Flannery O'Connor's short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find,”(367-377) imparts the idea that because of circumstances, free will can often lead to an ugly truth. Each person has the freedom of choice, however; there are times when that choice leads them to an unpleasant reality. Clair Katz, explains that O'Connor uses violence in a way that “jar[s]... her character's...
back to what she calls 'reality'”(411). This can be seen in O'Connor's use of irony to express how simple choices turn into extreme circumstances. In the case of the “grandmother, Bailey, and The Misfit,”(367) their choices lead to a deadly outcome.
The grandmother's selfish decisions play a significant part in the family's demise. Specifically, the grandmother is “afraid” (367) to leave her “cat, Pitty Sing,... in the house alone for three days”(367). She worries that the cat would “miss her too much... [or would] asphyxiate... [if] he brushes up against one of the gas burners”(367). These, of course, were valid worries for the grandmother; however, she knows her son Bailey would not be pleased. She doesn't want to leave the cat behind and hides it in the “car”(367). Additionally, by making this particular choice, the grandmother sets into motion the reason for the tragic car “accident” (370) that puts the family's lives in The Misfit's path. Pitty Sing is released when the grandmother realizes she made a mistake about the location of an “old plantation”(370). She, incidentally, believes it is down a “dirt road”(371) in “Georgia”(372) but is really in “Tennessee”(372). This memory lapse “embarrasse[s]” (370) her and causes her “jump”(370) and that jostles the cat's “basket”(367). Unfortunately, the cat leaps on Bailey's “shoulder”(371) and he loses control ...
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...and their family's death. The Misfit's choice of becoming what others say he is, though having the freedom to choose otherwise, make him the worst he's able to be and will eventually put him back in the prison he believes he can escape. Freedom of choice seems to be a great gift however, as hard as people try, they always come to a point where they realize that there is something greater that overrides that choice and they end up where they were meant to be all along.
Works Cited
Hendin, Josephine. “On O'Connor's Refusal to 'Do Pretty.'” Meyer. 410.
Katz, Clair. “The Function of Violence in O'Connor's Fiction.” Meyer. 411.
Kessler, Edward. “On O'Connor's Use of History.” Meyer. 412.
O'Connor, Flannery. “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” Meyer. 367-377.
Meyer, Michael. The Bedford Introduction to Literature. 9th Ed. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin's,
2012. print.
The Grandmother often finds herself at odds with the rest of her family. Everyone feels her domineering attitude over her family, even the youngest child knows that she's "afraid she'd miss something she has to go everywhere we go"(Good Man 2). Yet this accusation doesn't seem to phase the grandmother, and when it is her fault alone that the family gets into the car accident and is found by the Misfit, she decides to try to talk her way out of this terrible predicament.
With these two divergent personas that define the grandmother, I believe the ultimate success of this story relies greatly upon specific devices that O’Connor incorporates throughout the story; both irony and foreshadowing ultimately lead to a tale that results in an ironic twist of fate and also play heavily on the character development of the grandmother. The first sense of foreshadowing occurs when the grandmother states “[y]es and what would you do if this fellow, The Misfit, Caught you” (1042). A sense of gloom and an unavoidable meeting with the miscreant The Misfit seem all but inevitable. I am certain that O’Connor had true intent behind th...
In the beginning of the story the negative characteristics of the grandmother are revealed. She is portrayed as being a very egocentric person. The grandmother is very persistent about getting her way. She appears to be very insensitive of the feelings of the other family members. She consistently tries to persuade the family to go to Tennessee rather than to Florida. Also, she rebelliously took the cat with her on the trip when she knew the others would object. As a result of her selfishness the family had to make a detour to stop and see the house that she insisted upon visiting.
The narrator starts the story giving background information about the grandmother and her son, Bailey. The narrator explains that the "grandmother didn't want to go to Florida" (320). Although a major conflict could result from her dislike of the family's choice of vacation spots, it does not. When the grandmother first speaks she asks Bailey to read a newspaper article that she has found. She attempts to change his mind about not going to Florida, by saying, "Here this fellow 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..." (320). Bailey does not ...
Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man Is Hard to Find is one of the most well-known short stories in American history. A Good Man Is Hard to Find is a disturbing short story that exemplifies grace in extremity as well as the threat of an intruder. The story tells of an elderly grandmother and her family who embark on a road trip to Florida. The grandmother is a stubborn old woman with a low sense of morality. While on the trip, the grandmother convinces her son to take a detour which results in a broken down car and an encounter with a convicted fugitive, The Misfit. Although the grandmother pleads for mercy, The Misfit kills off the rest of her family. Through the grace she finds in her extreme circumstance, the grandmother calls The Misfit her own and implores him to spare her life. The Misfit does not oblige her and states after her death, “She would have been a good woman if it had been someone to shoot her every day of her life.” Through Flannery O’Connor’s disturbing and shocking display of the grandmother’s demise, she gives the reader a sense of the threatening power of an intruder and the idea of extreme situations bringing about a state of grace. The reason for such a powerful work may have resulted from Flannery O’Connor’s religious upbringing as well as the state of the nation at the time.
Not long after being on the dirt road the grandmother recalls a “…horrible thought…” that sent shock waves through her feet scaring “… Pity Sing the cat [, and causing it to] spr[ing] onto Baileys shoulder”(O’connor.428). Bailey not long after loses control of the car and crashes them into a ditch flipping the car a couple times. The author noting that “The horrible thought she had had before the accident was that the house she had remembered so vividly was not in Georgia but in Tennessee”(O’connor.428). The authors insight on the grandmother allows the reader to fully understand the grandmothers selfishness and inability to admit she was ever wrong in anything she did. It is not long after the foreshadowing catches up to the helpless family stranded in the midst of nowhere as a strange car slowly approaches them with three men in it. The grandmothers outspokenness is once again continued as she made it vocally known that she recognizes the misfit as one of the men. It is at that moment the misfit says “…it would have been better for all of you, lady, if you hadn 't of reckernized me”(O’connor.429). The reader can conclude the fate of the family at this point and lay blame everything that has happened on the grandmother. Soon after killing the rest of her family the grandmothers social order begins to vividly and rapidly change as she tells the misfit to “pray” and even tells him “…you’re one of my babies. You 're one of my own children”(O’connor.432-433). The reader can now see the grandmothers transformation as she lives the last couple minutes of her life she talks about Jesus, and even considering the misfit to be a “…good man at heart”(O’connor.430). Not long after the grand mother is shot through her chest several times and is carried into the woods and placed next to the rest of her
Although this story is told in the third person, the reader’s eyes are strictly controlled by the meddling, ever-involved grandmother. She is never given a name; she is just a generic grandmother; she could belong to anyone. O’Connor portrays her as simply annoying, a thorn in her son’s side. As the little girl June Star rudely puts it, “She has to go everywhere we go. She wouldn’t stay at home to be queen for a day” (117-118). As June Star demonstrates, the family treats the grandmother with great reproach. Even as she is driving them all crazy with her constant comments and old-fashioned attitude, the reader is made to feel sorry for her. It is this constant stream of confliction that keeps the story boiling, and eventually overflows into the shocking conclusion. Of course the grandmother meant no harm, but who can help but to blame her? O’Connor puts her readers into a fit of rage as “the horrible thought” comes to the grandmother, “that the house she had remembered so vividly was not in Georgia but in Tennessee” (125).
To buttress this she pointed out that even at the grandmothers death misfit confirmed her to be a good woman in his statement “she would have been a good woman if she was to face death every minute of her life” (437). In contrast to her opinion Stephen Bandy a notable literally critics in one of his articles “One of my babies “: The Misfit and the Grandmother” he compared the characters of both and argued that despite the fact that O`Conner claimed the grandmother was merely filled with “prejudice” of her time, He described the grandmother as racist, busy body and utterly self-absorbed. When she saw that her child and grandchildren was been killed tried to manipulate Misfit to spare her own life whereas she was the one that lead them to their death.
