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Significance of journey in literature
Significance of journey in literature
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1. “[For O’Connor’s characters], the path to salvation is never easy; the journey is marked by violence, suffering, often acute disaster. To arouse the recipients of grace, divinity often resorts to drastic modes of awakening. A kind of redemption through catastrophe,” according to Dorothy Walters. Trace how this is true in one of her stories. Show with specifics how the character moves along the path to salvation, showing the journey and how the character ultimately is redeemed. Although each character is very different in their own way, O 'Connors uses each character to show a sense of kindness, struggle, and moment of clarity. Sometimes these characters are bizarre and eccentric, but each in their own individual way. A Good Man is Hard …show more content…
"would you mind calling them children to sit down by you? Children make me nervous."(pg 362) something most people wouldn 't dare to mutter aloud. He found his salvation in what he believed "Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead and He shouldn 't have done it. He thrown everything off balance. If He did what he said, then it 's nothing for you to do but throw away everything and follow Him, and if he didn 't then it 's nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can - by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him. No pleasure but meanness" (pg 366)he felt his grace was to keep up what he saw as Jesus 's work. Which entailed killing people for them to abandon everything else. He was so true to his character he even became mad wishing he 'd been there to see if Jesus truly had raised the dead so he didn 't have to continue this work ""Listen lady," he said in a high voice "if I had been there I would of known and I wouldn 't be like I am now."" Even before he murdered the grandmother, he clearly appreciated that she saw him has a good man. Saying "She would of been a good woman, if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life." (pg 366) I felt this also implied people were only truly at their best before and kindest before they were …show more content…
Although they are blue collar workers, they play a vastly significant role. They are sometimes thought of differently but as Glib points out, Romero takes pride in not only his work but his things. Which is sometimes not how that specific social class is seen. Even though at times it 's hard, Romero tries to teach himself to appreciate all the things in life that he does have "Yet people he knew left - to Houston, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Diego, Denver, Chicago - and came back for holidays with stories of higher wages and acquisition." (pg
In most of Flannery O’Connor’s short stories a number of characters have a hard time seeing an ultimate reality in their life. They tend to have a distorted grasp on reality but not all in the same way. In the story “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” the Misfit and the Grandmother are prime examples. The actions and the way of life of the Misfit and Grandmother are mostly due to the fact that they are living in an false reality where they are in their own little world, where in the Misfit’s world everything goes with no worry of repercussion in the Grandmother’s case she can do no wrong because she has a false perception of what is right.
Reading this part from “A Good Man is Hard to Find” I would think from The Misfit saying this would really be him feeling sorry that he killed his father. Nevertheless if you are coming at this quote from another point you could think he was losing his real father and also god at the same time. Which would make him feel guilty and become the killer he is today. So before losing his father and becoming a killer he could have been a perfect church boy like anybody would be.
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.
...r to make an impact, with the “ugly girl” showing Mrs. Turpin that she should be kinder in her life like the people she judges and believes she is above. The black lady with her son in “Everything that Rises Must Converge” showing Julian that he shouldn’t have been so hard on his mother for behaving the way she was raised and living the lifestyle she was used to since integration was a relatively new event in history. And in “A Good Man is Hard to Find” the grandmother is trying to get a criminal, The Misfit, to let her live calling him a “Good man” and “you’re not a bit common” though it is all in vain because The Misfit kills the grandmother without her changing and letting her live, but he did say “She would have been a good woman” (A Good Man is Hard to Find, 133). O’Connor uses these freaks as a messenger to get the characters to change and live better lives.
“A Good Man is hard to find,” a short story written by Flannery O’ Connor, is one of the most interesting stories I’ve ever come across to in my life. Born as an only child into a Catholic family, O’ Conner is one of the most “greatest fiction writers and one of the strongest apologists for Roman Catholicism in the twentieth century (New Georgia Encyclopedia).” She was a very strong believer in her faith and she used her stories as a tool to send the reader a message that were most likely ignored and almost never uttered out loud. The story revolves around a grandmother who believes to be high and mighty around others. This results in her downfall later on.
In Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find", setting is used as a way to predict the tragic outcome of the story. The story's end is unexpected when first read, but upon closer inspection one can see several clues and foreshadowing techniques O'Connor used to hint at what would eventually happen, specifically in her use of setting. The outcome of the story is hinted at through the description of the family's scenic drive through Georgia, Red Sammy's, and the deserted road they travel on.
