“A Good Man Is Hard to Find”: A Plot Explicative “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” is a fictional short story first published in 1953 by Flannery O’Connor. The story follows a simple chronological structure, and the plot line is straightforward enough for readers to follow, but not too mundane that they lose interest. While there are many equivalent characters in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” and the story isn't long enough to extensively develop any of these characters, the best choice for the protagonist is the grandmother. She is found in much of the dialogue, and her stubborn and persuasive personality influences many of the events. For example, the very first sentence is “The grandmother didn't want to go to Florida.” The antagonists of the …show more content…
plot are The Misfit, the negative energy caused by bickering within the family, and the sense of mistrust that has enveloped a society over time. In his conversation with the grandmother, Red Sam bemoans: “ ‘Everything is getting terrible. I remember the day you could go off and leave your screen door unlatched. Not no more.’ ” The structure of “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” is a simple chronological structure.
Occasionally, the grandmother will tell stories from her past, but otherwise the timeline is straightforward and easy to follow. The story can be divided into four main parts: the short conversations in Bailey’s house, the time spent in the car, the family's lunch at Red Sam’s, and the car wreck until the end. Most action takes place in the fourth part, near the end of the story. The conversation between the grandmother and The Misfit is especially notable; it reiterates the grandmother’s stubborn and controlling personality and exposes the reader into the mysteriously diabolical demeanor of The Misfit. O’Connor uses explicit detail in her writing to capture the image of the Deep South in a time of racial equality and frustration. The grandmother, seeing a black boy standing in the door of a shack, comments “ ‘He probably didn't have any [pants]. Little niggers in the country don't have things like we do. If I could paint, I'd paint that picture.’ ” O’Connor indeed paints us a picture—a verbal picture. Her intricate details about Georgia’s countryside and the southern way of life elicit images so vivid that readers will feel like a part of the story. She writes, “The brilliant red clay banks slightly streaked with purple; and the various crops that made rows of green lace-work on the ground.” Picturesque descriptions like this one, along with dirt roads and venues like The Tower, …show more content…
make for a captivating read. The conflict in this fast-paced tale is between the family and The Misfit.
However, the parallels go much further. The family represents the average American family chasing the average American Dream; The Misfit and his gang represent the growing hostility of crime threatening those families. Growing paranoia conflicts with families’ quality of life. O’Connor uses several elements of mystery and suspense to captivate her audience. The grandmother’s suspended thought prior to the wreck is a true cliff hanger. The overall sense emanated about The Misfit is a mystery in itself. The story first mentions him in the first paragraph with the grandmother rumoring, “ ‘Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is alone from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida and you read here what it says he did to these people.’ ” This statement, along with many other references throughout the story, foreshadows the appearance of the Misfit at the end of the story. In the business of capturing and holding readers’ attention, “A Good Man Is Hard
to Find” changes plot abruptly near the end. The car accident is completely unexpected, and The Misfit’s arrival afterward is jaw-dropping. O’Connor brings back a character the reader has only heard of indirectly, by means of chance. Questions about The Misfit are answered directly by the man himself. The reader learns of his two sidekicks and his cool, yet intimidating personality. The manner in which the criminals murder the family off-stage elicits suspense and mystery. The climax comes at the end, when he shoots the last family member, the grandmother, and abandons the scene. O’Connor’s decisions about the plot and structure to “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” make for an artistically unified piece of literature. This story is a great read.
As I read Flannery O’Connor’s short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, I find myself being completely consumed by the rich tale that the author weaves; a tragic and ironic tale that concisely and precisely utilizes irony and foreshadowing with expert skill. As the story progresses, it is readily apparent that the story will end in a tragic and predictable state due to the devices which O’Connor expertly employs and thusly, I find that I cannot stop reading it; the plot grows thicker with every sentence and by doing so, the characters within the story are infinitely real in my mind’s eye. As I consider these factors, the story focuses on two main characters; that of the grandmother, who comes across as self-centered and self-serving and The Misfit, a man, who quite ingeniously, also appears to be self-centered and self-serving. It is the story behind the grandmother, however, that evidence appears to demonstrate the extreme differences between her superficial self and the true character of her persona; as the story unfolds, and proof of my thought process becomes apparently clear.
The narrator starts the story giving background information about the grandmother and her son, Bailey. The narrator explains that the "grandmother didn't want to go to Florida" (320). Although a major conflict could result from her dislike of the family's choice of vacation spots, it does not. When the grandmother first speaks she asks Bailey to read a newspaper article that she has found. She attempts to change his mind about not going to Florida, by saying, "Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida and you read here what it says he did to these people..." (320). Bailey does not ...
