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Evil And Suffering In Flannery O Connor

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Questions that may cross Flannery O’Connor mind are questions like, why does evil and suffering exist? Is there a purpose for going through evil and suffering? What is the purpose of going through things that cause such feelings? Or what can be gained, if anything, through evil and suffering? Evil and suffering is subjective based on the person; what I might consider evil may differ from the next person, and my definition of suffering- the way I view suffering will differ from someone else’s state of suffering. Even though interpretations of evil and suffering vary, it doesn’t make one person’s interpretation any better or truer than the next persons. We are all susceptible to evil and suffering, it just varies because of how we perceive and react to this problem. However, the one thing that is consistent through evil and suffering is that everyone can be saved by grace. Flannery O’Conner’s is a southern gothic writer, with a Catholic background that can be seen throughout her writings. Typically, her writings reveal some religious belief and the questions …show more content…

Her story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” brings up the questions, could the villain, The Misfit, also be a victim? Or are the only victims the grandmother and her family? I was able to see The Misfit as being a victim also; although the story does not directly describe him as a victim, I can infer by some of his comments made that he may have been a “victim” in his own life. At one point in the story he talks about how the “head doctor” told him that he killed his father, but he knows that he did no such thing- so maybe he was accused of something he didn’t really do (pg. 130). He continues on to say, “there never was a body that give the undertaker a tip,” that shows that he was given the short end of the stick in life and looked over because he was an “under taker (O’Conner, pg.

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