Flannery O Connor Criticism

Alex Yenkin

10/12/2015

Dr. Allen

College Writing

Title

Throughout the United States’ history, a rift has existed between the North and the South. In “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor, we receive the perspective of the grandmother, an old southern woman struggling to find people who share her sentiments. However, O’Connor does not mean for the reader to feel empathy for the grandmother. The grandmother frequently makes mistakes like causing the car to crash, or identifying the Misfit rather than keeping silent. O’Connor uses the negative aspects of the grandmother to criticize southern conservatism.

The grandmother embodies the South. The very first line of the story is “The Grandmother didn’t want to go to Florida”, and

it continues to say that she would much rather visit Tennessee (O’Connor 852). There is no explanation for her feelings until later, so the reader’s first impression is that the grandmother simply likes Tennessee, a quite southern state, more than Florida, which by the 1950’s had developed into a state with an economy based on finance and real estate rather than the agriculture on which it used to depend. She is pitted against the rest of the family, who is intent on going to Florida. By this contrast, the grandma becomes representative of the South.
The choice of a grandmother to represent the South is telling of O’Connor’s criticism of the South.

If O’Connor wanted to present the South as strong and righteous, she probably would have chosen a character more like Red Sam to be the main character, but nonetheless the grandmother is the main character and that provides enough criticism by itself. Throughout the bulk of the story, the grandma doesn’t seem much different from any other elderly grandmother. She is stubborn, as evidenced by her unwillingness to admit her wrongdoing after the car accident. She is also forgetful, forgetting what state she is in and the appearance of the Misfit, despite fawning over his image in the newspaper. Because of her relation symbolically to the South as a whole, the reader associates these negative qualities with the South as a

whole.
In addition to these basic criticisms, O’Connor also criticizes the southern idea of “heritage”. To the grandmother, where someone is from or what family they are part of is extremely important. When June Star and John Wesley make fun of Tennessee and Georgia, the grandma responds by saying that in her time, “children were more respectful of their native states and their parents and everything else” (854). The two things that the grandmother deems most worthy of respect of native states and parents. She doesn’t chastise the children for their condescension or obnoxiousness but rather for insulting their heritage. Personality qualities matter less to her than one’s personal background. Ironically, she displays her own condescension when she points out the black child on the side of the road exclaiming, “Wouldn’t that make a picture now?” (854). The juxtaposition of these two statements by the grandmother point out the ridiculousness of caring about heritage to the point of a lack of caring about personal qualities.
The main flaw with the grandmother’s obsession with heritage is exposed by the grandma’s conversation with the Misfit. The grandmother says to him, “I know you’re a good man…I know you must come from nice people!” (860). Her goal in saying this statement is that if he comes from a good home, then he would recognize that he should be a good person. However, this does not come even close to working. The Misfit responds by saying that his parents were the “finest people in the world… God never made a finer woman than my mother and my daddy’s heart was pure gold” (860). The definitiveness with which the Misfit speaks seems to suggest that he recognizes that he is a bad person despite coming from wonderful people. Unlike June Star and John Wesley, who are disrespectful because they insult their heritage, the Misfit respects his upbringing. Even though he has such a positive attitude towards his roots, he still is a bad person.
To further this argument, the narrator describes the Misfit telling Bobby Lee, who is holding a gun, to watch the children, immediately after the Misfit is beaming about his parents (860). The Misfit moves seamlessly from almost bragging about his background to giving orders to his henchman. O’Connor uses this placement of ideas to suggest that there is no correlation between family background and the ‘goodness’ of a person, which contradicts directly with one of the base beliefs of the grandmother, and is a critique of southern beliefs.
Another idea of the grandma that is criticized by O’Connor is her “us and them” philosophy.

In the story, the grandmother frequently divides herself and others primarily between ‘good’ and ‘bad’. This divide is rigid, yet arbitrary at the same time. Every person is, in the grandmother’s mind, either ‘good’ or ‘bad’, but the grandmother’s idea of ‘good’ does not seem to have much to do with conventional ideas of good and evil.. A main example of this is her conversation with Red Sam. The grandma immediately takes a liking to Red Sam and calls him a “good man”, but this is mainly due to him appealing to her conservative nature. During their conversation, Red Sam says, “Everything is getting terrible. I remember the day you could go off and leave your screen door unlatched. Not no more” (856). Red Sam is saying exactly what the grandmother has been thinking previously in the book. They both think the world has gone wrong and believe that the past was better. The implication of this argument is that there are ‘bad’ people who have made the world go wrong, but those who agree with Red Sam and the grandmother are ‘good’. O’Connor is trying to expose the inconsistency and haphazardness of the

grandmother’s