Flannery O’ Connor, A Good Man Is Hard to Find

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1 You can do one thing or you can do another, kill a man or take a tire off his car, because sooner or later you’re going to forget what it was you done and just be punished for it.” This quote was stated in Flannery O’ Connors story of A Good Man is Hard to Find, she was a catholic all her life which motivated her to write stories and influence them. In A Good Man is Hard to Find, there were many examples of religion revealed in her literature such as the one presented and more examples followed. 2 The statement above is when The Misfit spoke this near the end of the story, just before sending the children’s mother, the baby, and June Star into the woods to be killed. 2 The Misfit tells the grandmother that he had been punished for a crime that he can’t remember, and this is the lesson he has taken away from it.
2 According to the Misfit’s speculation, no matter what the crime, big or small, the consequence will be the same—even if one never remembers what he or she did.
2 This idea of being punished for an unremembered crime refers to the Christian belief in original sin. 2 According to Christian theology, all humans are sinners, from the time they are born, for which they will be eternally punished. 2 But Only through God’s grace can people be saved. 2 In this perception, humans “forget” their crime, yet are punished nonetheless, just as the Misfit states. 2 Even More, the grandmother has her moment of grace when she acknowledges the Misfit as one of her “own children,” recognizing how very similar she is to the Misfit for the first time. 2 She isn’t morally superior, as she has always believed. 2 Instead, both are struggling in their own ways to come to terms with the difficult, often debatable belief of the Christian faith.
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...thoughts and life style O’ Connor lives throughout her story.
The many examples displayed about religion and Christianity plays a role on the reader and gets the student to realize that O’ Connor was trying to “sell” out her particular perception on life in this world as valid.
Works cited Drake, Robert.
5 "'The Bleeding Stinking Mad Shadow of Jesus' in the Fiction of Flannery O'Connor." Comparative Literature Studies 3.2 (1966): 183-196. Rpt. 5 in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Sharon R. Gunton. Vol. 21. Detroit: 6 Gale Research, 1982. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 24 Apr. 2014.
Renascence:
Essays on Values in Literature. 52.4 (Summer 2000): p311. 6 From Literature Resource Center.
"O ' Connors Short Stories.".
N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Apr. 2014.
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