The conversations between The Misfit and the Grandmother are quite interesting. When she is face-to-face with him and her death is imminent, she is the least willing of the family to accept it. Only the grandmother attempts to talk her way out of the situation even though the rest of her family lies assassinated in the woods behind her. In a last effort to escape with her life, she offers The Misfit all the money she has. He responds, “‘Lady,’ The Misfit said, looking beyond her far into the woods, ‘there never was a body that give the undertaker a tip'” (O’Connor 30).
The Misfit; is the epitome of the Godless man in a Godless society. He is a killer who is also raised without spirituality as the old woman's children. He is the representative of evil.
After the accident that the grandmother had unintentionally caused by manipulating the image of a nonexistent house into her family’s head, they run into the Misfit. No one else in the family knew who he was or anything about him. They all thought someone had come to their rescue and was going to fix the car, but nothing gets over on the grandmother. Blatantly putting the whole family in danger she blurts out, “’You’re the Misfit!’…’Yes’m…but it would have been better for all of you, lady, if you hadn’t of reckernized me’” (192). At this point in time, she knows that she is going to die, trying to save herself and not caring about the rest of her family clearly as she has witnessed the Misfit’s goons kill off her whole family, she tries to manipulate him. She brings up that he is a “good man at heart” (192) and telling him if he “would pray…Jesus would help” (194). That was just simply her trying to plea for her life, but when she realized she was getting nowhere her “head cleared for an instant” (196), she knew this was an opportunity to try and manipulate the Misfit into letting her go, to make him feel like he didn’t have to be a killer anymore, to comfort him “she reached out and touched him on the shoulder” (196). The Misfit jolted away and shot her three times in the chest because he saw through her manipulative ways which if clear when he
Flannery O’Connor is a master of the ironic, the twisted, and the real. Life is filled with tragic irony, and she perfectly orchestrates situations which demonstrate this to the fullest extent. A Good Man is Hard to Find is an excellent example of the mangled viewpoint which makes her work as compelling and striking as it is.
Elmore Leonard once said “I don’t judge in my books. I don’t have the antagonist get shot or the protagonist win. It’s just how it comes out. I’m just telling a story.” “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”, written by Flannery O'Connor, is one of the most interesting stories that we have read in this class. The protagonist in this story is the grandmother and the antagonist is The Misfit. In any other short story, the protagonist and the antagonist would not have much in common, but that is not the case in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”. The three major similarities between the grandmother and The Misfit is that they are both the oldest one in their groups, they are both hypocrites, and they both are missing important spiritual relationships.
A story without style is like a man without personality: useless and boring. However, Flannery O’Connor incorporates various different styles in her narratives. Dark humor, irony, and symbolism are perhaps the utmost powerful and common styles in her writing. From “Revelation” and “Good Country People” to “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” all of O’Connor’s stories consist of different styles in writing.
By analyzing, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and “Everything that Rises Must Converge,” these two themes jump out at the reader. Growing up in the mid-1920’s in Georgia was a huge influence on O’Connor. Less than a decade before her birth, Georgia was much different than it was at her birth. Slaves labored tirelessly on their master’s plantations and were indeed a facet of everyday life. However, as the Civil War ended and Reconstruction began, slaves were not easily assimilated into Southern culture.
O’Connor, Flannery. "A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” The Story and Its Writer. Charters, Ann. Compact 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/ST. Martin's, 2011. 676-687. Print.
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.
Understanding a story requires understanding the characters and how they feel. Misfit, the character from “ A good man is hard to find,” is a man who had be...
O'Connor, Flannery. "A Good Man Is Hard to Find." The Story and Its Writer An Introduction to Short Fiction. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford / St. Martin's, 2011. 1042-053. Print.
In “A Good Man is Hard to Find” O’Connor uses literary devices such as conflicts, imagery, simile, foreshadowing, and irony to develop her eccentric characters. Throughout “A Good Man is Hard to Find” O’Connor uses all of the previously mentioned literary devices to describe her characters in great detail. The grandmothers character
In “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” the readers are lead to believe that the Grandmother is a good Southern woman who lives her life by God’s grace, and the Misfit is a horrendous, murderous, mad man that believes in nothing. Although these first impressions seem spot on at a first glance, the actual characteristics and traits of these characters are far more complex. The Grandmother and Misfit have a very intriguing conversation before he murders her, but in the short time before her death, the readers see the grandmothers need for redemption and how the murderous Misfit gave her the redemption she so desperately needed,