Superficial Beliefs

“She would have been a good woman if it had been someone there to shoot her for every minute of her life.” Flannery O’Connor’s depiction of Christian faith can be seen in almost all of her works. Inevitably, the plots in all of O’Connor’s stories end with a shocking conclusion, and this leaves the reader with freedom to interpret the central idea. From the endless list of themes that O’Connor embeds into her stories, “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” is largely influenced by the idea of divine grace, hypocrisy, and white supremacy.

The feeling of white supremacy can be repeatedly seen in O’Connor’s writing, including in her short story, “A Good Man Is Hard To Find.” Although there is no direct racism portrayed in the story, a variety of scenes notion one into questioning the ambiguous remarks made by the Grandmother. The nostalgic elements of her genteel past such as abandoned mansions and plantations that were once owned by whites, show how difficult it is for the Grandmother to cope with the world she now lives in (Enjolras 37). These symbols are reminders to her of the South that she used to enjoy as a child when whites had a strong sense of identity and a right to rule over blacks (Enjolras 37). She is now part of a racially infused South, where the oppressed African-Americans are improving their lifestyle and living amongst whites. This is not the only instance when the racial roles play a significant part in her life. When she sees the little black child in the countryside during the road trip and boldly refers to her as a ‘pickaninny’, it seems as if she considers the child a type of animal because she is so unlike her, revealing that she has never experienced poverty and misfortune as African-Americans did during her childhoo...

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...erica, 1998. Print.

The author tells about, as the title suggests, the different characters in the story. The author presents facts about O’Connor’s life that might have been the cause for all the features, behaviors, and beliefs of the characters in her works. For example, the author says most of the characters have something physically grotesque about them and this is seen as a continuous pattern in Flannery O’Connor’s writing, and it could have been due to the fact that she lived in forced isolation while in Milledgeville, Georgia. There are many excerpts in the book that discuss “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” relating to the Misfit and the grandmother, such as their conceited self-righteousness, all of which will help me develop my argument. So I intend to use some of those excerpts as proof for my view of the grandmother as the real antagonist in the story.