What Is The Symbolism In A Good Man Is Hard To Find

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.

Having lost her mother in birth and with her whole life encircled by death, Vada Sultenfuss, the gloomy 11-year-old daughter of Harry Sultenfuss, the town’s funeral parlour manager, is no wonder that death became almost an obsession to her. In addition, Vada has no friends in school, she is a hypochondriac tomboy, her grandmother has Alzheimer 's, and worst of all, her best friend is Thomas J. Sennett, another unpopular kid who is allergic to just about everything. During the summer break in 1972, Vada will have her first crush, she will join a poetry writing class, but most of all, when the cheerful and quirky Shelly DeVoto takes up the position of make-up artist at Harry’s mortuary, she will gradually find the maternal figure she always needed.

Another unusual thing about "A Good Man is Hard to Find is the use of the term "good." It is thrown around excessively through the entire tale by the grandmother and even the Misfit seems to use this word as well. The interesting concept through the characters using this word is that they seem to be misusing it in a sense. The Grandmother and The misfit seem to classify the word "good" with things that are actually bad. With the terms "good" and "evil"

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.

Flannery O’Connor uses style, tone, and character to tell the story of a family and a band of misfits as they struggle with good over evil in the Southern Gothic short story ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’ (Kirszner & Mandell, 2012). The style and tone of the characters are depicted in a way that makes it difficult to feel compassion or sympathy for them. The figurative language and style used by the author depicts characters with casual, informal, and extreme Southern stereotypes, diction and attitudes. The tone of the story is ironic in regard to both the characters and plot. O’Connor uses colorful language to describe the characters of the story in a way that allows the reader to vividly see the characters as cartoon like, grotesque, and exaggerated.

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.

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

“The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” rather uniquely utilizes a third-person stream-of-consciousness point of view to convey its theme. The stream-of-conscousness puts the reader into the thoughts of the main character, Granny Weatherall (henceforth “Granny”), though from a third person perspective. Therefore, if one considers the characterization of Granny, it would become immediately obvious that only indirect presentation of details is used, through her thoughts as opposed to a direct presentation of Granny, would immediately put distance between her and the reader. It’s through the contiguous thoughts of her that the reader can begin to characterize her: her repeated references to a favorite child, her memories of being jilted, her opinions of other characters such as Father Connolly or Doctor Harry. Throughout the story, the reader learns Granny’s character through her thoughts and words, as she struggles and complains and contemplates the past.

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-

Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” was published in 1955. O’Connor was also known for her novel The Violent Bear it Away (published in 1960) and her collection of short stories Everything That Rises Must Converge (published in 1964). The author often used violence and greed to show how she saw humanity that was without God. She liked to write about pettiness and vanity in the rural south, both of which play large parts in “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” This particular piece of work is about a family who goes on a road trip that takes an unexpected turn when they cross paths with a murderer and his henchmen.

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.

What will happen to you after I am gone?’ was her favorite lament. I was nothing, husbandless, childless. I felt myself hovering like a pencil notation on the margins of society. For long periods, I was engulfed by melancholy, depression and despair. I would lie in bed for hours, unable to sleep, pitying myself for all I didn’t have, blaming my mother, myself.”

As you can see her stories are surrounded by her belief. In today’s world societal morals and values have drastically crumbled making the world an unacceptable place. Flannery O’Conner’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” moves from a family comedy into a brutal revelation while on a family vacation. While on the way to find the homestead where grandmother grew up, she puts them down the wrong path right into a murderer’s escape route.

At first when one thinks of Tolkien and O’Connor, they do not seem to have many things in common. One is a British author who writes about secondary worlds, with magical characters, where the other is an American Author who writes about ironic, darkly funny Southern Gothic stories that end grotesquely. In this class, we had the opportunity to read many different types of short stories that had multiple themes that expressed Catholic Worldview. For example, Flannery O’Connor who is the author of A Good Man is Hard to Find, who liked to write about mysterious, and odd characters. Compared to JRR Tolkien the author of the famous Lord of the Ring series. He liked to write about Elves, Dwarfs, Wizards, Hobbits and humans in the middle Earth world.

The noise of the world outside, as also inside the house -- the clash of people meeting -- the laughter and the screams of greeting, the pink pleased squeak of cousin Jane not only fill her with fear near, but also at distance, the dread of death on seeing Jane’s “faded eyes” and hands like nervous butterflies. Among these death-pale relatives she feels as if: A whirlpool leers at