Everyone is faced with decisions and choices in life, and sometimes they are combined with impelling and inevitable consequences. Flannery O'Connor’s religiously symbolic short story "A Good Man is Hard to Find" portrays a family of unappreciative adults and children traveling to Florida for a vacation. While traveling the family has an unfortunate accident and encounter a wanted and deadly criminal named The Misfit. As they are forced to face their own destruction, the grandmother attempts to find some mercy in the misfit to prevent her own death and subsequent Judgment. O’Conner in “A Good Man Is Hard To Find”, skillfully uses noticeable foreshadowing, elaborate symbolism, and dramatic irony to portray the message that people sometimes experience
The irony at the end of this story is very interesting. O’ Connor forces the reader to wonder which characters are “Good Men”, perhaps by the end of the story she is trying to convey two points: first, that a discerning “Good Man” can be very difficult, second that a manipulative, self centered, and hollow character: The Grandmother is a devastating way to be, both for a person individually and for everyone else around them. The reader is at least left wondering if some or all of the clues to irony I provided apply in some way to the outcome of this story.
After the accident that the grandmother had unintentionally caused by manipulating the image of a nonexistent house into her family’s head, they run into the Misfit. No one else in the family knew who he was or anything about him. They all thought someone had come to their rescue and was going to fix the car, but nothing gets over on the grandmother. Blatantly putting the whole family in danger she blurts out, “’You’re the Misfit!’…’Yes’m…but it would have been better for all of you, lady, if you hadn’t of reckernized me’” (192). At this point in time, she knows that she is going to die, trying to save herself and not caring about the rest of her family clearly as she has witnessed the Misfit’s goons kill off her whole family, she tries to manipulate him. She brings up that he is a “good man at heart” (192) and telling him if he “would pray…Jesus would help” (194). That was just simply her trying to plea for her life, but when she realized she was getting nowhere her “head cleared for an instant” (196), she knew this was an opportunity to try and manipulate the Misfit into letting her go, to make him feel like he didn’t have to be a killer anymore, to comfort him “she reached out and touched him on the shoulder” (196). The Misfit jolted away and shot her three times in the chest because he saw through her manipulative ways which if clear when he
Though the grandmother dies in the end, O’Connor’s use of foreshadowing, characterization, and a distinct point of view lead me to believe this is the beginning of a different life for The Misfit. After he kills the grandmother The Misfit immediately starts cleaning his glasses, an indication that he sees the world in a different way. He had originally thought there was no pleasure in anything but cruelty, eventually the Misfit decides “It’s no real pleasure in life.” He had wanted to see Jesus raise the dead more than anything, and The Misfit ultimately got his wish; the grandmother had a last minute relief from her unbearable pomposity and then died, presumably redeemed. And the Misfit finds a glimpse of human empathy and compassion from the last woman we would have expected it from.
Many have written entire novels on the topic of good versus evil. Philosophers have spent their entire lives researching and debating and providing theories to somehow find an answer that will never be clear. What makes a person evil or good? In her short stories, “A Good Man is hard to find” and “Good Country People,” Flannery O’Connor explores the theme of good versus evil and differentiating between them and what that conveys about the complexity of human nature.
In conclusion, Flannery O’Connor used violence in her short stories in order to give her characters an event that changes their entire viewpoint, beliefs, and actions in life and shows them the reality of it. These acts of violence can be seen in A Good Man is Hard to Find, Good Country People, and Everything that Rises Must Converge.
In Flannery O 'Connor 's short story, A Good Man is Hard to Find, the theme of good vs. evil unravels throughout the series of tragic events. The Grandmother’s epiphany introduces the idea of morality and the validity is left to the interpretation of the reader. By questioning the characteristics of right and wrong, morality and religion become subjective to personal reality and the idea of what makes individuals character good or bad becomes less defined.