Analysis Of A Good Man Is Hard To Find By Flannery O Connor

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Professor name: Ndeh
Course Name: ENG 1102
Date: September 16, 2015

A good Man is hard to Find; analyze Point Of View by Flannery O Connor
“A Good Man is Hard to Find” is a tragic short story, which was written by Flannery O’ Connor. In this story, the lives of two families are involved. This story revolves around three children of these families, two parents of these children and a grandmother. Flannery O’ Connor has used the grandmother’s thinking and mind set as the main theme of this story. Flannery O’ Connor has built the character of grandmother in this story. Although, grandmother is not telling this story, but story is narrated in such a way that it revolves around the life of grandmother and events happened to her.

Flannery O’ Connor has tried to make this story more rhetoric and realistic so that it can be more influencing for the readers.
Three rhetoric principles can be used, while writing a story or a speech includes ethos, pathos and logos. Flannery O’ Connor has combined the omniscient narrators’ voice and the point of view of the grandmother so that a perfect balance can be created, which can be catchy for the readers or the listeners, if this story is going to be played in audio. Many examples can be found by the reader in this story, which shows that how the narrations have used to reflect the thinking of grandmother. Like at one scene, in this story, the grand mother says that she does not want to go to florid because she thinks that there is a criminal in Florida, who can be harmful for her “...that calls himself The Misfit is a loose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida...” (337) Influence of the thinking of the grandmother can be seen in this entire story like, when the family schedules the trip to Florida, the grandmother dresses herself and says, “...anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady” (338) On their way to Florida, when the family stops on a restaurant for meal, the grandmother mentions about the criminal “Misfit” to the owner of restaurant. The wife of restaurant‘s owner does not believe her, so she says if Misfit knows about them then, “Wouldn’t be none surprised to see him” (341)
In this entire story the scary moments can be visualized by the reader because as the story progress, the grandmother expresses more about the killer and criminal, which creates suspense in the mind of the reader. Even in such scary scene, the reader may not be happy to see the killer and the death of innocent family, but still the suspense of the story makes the reader as more curious about the end of the story. Reader want to see who was the actual killer, which was in the mind of grandmother’s in this entire journey to Florida.
The reason for the success of this story was that the writer, Flannery O’ Connor has used the character of grandmother to drive the entire story.

The writer had options in the form of the other characters, like the children and parents of this story, to create suspense about the killer but the reason due to which the writer uses the character of grandmother was that it injected the sentiments of pity to the whole story and scene of victimization of the family, which was going to be killed by a unseen killer. Initially, it seems that the grand daughter is not respecting the emotions of grandmother, when she says, “She wouldn’t stay at home to be queen for the day...Afraid she’d miss something”

(342)
But later on, as the story progress, it proves that these characters were victims.

After reading this story, the reader comes to know that the character “grandmother” about one was feeling very sorry and was considering it as the factor was pity was just a suspense. The actual situation was the different as it was perceived by the writer at the start of the story, and the reason of problems for that family was their grandmother, not Misfit.
As the writer of this story, Flannery O’Connor has used the omniscient narration as a tool in this story in very effective and efficient manners so it is difficult for the reader to judge that what will happen next. Many events remain secret for the reader, and these secrets start revealing, as the story progresses. When the story ends, the reader comes to know that he/she was wrong at the start of the story. Many other characters have also entered in this story, the introduction of these characters by the writer was to make this story as more interesting and more thoughtful like,
When in one scene, a character named as the Red Sammy from the barbecue place says, “Two fellers come in here last week driving a Chrysler. It was an old and beat-up car but it was a good one and these boys looked all right to me”.

(343)
The perception of the reader at the beginning of the story and the perception of the reader at the end of the story is entirely different because at the start of this story, there were many realities about which the reader was unaware, the need of the story tells the actual reality of what happened to the reader.

Works cited
O’Connor, F. (2001). “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing. Ed. Laurie G. Kirszner and Stephen R. Mandell. Orlando: . Harcourt College Publishers,266-278.