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Flannery O'Connor is an influential voice in American literature. It is the headlight of American literature, also the master of the short stories. Writer of the southern United States, we call her style the "Southern Gothic" intimately tied to its region and its grotesque characters. For me O'Connor's writings also reflect her Catholic faith, in considering her moral values. Deeply influenced by good and evil, the theme of redemption through grace and suffering, the work of Flannery O'Connor takes us to the heart of darkness of humanity. In Flannery O'Connor we find another key figure: the one of the prophet, the marginal, the one that is different from "brave people" and as such is the theme of "grotesque". The "grotesque" in Flannery O'Connor is one of the topics most discussed by literary critics. A closed reading of Flannery O’Connor “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, one of the best of her stories, reveals different levels of interpretations.
There are various critics from “A Good Man is Hard to Find." Most of those opinions target the act of the grandmother and the Misfit.
The dominating opinion is that the final part of the grandmother was one of grace and of charity, which implies that "A Good Man is Difficult To Find" was written to show a transformation in the grandmother as the history progress. In the beginning, she was more worried about the resemblance to a good Christian than to be a faithful Christian. “At lunchtime, they stop at Red Sammy’s, a barbecue eatery, where the grandmother laments that “people are certainly not nice as they used to be,” and Red Sammy agrees: “A good man is hard to find.” In this conversation, the grandmother, narrow-minded and opinionated, repeatedly assures herself that she is a lady,...
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... topped throughout history. At the end, she goes counts that she did not take good life and spreads to touch her killer, the Misfit, in a final amnesty and a charity.
Works cited
Bandy, Stephen C. "`One of My Babies': The misfit and the grandmother." Studies in Short Fiction 33.1 (1996): 107. Literary Reference Center Plus. EBSCO. Web. 29 May 2011.
Garbett, Ann D. "A Good Man Is Hard to Find." Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition (2006): 1. Literary Reference Center Plus. EBSCO. Web. 1 June 2011.
Kaplan, Carola M. "A Good Man Is Hard to Find." Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition (2004): 1-3. Literary Reference Center Plus. EBSCO. Web. 30 May 2011.
O'Connor, Flannery. "A Good Man Is Hard to Find." The Complete Stories. New York: Farrar, (1969). 117-33. Literary Reference Center Plus. EBSCO. Web. 1 June 2011.
As I read Flannery O’Connor’s short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, I find myself being completely consumed by the rich tale that the author weaves; a tragic and ironic tale that concisely and precisely utilizes irony and foreshadowing with expert skill. As the story progresses, it is readily apparent that the story will end in a tragic and predictable state due to the devices which O’Connor expertly employs and thusly, I find that I cannot stop reading it; the plot grows thicker with every sentence and by doing so, the characters within the story are infinitely real in my mind’s eye. As I consider these factors, the story focuses on two main characters; that of the grandmother, who comes across as self-centered and self-serving and The Misfit, a man, who quite ingeniously, also appears to be self-centered and self-serving. It is the story behind the grandmother, however, that evidence appears to demonstrate the extreme differences between her superficial self and the true character of her persona; as the story unfolds, and proof of my thought process becomes apparently clear.
The most important aspect of this story is the actual meaning of ?A Good Man is Hard to Find.? Most people think that is a term meant just for a woman trying to find a man to fall in love with. In this story, it has a complete different meaning. Through the grandmother?s eyes, it was not only good men that were gone, but it was also the good life. I believe she was ready for death, but this was not the death that she wanted.
In "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," Flannery O'Connor represents her style of writing very accurately. She includes her "themes and methods - comedy, violence, theological concern - and thus makes them quickly and unmistakably available" (Asals 177). In the beginning of the story O'Connor represents the theme of comedy by describing the typical grandmother. Then O'Connor moves on to include the violent aspect by bringing the Misfit into the story. At the end of the story the theme changes to theological concern as the attention is directed towards the grandmother's witnessing. As the themes change throughout the story, the reader's perception of the grandmother also changes.
A brilliant storyteller during the mid-twentieth century, Flannery O'Connor wrote intriguing tales of morality, ethics and religion. A Southern writer, she wrote in the Southern Gothic style, cataloging thirty-two short stories; the most well known being “A Good Man is Hard to Find.”
In "A Good Man is Hard to Find," the grandmother is a typical Southern lady. This constant effort to present herself a Southern lady is where her pride is grounded. She criticizes the mother's traveling outfit, but she herself is wearing a prim and proper-and probably uncomfortable-outfit so that "anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady" (O'Connor, "A Good Man" 382). She recalls exactly how to find a certain plantation she used to visit, and the children convince their father to turn the car around. However, the grandmother realizes that the plantation is in another state but is too prideful to admit so. This pride follows her to the point of grace when The Misfit forces her to see reality.
