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A Good Man Is Hard To Find Critical Analysis

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Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is a short story that tells of a disturbing and tragic chain of events following a family that wrecks their car on a back road in Florida. The family consists of a father named Bailey, his mother, wife, and their three young children. The chaotic family decides to take a detour and see a plantation the grandmother once saw. The conflict of the story begins when the family wrecks their car on the way and are stranded waiting for help, but the climax and resolution soon follows once they are met by a group of escaped, murderous convicts. The conflict of the story begins when the family decides to take a vacation to Florida, but wrecks their automobile on the way there. The grandmother did not want to go to Florida, but wanted to go to east Tennessee instead to see some of her connections there. The rest of the family is at disagreement with her and she tries to persuade them by saying, “Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida” (O’Connor …show more content…

“A Good Man is Hard to Find” is undoubtedly Flannery O’Connor’s most popular short story. O’Connor was known for using her Roman Catholic faith as an inspiration for her writings. The combination of dark, disturbing events mixed with sudden spiritual awakening sets the story telling of O’Connor apart from others. This story of a family vacation gone very grim is one that was widely discussed come its publishing in 1955. The short story is known for its combination of comical family dysfunctions, mixed with the unsettling events that resulted from the car wreck, followed by the hopeful spiritual awakening of the grandmother. This classic work of literature is one that is set apart from others, and will be remembered and discussed by those who see it for the true literary anomaly that Flannery O’Connor

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