Theme Of Pride In A Good Man Is Hard To Find

Pride is encouraged in some and hated in others. Pride in elderly people is excused because they are considered wise. In “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor, the grandmother’s pride . The grandmother enters the story trying and failing to take control of the choice of where the family should go on vacation. She is very concerned about appearances in public but allows herself to be rude in private. The grandmother manipulates those around her to get what she wants. The Misfit does not know her or much about her, but he understands her character. The grandmother assumes everyone is inferior to her.
The grandmother believes others are right only if they agree with her. Her first reason for avoiding Florida is to avoid the

She may not want to go to Florida, but she couldn’t pass up a good opportunity to talk. “She sat in the middle of the back seat” with a child on either side and talked about the scenery to the children until they stopped listening. Then she asked for the baby and bounced him on her knee and “told him about the things they were passing” (354). The grandmother doesn’t care that the rest of the car wants her to be quiet- she can’t stand the silence or for the silence to be filled with anything but her voice. This is considered very rude. Not once does she ask if they would like her to stop talking, nor does she get the hint when her family members don’t respond when she speaks to them. It is normally assumed that when one does not respond it is because they don’t want to. In public, the grandmother lets others talk. She is only rude when it doesn’t harm her appearances. She “asked” (357) for red Sammy’s opinion, something she did not do once with her family. When she was trying to change Bailey’s mind about the trip she said they “ought to take them somewhere else for a change” (352). Ought is a poor choice of words to use in an argument. Ought implies a moral obligation: you ought to take your child to the dentist, you ought to help the poor, you ought to you ought to let your mother live with you so she doesn’t die lonely in a nursing home. If something ought to be done, it is generally not something you’d like to do, just like the grandmother’s son clearly did not want his mother to live with him. Ought in this context disallows for alternate opinions. Bailey could not argue against grandma because ought was used to point out an obligation he