Compare And Contrast A Good Man Is Hard To Find

Flannery O’Connor and William Faulkner are both iconic writers. Their stories are often deals within the same works and different class of people. They both repeatedly focus on southern backdrops and characters, also deals with cultural corruption, and more commonly having conflicts between different generations in one’s family. These two writers never have a happy ending in the story: its either death or downfall of a man. Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and Faulkner’s “A Rose For Emily” have similar traits of their writing. “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is about how a grandmother convinces her son to take her family to Tennessee but The Misfit kills them. “A Rose for Emily” is about Emily Grierson who is from a wealthy family.

She keeps herself locked in her obsessions. Both the stories have a southern style, both the protagonists have a similar southern style and share irony in their own way.
O’Connor’s story shows a southern family being killed by brutal murderer named Misfit.

Faulkner’s story is about a wealthy women is exposed to have decayed body of her lover, are two examples of southern gothic styled stories. In “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” the grandmother and her family is traveling to Tennessee and gets stuck in an accident. They are relieved when they see a car turn towards them but soon their relief diminishes. However, when they realize that the man driving the car is none other than Misfit an escaped murderer. The Misfit has two partners; they take the family away and kill them. After murdering the grandmother the Mistfit later says, “”She would have been a good woman,” …”if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life””(433). “A Rose for Emily,” is about a woman named Emily, who is the only member of from her family living. Soon when she dies, people of her town are in shock to see a decayed body of her lover who had been assumed that he left Emily years back. The story ends when the town sees something dreadful. “Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair”

(522).
In both the stories’ the protagonists have same upbringing and unpleasant actions leading them to do something unnatural. Emily and the Grandmother are similar in their display of southern behaviors. They are both persistent, strong-minded, and inclined to care only about what they think is finest and appropriate for them. Story proves all these traits where both protagonists tend to make choice they want, and how neither of them will not let go anything until they are successful to get what desire. In “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” the Grandmother got her desired wish of going to Tennessee rather than Florida during the family trip. “She wanted to visit some of her connections in the east Tennessee and she was seizing at every chance to change Bailey’s mind”(422). The Grandmother’s decision changes the whole fate of her and her family’s by forcing them to change their vacation plans. She was trying convince the killer not shoot her, the typical self centered person, she did not even care of her family. Same way, “A Rose for Emily,” a tragedy in Emily’s life let her behavior change, she is not able to live the present world outside her home. “After her father’s death she went out very little; after heart sweet heart went away, people hardly saw her at all”(517). In result, she became so out date and unconventional. When IRS came over her house to talk about her taxes she says “”See Colonel Sartoris.” (Colonel Sartoris had been dead almost then years)” (417). She being so abnormal, she kills her love and sleeps with his body until she dies. Emily is willing to do anything to make things work the way she wants. Both the protagonist enacts their wishes upon others and influencing lives around them.
The use of irony can be found in both Faulkner’s and O’Conner’s stories.

In “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” for example, the Grandmother had a big hand in making plans for the vacation. But, she was not happy on her son Bailey’s decision to go Florida; instead she wanted to go Tennessee. The Grandmother tries and convinces the family no to go Florida; she tells everyone about an escaped convict who is also headed the same route. She says””… I wouldn’t take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn’t answer to my conscience if I did” (422). Here is when the irony occurs, at the Grandmother’s request, the family takes the alternate route to Tennessee. But, the route they have chosen leads them directly to The Misfit. In, “A Rose for Emily,” the entire story tied up with many ironies. For instance, when the narrator of the story tells how Emily’s dad Mr. Griersons are really good and well do southern family, and “believed that the Griersons held themselves a little too high for what they really were” (518). Emily’s father thought there is no man that is good enough for his daughter. Emily was really anxious for a man and falls in love with Homer. Emily’s love for Homer is so ironic. Emily was desperate to own him that she creates death marriage with Homer. She murders the person who she loves the most, in order to have everlasting bond with him. Their marriage is an imaginary from Emily’s vision, and at last Emily thinks she has created

“cuckolds” by killing him. “The body had apparently once lain in the attitude of an embrace, but now the long sleep that outlasts love, that conquers even the grimace of love, have cuckolded him” (522). There are various forms of irony that can be found in this story.
O’Connor and Faulkner are two powerful writers to write on south of America. Both of the writers have developed southern style writing; have developed the character in southern style of having backdrop, and irony in similar way. Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” more over chose to just criticize the southern society class, whereas in O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” goes more on religion. Although, the stories have different aspects they tend have similar examples and shows incomprehensible human beings.