"A Good Man is Hard to Find" Analysis

The short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor is a story written with the intention of converting the young people, of the time, into Christians. O’Connor is a strong believer, wanting to convince her readers to also start leading a Christian life. This is the theme of many of her stories. The grandmother being the physical body that feels the grace of god and the Misfit as the one who tests her faith, expresses this message to her readers effectively. The usage of foreshadowing, allusions, imagery and flashbacks by O’Connor builds up the reader’s anticipation for the final stage of the story and leads to the family’s fatal outcome.

O’Connor relies strongly on the use of foreshadowing to create a suspenseful story to convey her message to the readers. The author mentions the Misfit twice in the story before he actually makes an appearance, leading to an assumption by the reader that he plays an important role in the narrative. The first time that the Misfit is mentioned, the grandmother is trying to convince the family not to go to Florida. The grandmother tries to play on the fears of the children by saying “… what would you do if this fellow the Misfit caught you?” (O’Connor 1). This tactic does not work on the children and they decide to still carry on the trip to Florida. The author’s use of diction in the story also contributes to the foreshadowing of later events in the story. The connotation of the words she uses gives the reader clues as to what will happen to the family at the end of the story. O’Connor’s use of the words “Toomsboro” and “hearse like” are textual proof of this. The author uses these words to allude to death, “Toomsboro” sounding similar to the word tomb and “hearse-like” (O’Connor 5-...

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...is about the plantation. She tricks the children into wanting to go but the grandmother later realizes that there is no plantation and that “…the house she had remembered so vividly was not in Georgia but in Tennessee” (O’Connor 6). This flashback is important to the story because the grandmother’s mistake is what led them to the misfit. The author used allusions to get the family to where they will meet the misfit and to also give the reader some background on grandmother.

In conclusion, the author uses all three elements, foreshadowing, allusions, and flashbacks to lead the family to the end of the story. Foreshadowing being the strongest element used out of the three. O’Connor’s use of these three element not only does this but it also gives the characters depth, while contributing to the authors theme of spiritual redemption, and the idea of good versus bad.