Comparison Of A Good Man Is Hard To Find And Babylon Revisited And The Great Gatsby

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Recommended: A good man is hard to find character analysis

In literature, we often see the “happy ending”, where the guy gets the girl, they ride off into the sunset together, forever. This is a consistent presentation across literature. Though another popular style, but less often seen, is that of the unhappy ending, which we will explore in this paper. Its style is one that can strike emotion through readers as they turn each page. In this work, we will analyze two classic works: “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor, and “Babylon Revisited” by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Both stories share the same type of ending style. We will analyze the themes & symbols that each story has and compare the two.
A Good Man Is Hard To Find
This story, by Flannery O’Connor, tells the story of three generations …show more content…

Scott Fitzgerald writes about a man named Charlie, who returns to Paris to visit his daughter, who remains in the custody of his sister-in-law, after the death of his wife during his time while drying out from alcohol in a “Sanitarium” (Fitzgerald 706). During his trip, he is offered the chance to retake custody of his daughter, Honoria. Charlie, who still drinks one drink a day to stave off alcoholic obsessions, ends up meeting a pair of drunks in the bar he frequents for his one drink. They end up turning up sloppy drunk at his sister-in-law’s, ruining his chances for the moment at regaining custody, due to the sister-in-law’s mistrust of his “sobriety” and the people he still communicates with. This story has one common recurring symbol, The Ritz Bar that Charlie frequents throughout the story. Its American theme reflects his home country while in Paris, and it was his home for many nights during his drinking years. He ends up in the bar at the end of the story, reflecting on how alone he is (Fitzgerald 713).
Comparison
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In “A Good Man”, the Grandmother’s cat ends up causing the car accident that leads to their eventual deaths (O’Connor 549), a beautiful symbol of what is the Grandmother’s personality and values. This symbol is paralleled in “Babylon Revisited” when the two former friends of Charlie show up at the sister-in-law’s doorstep, destroying his chances of retaking custody of Honoria, his daughter (Fitzgerald 711). Both symbolize a long history of imperfections from each person that have come to fruition at a crucial point in their lives, which end up leading to their downfall (though their downfalls are vastly different, each carries significant emotional damage to each

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