Irony And Foreshadowing In A Good Man Is Hard To Find

Irony and Foreshadowing
It is sometimes problematic for readers to view O’Connor as a religious writer since none of her characters seem “good.” Her narratives and short stories seem to bring readers to the instant where a “bad” character is ready to transform, but the reader never sees the results. O’Connor considered herself a writer with “Christian concerns” and showed readers through her stories and her vision of a world where what is routinely thought of as improvement is actually the opposite. She proves humankind’s need for the cryptic grace of God, a gift that is offered swiftly in normal settings. Violence is a means to awaken characters to their own moral insufficiency, to take away their qualities so that there is nothing left but a humiliated personality ready to accept redemption.

O’Connor had a gift for being able to capture the ordinary speech patterns of the occupants of the South, and her ironic humor is incomparable.

The story in A Good Man Is Hard to Find demonstrates her loftier use of symbolism. Some of her irony was even placed in names of cities “Outside of Toombsboro she woke up and recalled an old plantation…” (O’Connor 440). Descriptions of setting in O’Connor’s stories are nearly always symbolic as well. “They passed a large cotton field with five or six graves fenced in the middle of it, like a small island” (O’Connor 438). These graves are foreshadowing and symbolic for the emanate death of the five or six family members. The titles of the stories that Flannery O’Connor write are nearly always ironic, as are the names of many characters and settings. The title A Good Man Is Hard to Find ironically foreshadows the question of whether or not there is truly good men in the

world.
The foreshadowing is used to draw the reader to not only the end of the story but the theme that O’Connor has implied. While driving down the highway
The grandmother had on a navy blue straw sailor hat with a bunch of white violets on the brim and a navy blue dress with a small white dot in the print. Her collars and cuffs were white organdy trimmed with lace and at her neckline she had pinned a purple spray of cloth violets containing a sachet. In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady (O’Connor 437).
O’Connor uses foreshadowing all throughout her stories. When the family is making their journey down to Florida they spot signs up and down the highway. One sign said “THE FAT BOY WITH THE HAPPY LAUGH” (O’Connor 439). This foreshadows one of the misfit’s helpers which June star said “‘He reminds me of a pig.’ The fat boy blushed and laughed” (O’Connor 447).
There are many ironic scenes with in O’Connor’s short story. The obvious and main ironic scene is when the family happens run into the Misfit and his two helpers. Throughout the story there are hinted ironic scenes. When the grandmother asks her grandchildren “what would you do if this fellow, The Misfit, caught you?” (O’Connor 497). The irony of this conversation between the grandmother and grandchildren is that in the end the family does end up getting caught by The Misfit.
O’Connor became “the first great modern writer from the South.” Ironic humor, a rich use of symbolism and religious allegory, and characters that may falter but are always human are perhaps what continue to make O’Connor a favorite among readers. The short story A Good Man Is Hard to Find is a wonderful example of Flannery O’Connor’s fantastic use of irony and foreshadowing.