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A good man is hard to find character analysis
A critical article about "a good man is hard to find
A critical article about "a good man is hard to find
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The southern gothic genre criticized the South’s moral blindness. Southern gothic authors write using traits such as macabre situations and disturbed personalities. They also use themes of race and social structure, unrequited love, good vs evil, violence, and being an outsider. Short stories such as “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor, “Possibility of Evil” by Shirley Jackson, and “A Rose For Emily” by William Faulkner exemplify southern gothic traits. The traits of southern gothic literature are portrayed through the characters’ actions.
In “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor, a grandma’s selfishness causes a family vacation to end with the entire family murdered by a known criminal. O’Connor uses traits such
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as moral blindness, theme of being an outsider, and theme of violence. The grandma is a hypocritical, selfish woman who is blind to her own wrong. She looks down on her family for being disrespectful, even though she is disrespectful to people she believes are lower than her. The Misfit, an escaped criminal from Florida, shows the theme of being an outsider. According to The Misfit, his father said he “was a different breed of dog from my brothers and sisters”. The theme of violence is used to show the moral blindness of the grandma. She believed The Misfit was a good man, even though moments later he and his friends killed her and the rest of the family. In “The Possibility of Evil” by Shirley Jackson, a woman named Miss Strangeworth watches over the people in her town and writes secret letters to them of possible “evils”.
Jackson uses traits such as the theme of social structure, moral blindness, and disturbed personalities. The theme of social structure comes from Miss Strangeworth’s sense of superiority. She was once the head of the town and continues to feel a duty to watch over it, this influences her actions. Miss Strangeworth has a moral blindness to her own wrongdoing. While she believes she is helping to keep the town from evil, she’s the one who’s causing the problems. Without her letters, the people of the town would be able to function without worry. Miss Strangeworth’s personality is considered disturbed because she acts in an unusual way than most other people. She’s constantly paranoid of an evil lurking around and believes she’s the only person who’s truly …show more content…
“good”. In “A Rose For Emily” by William Faulkner, Miss Emily is a wealthy woman who lives sheltered from the outside by not leaving her own house for years.
When she finds Homer Barron, a man from the North who likes going out with his friends, she uses arsenic to insure he won’t leave her. Faulkner uses traits such as the theme of unrequited love, theme of social structure, and disturbed personalities. Miss Emily feels unrequited love from Homer. She buys items such as man’s toilet set with his initials on it to symbol their marriage, even though he was described as “not a marrying man”. It’s alluded to Homer not wanting to be with Miss Emily seriously and she can’t take it. Social structure plays a big part, Miss Emily is a woman who’s always been seen as wealthy and at the top of social stature. After her father’s death, when she begins seeing Homer the older ladies in town notice he is of a lower social status and believe “even grief could not cause a real lady to forget noblesse oblige”. Miss Emily has a disturbed personality which is shown by her actions that are revealed at the end. After she killed Homer with arsenic, she laid beside his body, as shown by her hair left on the
pillow. Southern gothic literature shows the South’s moral blindness through the characters in the stories. The traits affect the characters’ actions and the setting. Each of the short stories show traits of southern gothic literature such as macabre situations and themes of social structure and unrequited love. Southern gothic literature left a mark on American Literature and is still popular today.
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.
A murderer was in the family’s presence. The grandmother was begging for grace from the misfit in every way possible. The character of the selfish grandmother, in Flannery O’Connor’s short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” tries to use her manipulative ways to fight the Misfit’s urge to kill her. She is unrelenting in her actions to control those around her. Grandmother portrays a stubborn, devious character who wants what she wants and is going to see that she gets it.
“A Good Man is Hard to Find,” written by Flannery O'Connor tells a story of a dysfunctional family on a roadtrip to Florida to illustrate the theme of self-awareness. The main protagonist in this story is the self-centered Grandmother whose lack of self-awareness is the reason why her family, including herself, are murdered by The Misfit (the Floridian convict). Throughout the story, the Grandmother considers herself as a good woman; however, it is through dialogue that reveals her true self. In reality, she is selfish, manipulative, inconsiderate, and dishonest. No matter how much she attempts to manipulate others into thinking she is full of integrity and a good example to follow, her actions contradict everything she wants people to believe.
“A Good Man is Hard to Find” written by Flannery O’Connor is a short story about a family who is taking a trip to Florida and is killed by the Misfit and his crew after an accident. As the story begins, the grandmother is seen by the reader as the protagonist, but as the story progresses the grandmother shows her true colors and is seen as the antagonist. The grandmother was a manipulative, dishonest and selfish person who lead herself and her family to their death. The fact that this woman was willing to use manipulation to get what she wants; she shows her self-interest and her little concern for anyone else but herself throughout the short story. The grandmother is the cause of the accident that lead to her family’s death. She is the one who had the idea to go to the plantation, which she lies about in order to go, takes the family down the wrong trail and startles the cat who jumps on Bailey who is driving which causes the accident. The grandmother in O’Connor’s story takes on the monstrous characteristics of manipulation, dishonesty, selfishness, and being a lady so that she can make life go the exact way she wants it.
