“The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” written by Katherine Anne Porter, is about a grandmother who is in denial that she is about to die. And “A Good Man is Hard to Find” written by Flannery O’Connor, is about a family that goes to visit family in Tennessee but are brutally murdered before they get there. These two stories share many similarities and differences in both the characters, and conflict.
In “A Good Man is Hard to Find” the grandmother’s selfish attitude and pride forces the family to change their traveling plans. The grandmother was persistent on going to Tennessee, but the rest of her family wanted to go elsewhere. After bothering her family enough she got her way. On this trip she convinces the family to take a small detour where they would meet their tragic fate of death. O’Connor shows how the grandmother’s selfish pride led to each one of the family members death.
Flannery O’Connor is a renowned Southern author, noted for her gothic works and heavily Catholic themes. She focuses predominantly on racial tensions, morality, and divine grace. The religious and moral themes of her short story, A Good Man is Hard to Find, converge on the character of the grandmother. Despite the self-proclamations of fulfilling what it means to be a Southern lady, Grandmother holds a superficial grasp of her religion. Throughout the story, the Grandmother never truly changed, only her ostensible actions did. Her final act towards the Misfit was not out of charity, but in attempt to save herself.
In her book the ,The Long Loneliness, Dorothy Day discusses her transition to Catholicism with important life events. She recounts her childhood and her encounters with religion as well as her later life. She has long dedicated her life to helping those who are often overlooked, especially the poor. From her experiences Day comes to believe that a non-individualistic society would make it easier for people to be good.
In her eyes a good man doesn’t have to be a good man as long as she gets her way. The grandmother’s life is centered on herself. She is a very self centered woman and doesn’t care about anyone but herself, including her family. When the Misfits men take them away all she is worried about is herself.
The Purpose of Psychopaths in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” In the short story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” a family of six meets their demise on the side of the road in Georgia after a gang of convicts lead by The Misfit brutally murders each member of the family. The story starts off in an upbeat tone and sets up a seemingly happy plot about a family going on vacation to Florida. However, the grandmother does not listen to her son about taking her cat on the trip and her disobedience ultimately leads to all of their deaths. The author changes the tone of the story at the end when the family gets into a wreck and faces a gruesome death by a crazed armed killer on the loose (O’Connor#).
Midterm Exam A Good Man is Hard to Find #2: What is the role of chance or fate in the story? •In Flannery O ' Conner 's “A Good Man is Hard to Find” the roles of chance and fate help to drive the plot to its high point. Chance is present when the grandmother, at the preamble of the story, refuses to be persuaded to travel to Florida in fear of a loose criminal nicknamed The Misfit. Instead, she decides on a whim to visit a friend in Tennessee.
The ironic twists in the story are dark and grotesque. The sub-plot of the story is about an escaped convict on the loose heading toward Florida. Ironically, this is the same destination that the family is headed toward. Early on in the short story the grandmother says, “The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida and you read here what is says he did to these people.
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.
It is the grandmother’s selfishness that leads to the death of her family. The short story “A good Man is Hard to Find” teaches us that nothing good come from being selfish. Being selfish has plenty of consequences. One of them is that when you are selfish you or your loved once suffer. In the short story by O’Connor, the grandmother’s selfishness leads to the death of her family.
and they are all planning a trip to Florida. Although it has been decided that they are going to Florida, the grandmother is frustrated and tries to convince her son and his family that they should go to Tennessee instead since more family lives there and there are sights to see there. She also argues that going to Florida would only put the family in danger as there was a serial killer on the loose who goes by the name of “Misfit”. This, in itself, already raises a red flag for readers since they just so happen to be travelling to a place where a serial killer is running loose. Despite the grandmother’s protests against their trip to Florida, they all get in the car and begin their journey.
As the family travels down the wooded, unpaved trail, the grandmother suddenly recalls that the plantation is actually in Tennessee. In her embarrassment, she accidently frees her cat from its cage and it causes her son to wreck (O’Connor 503). Then, a car filled with three armed men slowly approaches them. As the men inspect the scene, the grandmother recognizes that the leader is the Misfit, a criminal on the loose. As the other two men take the rest of the family in the woods to kill them, the grandmother tries to appeal to what remained of the man’s integrity and capacity to
In nearly all historical societies, sexism was prevalent. Power struggles between genders mostly ended in men being the dominant force in society, leaving women on a lower rung of the social ladder. However, this does not always mean that women have a harder existence in society. Scott Russell Sanders faces a moral dilemma in “The Men We Carry in Our Minds.” In the beginning, Sanders feels that women have a harder time in society today than men do. As the story progresses, he begins to understand why he thinks in the manner that he does. Sanders does an excellent job of showing how his thinking changes as the text progresses. He does this through his brilliant use of interior monologue and personal anecdotes.
Ms. NS expressed that she was often frustrated with her siblings that her family had been always the one to cook, clean for her and took her to the doctor’s office. Ms. NS reported that her grandfather left her grandmother when Ms. NS was still little. She stated that, because her grandfather had never been involved with her mother’s life, she neither knew who he was nor where he had been for all these years. Ms. NS recalled that she unknowingly ran into her grandfather at her uncle’s wife’s funeral one day, as she randomly greeted visitors. Ms. NS described that her mother came behind her and spoke in a low voice that this old gentleman was her
The story gives way of foreshadowing the unfortunate ending in several instances. The first one is when Grandmother Bailey is trying to change the destination of the trip by showing her son the newspaper article about the man that escaped from the penitentiary. "Here this that calls himself The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida and you read here what it says he did to these people. Just you read it”