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Literary analysis of flannery o'conner, a good man is hard to find
Literary analysis on A good man is hard to find by flannery o'connor
Literary analysis of flannery o'conner, a good man is hard to find
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The Dysfunctional: Psychoanalysis of Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” Murder of women, children, and even a baby is a harsh image used by Flannery O’Connor in “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” The imagery is an effective literary device used to convey ironic tragedy, the struggle of female characters, and the family unit. The story follows a family on a trip to Florida when their journey, interrupted by an ill-fated detour resulting in a car wreck, ends in murder after they cross paths with an escaped convict. Family dysfunction, female struggles, and tragedy are common themes in the stories written by Flannery O’Connor, and her characters often referred to as grotesque. In her story “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” she displays the relationships between a dependant mother and a resentful indifferent son, between an impotent grandmother and her insolent grandchildren, and the family’s interaction with strangers to promote the idea of shared human struggles with the meaninglessness of self-absorption and the dangers of impetuous behavior. Flannery O’Connor, was born Mary Flannery O’Connor in 1925 in Savannah Georgia. She graduated from Women's College of Georgia in 1945, and received her master’s degree from Iowa State University in 1947. According to the Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, she suffered from lupus, and before dying in 1964, she spent the last ten years of her life as an invalid writing and raising peacocks on her mother’s farm in Georgia. Interestingly, the characters in her stories are often referred to as grotesque, however, as the Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia states, “[h]er characters, although often deformed in both body and spirit, are impelled toward redemption,” (Columbia Electronic Encycl... ... middle of paper ... ...13. Columbia University Press. Web. April 2014. HCC Database: Academic Search Complete. Desmond, John. Flannery O’Connor’s Misfit and the Mystery of Evil. Renascence. Marquette University. Winter2004, Vol. 56 Issue 2, p129-137. 9p. Web. Flora, Joseph M. Two on Flannery O'Conner. The Southern Literary Journal, Volume 37, Number 1, Published by The University of North Carolina Press, Fall 2004, pp.179-181. Article. Project Muse. Mitchell, Mark T. The Melancholy Tyrant: Democracy and Tyranny in Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”. Perspectives on Political Science. Fall 2005, Vol. 34 Issue 4, p211-216. 6p. Article. Web. O’Connor, Flannery. “A Good Man is Hard to Find”. Eds. John Schilb, and John Clifford. "Chapter 13 Doing Justice" Making Literature Matter: An Anthology for Readers and Writers. 5th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2012. p1283-1296. Print.
Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man Is Hard to Find is one of the most well-known short stories in American history. A Good Man Is Hard to Find is a disturbing short story that exemplifies grace in extremity as well as the threat of an intruder. The story tells of an elderly grandmother and her family who embark on a road trip to Florida. The grandmother is a stubborn old woman with a low sense of morality. While on the trip, the grandmother convinces her son to take a detour which results in a broken down car and an encounter with a convicted fugitive, The Misfit. Although the grandmother pleads for mercy, The Misfit kills off the rest of her family. Through the grace she finds in her extreme circumstance, the grandmother calls The Misfit her own and implores him to spare her life. The Misfit does not oblige her and states after her death, “She would have been a good woman if it had been someone to shoot her every day of her life.” Through Flannery O’Connor’s disturbing and shocking display of the grandmother’s demise, she gives the reader a sense of the threatening power of an intruder and the idea of extreme situations bringing about a state of grace. The reason for such a powerful work may have resulted from Flannery O’Connor’s religious upbringing as well as the state of the nation at the time.
"A Good Man is Hard to Find presents a masterful portrait of a woman who creates a self and a world through language." At least that is what Mary Jane Shenck thinks of the Flannery O'Connor story. Several different people have several different views of this controversial and climatic work of O'Connor's. In this paper I will take a look at these different views of different situations and characters in this book.
In her well-known short story, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” Flannery O’Connor skillfully describes the difficulty of finding a morally upright human being, whether it is a man or a woman. No one is perfect, everyone has inadequacies and shortcomings, and she presents this cleverly in her story. She is able to support this view of mankind through her characters. They are self-centered, egotistical human beings who can be judged by their words and actions. This is especially true of the protagonist (the grandmother) and the antagonist (the Misfit). The grandmother tries to portray herself as a virtuous woman, but in the end O’Connor shows that her actions are always self-serving and that morally, she is not that different from the Misfit.
Throughout all of Flannery O’Connor’s work, there are three dominant themes that show themselves: Christianity, irony, and grotesqueness. In nearly every story of hers, O’Connor is able to make a tragic story very grotesque in the way that she describes the events and characters of her story. [add more to introduction]
She was a writer who suffered from Lupus. Her father died of the same illness when she was thirteen. Her Catholic beliefs reflected in her work, as well as the implementation of violence and darkness ironically used in her short stories. The titles in the stories give the readers an idea that the stories are the opposite of what the titles really state. She uses metaphors and similes to describe the characters and the settings of the stories. Each story relates to the darkness of the characters: people with racial prejudice, ignorance, and evil. Each story ends in a tragedy. The use of irony allows her to transport a meaning to each story that is not easy for readers to understand.
Flannery O’ Connor’s story: “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is the tale of a vacation gone wrong. The tone of this story is set to be one irony. The story is filled with grotesque but meaningful irony. I this analysis I will guide you through the clues provided by the author, which in the end climax to the following lesson: “A Good Man” is not shown good by outward appearance, language, thinking, but by a life full of “good” actions.
Muller, Gilbert H., Nightmares and Visions: Flannery O'Connor and the Catholic Grotesque, Athens, GA, University of Georgia Press, 1972.
O’Connor, Flannery. “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” Flannery O’Connor: Collected Works. New York, NY: The Library of America, 1988. 137-153.
Flannery O’Connor’s short story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” is about the misfortunes a family experiences while embarking on a vacation, but it goes further to depict the divergence between the superficial conflict in everyday life and the true battles in life threatening situations. O’Connor’s use of tone, syntax, and diction helps to develop the characters and illustrate the struggle of good versus evil, shedding light on the harsh reality of the prevalence and depth of real evil.
The impact of an author’s life on their writing is vast. Many people do not see the large influence of an author’s childhood on their writings, but it plays a major role. The life of Flannery O’Connor is no exception to this. The great Catholic lifestyle of her parents helped persuade her writing of, “A Good Man is Hard to Find.”
Dowell, Bob. “The Moment of Grace in the Fiction of Flanner O’Connor”. College English. 27.3
Scott, Neil. Flannery O'Connor: An Annotated Reference Guide to Criticism. London, UK: Timberlane Books, 2002. Print. 10 March. 2014
Web. . Margaret, Whitt. Understanding Flannery O’Connor . Ebook.
Asals, Frederick. Flannery O'Connor : The Imagination of Extremity. University of Georgia Press; Reissue edition. Athens, Georgia, 2007.
Whitt, Margaret. Understanding Flannery O’Connor. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1995. 47-48, 78. Print.