core: They are sinners in need of Christ. The Misfit and the grandmother are both capable of change and accepting God, but only the grandmother reaches this revelation before her death. Grace is one of the most important ideas in the Bible and Christianity. Grace is “the love of God shown to the unlovely; the peace of God given to the restless; the unmerited favor of God,” (Holcomb).