ipl-logo

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

743 Words3 Pages

Sin is to Death as in Death is to Sin “The soul who sins shall die.” (Ezekiel 18:20) This quote is from the bible, the quote helps us understand the story more. In “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” by Flannery O’ Connor, we are surprised by the violence at the end of the story. At first we think why there were so many deaths that occurred in the story, but when we read the story again we see that O’ Connor’s use of symbols demonstrate theme within the story. In “A Good Man Is Hard To Find”, Flannery O’ Connor shows the dirt road and the hearse-like automobile to illustrate how death is foreshadowed and led upon when the grandmother committed sin. My first example of death being foreshadowed is the dirt road. O’ Connor’s description of the dirt …show more content…

O’Connor foreshadows the death of the family saying “In a few minutes they saw a car some distance away on top of a hill, coming slowly as if the occupants were watching them. The car continued to come on slowly, disappeared around a bend and appeared again; moving even slower.” (O’Connor 380) and “It was a big black battered hearse like automobile. There were three men in it.” (O’Connor380) Flannery O’Connor uses many examples of figurative language like similes, metaphors, and personification to set the plot and structure of “A Good Man Is Hard To Find.” To describe the automobile, O’Connor writes alliteration describing the transportation device as big, black, and battered. The author also describes the car using the words “hearse-like.” A hearse is a vehicle that carries a coffin to a funeral. This demonstrates imminent death and the fate of the family! The hearse like car belongs to the Misfit, a killer that had escaped from prison. The car clearly shows a symbol of death. This automobile shows great importance of the family’s death when the grandmother lied where they were going to everyone else in the car. The hearse-like automobile carries the death to their resting place. Since the grandmother committed that sin, she is the cause for everyone in that car to be

Show More
Related

  • Figurative Language In Cherrylog Road

    392 Words  | 2 Pages

    A symbol that stood out the most as a reader of the poem, was the symbolism of the old cars and scrap metal in the junk yard. In the junk yard there are numerous old cars and pieces of scrap metal. Although the pieces of scrap metal and cars are old from the time that they have sat in the junk yard, they are all still alive with their past. The metal and cars represent the two rebellious teenagers because their secret encounters will too soon become a memory like the metal and cars. The only thing that will be left of

    Read More

  • Symbolism In The Greasy Lake Story

    116 Words  | 1 Pages

    For instance, car they drive to the lake, an old station wagon, it was not the car of a tough guy. The biker on the lake shows us that he is dangerous by stereotype alone. The vehicles are characteristic of the persons who drove them. Another symbol of the danger and death it is the Greasy Lake.

    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

  • 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

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

    688 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the story "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor, there is no doubt the reader should consider the grandmother a villain. Throughout the story, it is easy to assume the grandmother would eventually lead the family to some sort of downfall. The grandmother has many traits that make her a villain, and through her judgemental nature, selfish acts, and inability to stop talking, she leads her family and herself to their death. Throughout the story it is obvious that the grandmother is very judgemental of people and seems to consider herself as better than everyone.

    Read More

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

    1371 Words  | 6 Pages

    In the 1953 short story titled “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor, readers are given a glimpse of what the end of the story may look like through use of foreshadowing, symbolism, and other literary techniques. Although the story looks to be an innocent story of a family who travels to Florida for vacation at the start of it, readers soon find out that the story has a darker twist to it. This family trip turns violent and this gruesome ending can easily represent the violence taking place in America during the time this story was written by O’Connor and even today. The short story starts off with a family of six- parents, a grandmother, and three children-

    Read More

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

    690 Words  | 3 Pages

    Elements of Southern Gothic Literature has multiple impacts on the endings of stories. Flannery O’Connor used Southern Gothic Literature in her short stories such as “Good Country People”, “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, and “The Life You Save May Be Your Own”. Flannery O’Connor uses spinsters, horifing endings, and mental insibility with one or more characters in the three stories previously mentioned. Flannery O’Connor used Souther Gothic Literature in many of her short stories for example, in “Good Country Poeple” O’Connor used spinsters, horrifying endings, and mental insibility.

    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

  • 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

  • Grace In Flannery O Connor's A Good Man Is Hard To Find

    1025 Words  | 5 Pages

    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).

    Read More

  • The Misfit Symbolism

    851 Words  | 4 Pages

    In comparison to Dante's moral hierarchy, the Grandmother would be a great sinner even though she thought otherwise of herself. She was intently selfish in herself and only thought of her when the Misfit was extracting the family members out to the woods to be killed, she only wanted to save herself and not the others. Dante would rank this kind of act as a greater sin and the Grandmother would end up in the 9th circle of hell and in the Gluttony portion of it. Color symbolism provides a sequence of events that will unfold when reading, in a good man is hard to find the family described a black battered hearse-like automobile. A hearse is considered to be a funeral car where the coffin gets placed in.

    Read More

  • Good Man Is Hard To Find Response

    1016 Words  | 5 Pages

    In her short story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”, Flannery O’Connor introduces the reader to a world of family issues, danger, and murder. The story was written in 1955 during a period of social and racial unrest in the southern United States. Mostly, the story follows O 'Connor 's basic Southern Gothic writing style. A work that is "cold and dispassionate, as well as almost absurdly stark and violent" (Galloway). While the quote gives major insight into the theme of the story, it does not offer a glimpse into O 'Connor 's real message of the story.

    Read More

More about Theme Of A Good Man Is Hard To Find By Flannery O Connor

Open Document