If these characters were both purely evil, and had no guilt whatsoever, this would be simply a boring story of unhinged men. Adding both good and evil sides to an individual adds a little something extra to the story that distinguishes it from many other pieces of literature. Aside from adding to the storyline, these morally ambiguous characters give students a chance to practice their skill at analyzing characters and think for themselves, forming their own outlooks on the characters and the book as a whole.
The grandmother and The Misfit of Flannery O'Connor's 'A Good Man is Hard to Find' are backward, opposite images of each other. However, the grandmother does have similarities with the character, Ruby Turpin in O'Connor's short story, 'Revelation'.
Flannery O’Connor's perception of human nature is imprinted throughout her various works. This view is especially evident in the short stories, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” and “Revelation.” She conveys a timeless message through the scope of two ignorant, southern, upper class women. In “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” O’Connor presents readers to a family who is going on a road trip with their selfish grandmother. She is a religious woman who does not follow the set standards that she preaches. Similar characteristics are exposed in “Revelation.” As the self centered Mrs. Turpin sits in the waiting room, she contemplates on her own status with God. Nevertheless, she still commits the sin of judging others. In both of O’Connor’s short stories, these controversial protagonists initially put up a facade in order to alienate themselves from their prospective societies. Although the grandmother and Mrs. Turpin both believe in God, O’Connor utilizes theme to expose that they also convince themselves that they can take on His role by placing judgement on people who, at the most fundamental level, are in the same category as them.
"A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor is a short story that depicts a family's vacation to Florida that turned into an abysmal tragedy when they met with the Misfit, a convict who escaped from prison. This story is meant to be interpreted as a parable, whereby O'Connor made skilful use of symbolism to bring about messages such as the class-consciousness and the lack of spiritual faith that exist amongst human.
Flannery O’Connor believed in the power of religion to give new purpose to life. She saw the fall of the old world, felt the force and presence of God, and her allegorical fictions often portray characters who discover themselves transforming to the Catholic mind. Though her literature does not preach, she uses subtle, thematic undertones and it is apparent that as her characters struggle through violence and pain, divine grace is thrown at them. In her story “Revelation,” the protagonist, Mrs. Turpin, acts sanctimoniously, but ironically the virtue that gives her eminence is what brings about her downfall. Mrs. Turpin’s veneer of so called good behavior fails to fill the void that would bring her to heaven. Grace hits her with force and their illusions, causing a traumatic collapse exposing the emptiness of her philosophy. As Flannery O’Connor said, “In Good Fiction, certain of the details will tend to accumulate meaning from the action of the story itself, and when this happens they become symbolic in the way they work.” (487). The significance is not in the plot or the actual events, but rather the meaning is between the lines.
In" A Good Man is Hard to Find" there are a variety of themes. The themes in this short story are: the grace of the grandmother and The Misfit, the vague definition of a “good man”, and the class of the grandmother. All of these themes are apparent to any reader, but it does not quite seem to match O’Connor’s depth style way of writing. The two characters, the Grandmother and the Misfit change from beginning to end. Even though they are both different as night and day, they both have principles and stand by their principles no matter what the circumstance.
O’Connor is known for her unique sense of writing and does not follow the traditional style of books written on religion. O’Connor uses a harsh and brutal way of writing to try and capture her audience. She does this by “shouting” and “drawing large and startling figures”. O’Connor does not write her stories for those who share the same beliefs. In fact O’Connor wants to reach the people who do not believe. She states that when you are talking to someone who already shares the same beliefs you can use a “more normal means of talking”, I believe she means that you do not have to paint them a picture or try and make them understand what you’re talking about. When she states that she needs to shout at the hard of hearing she means that she needs to find a way to reach an audience who is either is closed minded or has different beliefs.
In “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” the readers are lead to believe that the Grandmother is a good Southern woman who lives her life by God’s grace, and the Misfit is a horrendous, murderous, mad man that believes in nothing. Although these first impressions seem spot on at a first glance, the actual characteristics and traits of these characters are far more complex. The Grandmother and Misfit have a very intriguing conversation before he murders her, but in the short time before her death, the readers see the grandmothers need for redemption and how the murderous Misfit gave her the redemption she so desperately needed,
We see these characters as struggles that every human being on the face of the earth has to deal with at some point in life. “Everyman” shows us that in the end, all that we are left with is our good deeds. We have nothing else that will truly matter when the end comes.