A Good Man Is Hard To Find: A Comparative Analysis

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Recommended: A Brief introduction to Brave New World

In Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” and Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” the reader is let into two different worlds that take place in two completely different eras. Brave New World takes place 500 years in the future and is about a dystopian future. It shows how people are separated into different caste systems and are conditioned into how they should act. A Good Man is Hard to Find takes place in the 1930’s and is mainly about the goodness that an individual has. In both texts, the authors use of society and class, religion, and the contrasting ideas of freedom and manipulation help further the idea of how a class system can have the same meaning no matter what era.
In Brave New World, there are five caste systems; Alphas,
The idea of freedom is an oxymoron in this story because the people of the dystopian future don’t have a choice in their freedom. The people of the caste system are being conditioned by people of a higher power so they are limited to what they can and can’t do. The scientists are basically brainwashing the people into thinking that everything they are doing is completely okay. They are being conditioned to think pleasure is something they should pursue no matter what the circumstance or the age, that drugs are okay to take and that they only have positive outcomes. Huxley supports this with, “But, my dear chap, you're welcome, I assure you. You're welcome." Henry Foster patted the Assistant Predestinator on the shoulder. "Every one belongs to everyone else, after all. One hundred repetitions three nights a week for four years, thought Bernard Marx, who was a specialist on hypnopedia. Sixty-two thousand four hundred repetitions make one truth. Idiots!” (page 34) This develops the idea that the people are living in limitation, where they are forced to have certain desires and sexual feeling towards others. The concept of manipulation in A Good Man is Hard to Find, is mainly focused on the grandmother. The grandmother manipulated the misfit into not shooting her, as well as manipulating her family. She manipulated her son into taking them to Tennessee rather than Florida because she wanted to visit her relatives. Flannery O’Connor maintains this idea through, “Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is a loose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida and you read here what it says he did to these people. Just you read it. I wouldn't take my children in any direction with a criminal like that a loose in it. I couldn't answer to my conscience if I did." (page 1) In this quote the grandmother is trying to dig up reasons as to why her and

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