It has very complex characters to which expose the society on how it is. All stories in this genre are considered fictional, but always had a something to do with supernatural or something haunting. This includes themes such as death, darkness, and madness (Characteristics of the Genre 1). The SGL is surrounded by the themes that are thought to be gothic, which is under the interpretation of being wild. This type of writing became very popular when writers such as Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne, started to really bring this genre novels to readers. Though after these writers had passed some new and different writers came into view. These 3 popular Southern Gothic Literature writers and their stories were “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and “Good Country People” by Flannery O’Connor, and “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner. It is clearly seen throughout all the
After being reclusive for decades, Miss Emily dies in her dusty house at age 74 (305). After her burial, they force entry into the “room in that region above the stairs which no one had seen in forty years” (306). They find the “bridal suite” and remains of Homer laying “in the attitude of embrace” along with evidence that Miss Emily had also been in that bed with him (306). Readers believe that Emily kills Homer with the arsenic. In her mind, she is not going to allow him to leave her. She prefers to have him dead in her house, rather than gone
Violence, Humanity, Grace. These are three reoccurring themes throughout Flannery O’Connors short stories. As one looks at O’Connor’s stories one starts to see a pattern, or a similarity between each of the stories. One might describe it as “getting to know a personality” (Mays 419). As we focus on three stories, A Good Man is Hard to Find, Everything That Rises Must Converge, and “Good Country People”, by American fiction writer Flannery O’Connor we start to see distinct characteristics. O’Connor’s stories are set in the deep south where racism is often times prevalent. O’Connor’s characters often find themselves in difficult situations which can even be tragic. Most of her stories start out on a happier
In Flannery O’Conner’s, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” the story begins with the family going on a road trip to Florida. The Grandmother who is very critical, selfish, judgmental, forgetful, and dishonest and almost enjoys manipulating others to get her way. The Grandmother holds herself in very high regard and
However, not all characteristics of the characters are bad; it is that a mixture of good and bad is found in most of the characters. Two authors who express the Southern Gothic writing style are William Faulkner, who wrote “A Rose for Emily,” and Flanner O Conner, the author of “Good Country People” and “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” A great example of this type of writing is “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O' Conner. It is a story about a family trip gone that has turned out bad, a selfish grandma causes her entire family to be stranded after the car crashes and is put into a ditch.
Southern literature, specifically southern Gothic literature, is distinct with its perceptions and observations on the American South. Death, mental illness, and oppression are just some of the common themes found in Southern Gothic literature, making it quite different from other American literary texts. Two celebrated authors, Flannery O’Connor and William Faulkner, put the themes of the Gothic South to great use. Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man Is Hard to Find, which tells about the quietus of a Southern family at the hands of a killer, and William Faulkner’s A Rose for Emily, an elderly woman found to have her lover’s body rotting in the bedroom, are both commendable examples and show the antiquated views on southern culture and expectations. A Good Man Is Hard to Find and A Rose for Emily share many views on the brainwashed mindsets of the south, southern archetypes, and morbid outcomes.
She could not handle it. The stress began to take a toll on her not only mentally but physically. “She was sick for a long time. When we saw her again, her hair was cut short, making her look like a girl with vague resemblance to those angels in colored church windows, sort of tragic and serene (Faulkner).” This loneliness was changing her. “When we next saw Miss Emily, she had grown fat and her hair was turning gray (Faulkner).” She began changing even more as time passed on and the loneness grew stronger. We can only imagine the way she felt. Losing a father, then losing the only man she had ever loved. She held on tight to Homer even after he was gone. She held onto love even though it was gone. The townspeople pitied her when they found Homer’s body locked away in the room and when they saw the hair resting on the imprint of a head on the pillow beside him. She found love and compassion in a man that she had never found in her father. Everyone pitied Emily, but she never knew the feeling of truly being loved. Her dad showed a deep cruelty towards her no compassion or fatherly love. Her mother was never spoken of so we assume she was not around. Never once did we hear of a brother or sister, so no love of a sibling. She never once had a friend, a husband, or any kids. She never experienced any of the things that a woman strives for in life. Every woman should express sympathy for her in the most extreme way. [Faulkner himself sheds interesting
At the beginning of the story when her father died, it was mentioned that “[Emily] told [the ladies in town] that her father was not dead. She did that for three days, with the ministers calling on her, and the doctors, trying to persuade her to let them dispose of the body” (626). Faulkner reveals Emily’s dependency on her father through the death of her father. As shown in this part of the story, Emily was very attached to her father and was not able to accept that fact that he was no longer around. She couldn’t let go of the only man that loved her and had been with her for all those years. While this may seem like a normal reaction for any person who has ever lost a loved one, Faulkner emphasizes Emily’s dependence and attachment even further through Homer Barron. After her father’s death, Emily met a man name Homer, whom she fell in love with. While Homer showed interest in Emily at the beginning he became uninterested later on. “Homer himself had remarked—he liked men” (627) which had caused Emily to become devastated and desperate. In order to keep Homer by her side, Emily decided to poison Homer and keep him in a bedroom in her home. It was clear that she was overly attached to Homer and was not able to lose another man that she
Southern Gothic explored criticism and many different traits of the South. The traits used in Southern Gothic are Moral Blindness, Disturbed Personalities, Macabre, Social Structure and there are a few others. The short stories we read provided examples of Southern Gothic writing. “A Good Man is Hard To Find”, “The Possibility of Evil”, and“A Rose For Emily” were stupendous examples of Southern Gothic. Throughout the stories the characters portrayed the traits that are used in Southern Gothic.
In the beginning of Jackson’s story, Miss Strangeworth, the protagonist, is introduced as a kind old woman, “She knew everyone in town, of course; she was fond of telling strangers – tourists who sometimes passed through the town and stopped to admire Miss Strangeworth’s roses…” (Jackson 1). Although this may be true, later in the story we start to see a glimmer of her contrasting character trait, her judgementality, “Miss Strangeworth noticed that Miss Chandler had not taken much trouble with her hair this morning, and sighed” (3). After reading this, the reader begins to realize the complexity of the character, since her contrasting traits create her as a real life person, who is more than just a kind old woman. Throughout the story, these traits are consistent and when the reader learns about the letters that she
The grandmother is a central character to the story because her actions, and reactions, are the catalyst for a grim ending. In Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” the character of the grandmother is selfish, critical,