O'Connor, Flannery, "A Good Man is Hard to Find", The Norton Introduction to Literature. Portable Tenth Edition, Booth, Alison, and Mays, Kelly J., New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc, 2011.
Elmore Leonard once said “I don’t judge in my books. I don’t have the antagonist get shot or the protagonist win. It’s just how it comes out. I’m just telling a story.” “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”, written by Flannery O'Connor, is one of the most interesting stories that we have read in this class. The protagonist in this story is the grandmother and the antagonist is The Misfit. In any other short story, the protagonist and the antagonist would not have much in common, but that is not the case in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”. The three major similarities between the grandmother and The Misfit is that they are both the oldest one in their groups, they are both hypocrites, and they both are missing important spiritual relationships.
In the short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, by Flannery O'Connor, every object including the characters are symbols. The Grandmother for example is the one and only dynamic character, represents all of us who have had to feel grief or needed to ask for forgiveness. As Flannery O'Connor has suggested, the story is a spiritual journey because of the Grandmother's quandaries. In the beginning of the story the Grandmother is obsessed with everything worldly and superficial. She cares only about how others perceive her,
Bandy, Stephen C. "One of my babies": The Misfit and the Grandmother in Flannery O'Connor's short story 'A Good Man Is Hard to Find'. Studies in Short Fiction; Winter 1996, v33, n1, p107(11)
In her well-known short story, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” Flannery O’Connor skillfully describes the difficulty of finding a morally upright human being, whether it is a man or a woman. No one is perfect, everyone has inadequacies and shortcomings, and she presents this cleverly in her story. She is able to support this view of mankind through her characters. They are self-centered, egotistical human beings who can be judged by their words and actions. This is especially true of the protagonist (the grandmother) and the antagonist (the Misfit). The grandmother tries to portray herself as a virtuous woman, but in the end O’Connor shows that her actions are always self-serving and that morally, she is not that different from the Misfit.
Flannery O’ Connor’s story: “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is the tale of a vacation gone wrong. The tone of this story is set to be one irony. The story is filled with grotesque but meaningful irony. I this analysis I will guide you through the clues provided by the author, which in the end climax to the following lesson: “A Good Man” is not shown good by outward appearance, language, thinking, but by a life full of “good” actions.
To conclude, Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” is filled with irony and it is what makes the story so interesting. Without the use of these ironies the story would have been very different for the readers. Flannery O’Connor uses irony to enhance her writing and to push the readers to want to read further. She also uses this irony to explain some of her own concerns about the human condition. Verbal, dramatic, and cosmic ironies are all present in Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” and are used skillfully by the author to enhance the reader’s experience.
Flannery O’Connor lived most of her life in the southern state of Georgia. When once asked what the most influential things in her life were, she responded “Being a Catholic and a Southerner and a writer.” (1) She uses her knowledge of southern religion and popular beliefs to her advantage throughout the story. Not only does she thoroughly depict the southern dialect, she uses it more convincingly than other authors have previously attempted such as Charles Dickens and Zora Neale Hurston. In other works, the authors frequently use colloquialism so “local” that a reader not familiar with those slang terms, as well as accents, may have difficulty understanding or grasping the meaning of the particular passage. O’Connor not only depicts a genuine southern accent, she allows the characters to maintain some aspect of intelligence, which allows the audience to focus on the meaning of the passage, rather than the overbearing burden of interpreting a rather “foreign language.”
In the short story, “The Good Man Is Hard to Find” the grandmother describes a “good man” vaguely. The grandmother pertains the label “good” broadly, putting a shadow over the definition of a “good man” until it loses its meaning completely. She first applies it to Red Sammy after he furiously complains of the universal untrustworthiness of people. Red Sammy states, “Two fellers come in here last week, driving a Chrysler. It was an old beat-up car but it was a good one and these boys looked all right to me. Said they worked at the mill and you know I let them charge the gas they bought? Now why did I do that?” (1,045). The grandmother said he did this because he is “a good man.” She next relates the label “good” to the Misfit. After she identifies him, the grandmother asks, “You wouldn’t shoot a lady, would you?” (1,049). Even though he hates to admit it, The Misfit says, “I would hate to have to” (1,049). Because being a lady is such a meaningful part of what the grandmother believes as being ethical, the Misfit’s answer confirms to her that he does not share the same moral principles as she does. The grandmother begins to desperately call him a good man and that he comes from ...
The main recurring theme in Flannery O’Connor’s stories is the use of violence towards characters in order to give them an eye-opening moment in which they finally realize their true self in relation to the rest of society and openly accept insight into how they should act or think. This theme of violence can clearly be seen in three works by Flannery O’Connor: A Good Man is Hard to Find, Good Country People, and Everything That Rises Must Converge.