A Good Man Is Hard To Find Analysis

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Recommended: CHARACTER essay A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND by Flannery O’Connor

The perception of religion is different for everyone and for the grandmother in the story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, being a lady with good Christian values was how she defined herself. The grandmother’s innocence of the evil existing in the world cost her and her family their lives. The story “Cathedral” however, has a more positive outlook on faith. The narrator, “Bub”guided by a blind man named Robert was able to visualize and draw a picture of a cathedral, without really knowing what one was. This essay will examine how the outcomes of both stories were affected by the beliefs of those involved.
The grandmother’s views good/bad was based on how she was raised. Her family was good because they were white, attended church and believed in Jesus Christ. Understanding the true concept of Christianity is another story. During her final moments of life, this grandmother had doubts about her faith (O’Connor 1203).
What put this family into the clutches of the Misfit when they should have been heading to Florida? It was another case of the grandmother getting her own way. Bailey had no intention of stopping anywhere, but a story about an old plantation got the older children begging to see it, so he turned back just to shut everyone up. Pitty Sing, the grandmother’s cat jumped up on Bailey’s neck as he was driving down the dirt road, causing their car to roll into a ditch. (1196-1197). As luck would have it, the Misfit and his two buddies were right in the area.
After watching her family being led into the woods and hearing gunshots, the desperate grandmother tried to save herself. She called upon Jesus and tried to use every trick she could think of, including telling the Misfit, “You’ve got good b...

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...his is a defining moment for Bub; he realized that Robert helped him see how blind he had been to the blessings in his life up to this point.
Bub was amazed at the image he and Robert created. Bub was convinced that he knew nothing about cathedrals or art, and he had just learned differently (575). Bub had been shown that all is not as it appears in life. Roberts’s faith in Bub had made him accomplish something he never even imagined.
Both stories show the power of faith. Robert had faith that Bub could demonstrate a cathedral for him and so it happened. The Misfit was able to murder a family because of his belief in his own persecution, which justified his actions. Faith is the conviction of a person’s ideals. These ideals can sometimes accomplish wonderful things like the cathedral drawing or a horrible event like the murder of an entire family.

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