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A Good Man Is Hard To Find Symbolism

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The story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor has many great examples of how a character acts and has to face the consequences. Most importantly, O’Connor’s story grabs the reader’s attention with thought-provoking themes. It mainly talks about the complexities of human nature and the struggle between good and evil characters. The story and its characters revolve around a broken family trying to take a trip and an unexpected event that will change their lives forever. How can we better understand the story’s true meaning through its moral ambiguity and comprehend the characters more? We may ask ourselves many questions about the significance of the title “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” How does O’Connor use symbolism to propose …show more content…

One of the quotes states, “She saw the man’s face twisted close to her own as if he were going to cry, and she murmured, Why you are one of my babies. You are one of my children !” (O’Connor 508). This quote shows that the grandmother is trying to persuade the Misfit to spare her life and not kill her like the rest of the family. She does not understand that she cannot save herself from the Misfit because her faith has already been predetermined. A quote from an essay done on O’Connor’s story states, “This manipulative characteristic is further illustrated throughout the story, such as when she embellishes her recollection of the old plantation with falsehoods, telling the children there is a hidden treasure in the house “craftily, not telling the truth” All this she does only to get what she wants.” (Brandon Pg, 1”) This essay helps us better support our claim that the grandmother is manipulative. Toward the end of the story, she uses her tactic of manipulation to pursue the Misfit not to kill her but ends up with an unexpected result of her getting killed. This event is mainly because the Misfit uses tactics of manipulation, like his partners with him, that kill the family and try to make them believe something better than their fated

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577 Words | 3 Pages

When confronting the Misfit, she has undergone a mental spiral caused by her insistence, against her previous comments, that the Misfit is a good man. She does not seem to believe what she is saying for most of the confrontation, but then “the grandmother’s head cleared for an instant. She saw the man’s face twisted close to her own as if he were going to cry and she murmured, ‘Why you’re one of my babies. You’re one of my own children!’” (211).

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669 Words | 3 Pages

Flannery O’Connor uses her short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” to show the transformation of two character stereotypes which the grandmother and Misfit embody. This story might seem like a road trip gone wrong but, O’Connor also shows that through compassion and grace, people can change. The grandmother’s stereotype is a southern, Christian, overpowering mother who is often judgemental and hypocritical. She is flawed from the start and is ultimately responsible for the family’s fate, insisting on the change of course.

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1371 Words | 6 Pages

In the 1953 short story titled “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor, readers are given a glimpse of what the end of the story may look like through use of foreshadowing, symbolism, and other literary techniques. Although the story looks to be an innocent story of a family who travels to Florida for vacation at the start of it, readers soon find out that the story has a darker twist to it. This family trip turns violent and this gruesome ending can easily represent the violence taking place in America during the time this story was written by O’Connor and even today. The short story starts off with a family of six- parents, a grandmother, and three children-

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1080 Words | 5 Pages

In the story A Good Man is Hard to Find, Flannery O’Connor uses the literary elements of characterization and foreshadowing to ask the reader what they would do in an impossible situation when given the choice between right and wrong and having the opportunity to change. The author wants the reader to see that during hard times people can choose to stick with their religion and faith to attempt to overcome the challenge or they could abandon it and live with the burden of the situation. O’Connor uses Grandmother’s sudden change of character to demonstrate to the readers that people have the ability to change for the better at any point in their lives. At the beginning of the story the Grandmother leaves the children’s mother unnamed because

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1097 Words | 5 Pages

The grotesque psychopathic nature of the characters in Flannery O’Connor’s, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” ironically shows how a good man does not truly exist through the revelation and proclamation of what characteristics a good man possess. In the story The Misfit shows characteristics of a psychopath by escaping prison and killing an innocent family. However, The Misfit isn’t the only character in the short story to show psychopathic tendencies. The grandma also shows some characteristics of a psychopath because she does not care or show remorse for her family who was brutally murdered

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1466 Words | 6 Pages

The short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is revolved around many distortions that the author O’Connor creates to build meaning within the story. The novel presents characters that are characterized through many different symbols that result in an uncanny feeling for the reader. O’Connor’s “place” is the distortion in the story that causes conflict, creating the uncanny feeling in the story. O’Connor’s “place” also represents a different variety of symbols, creating the necessary meaning of the psychological realism. O’Connor utilizes distortion to create meaning in the story within her characters who represent the conflicts within the Catholic Church and dramatizes it with a complicated sense of humor.

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1101 Words | 5 Pages

Now, the reader can see that the grandmother is not a good lady. She is a liar, and selfish. The encounter with the Misfit reveals the grandmother’s true colors. She is trying to save her own life; not once does she tell the Misfit to spare her son’s life or her grandchildren’s lives. In the beginning, she says that “I[the grandmother] wouldn’t take my children in any direction with a criminal like that[the Misfit] in it” (O’Connor, par. 1).

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1123 Words | 5 Pages

In conclusion A Good Man Is Hard To Find by Flannery O’Connor tells the story of family who meets a tragic end while using characterization, foreshadowing, tone, and diction to establish a common theme of social class which is apparent throughout her

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579 Words | 3 Pages

Sometimes, people manipulate others in order to obtain their goal. In the short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, by Flannery O’Conner, portrays a grandmother as a witch, trying to influence others to their will. The manipulative grandmother leads her family to danger, causing the death of everybody, when she decides to join them on their trip to Florida. The grandmother, not wanting to go to Florida for vacation, first tries to convince her son, Bailey, to go to Tennessee instead of Florida, “seizing every chance to change Bailey’s mind” (138).

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946 Words | 4 Pages

Redemption is the act of being saved from acts of evil and sin. The debate of whether human nature is redeemable or not has been one to plaque religious scholars. In Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, this question continues in the interactions between the characters; the most notable being the Grandmother of a rather horrible family and the Misfit, a murderer. While on a road trip, these two characters’ paths collide and lead to a rather unfortunate end where the Grandmother and her family are killed. While many readers believe the ending creates and overall negative tone of the story, some believe that there is a hope for redemption; the story’s author O’Connor who is a devoted Catholic included.

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1016 Words | 5 Pages

In her short story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”, Flannery O’Connor introduces the reader to a world of family issues, danger, and murder. The story was written in 1955 during a period of social and racial unrest in the southern United States. Mostly, the story follows O 'Connor 's basic Southern Gothic writing style. A work that is "cold and dispassionate, as well as almost absurdly stark and violent" (Galloway). While the quote gives major insight into the theme of the story, it does not offer a glimpse into O 'Connor 's real message of the story.

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1393 Words | 6 Pages

In “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” Flannery O’Connor creates a story where the roles of good and evil blend together. In the short story, a family in the rural South gets caught up with a criminal named the Misfit after their wreck and they end up getting murdered. The clash between the grandmother and the Misfit highlights the religious aspects of the story and also O’Connor’s beliefs. Her stylistic traits of violence, distortion, and religion are used to convey a corrupt world that needs salvation. O’Connor’s trait of violence is used throughout to reveal the corrupt and criminal world that emanates the need for salvation.

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544 Words | 3 Pages

However, her son doesn’t listen and decides to still take the trip to Florida with the family and things got crazy for them. A Good Man is Hard to find shows O’Connor’s impressive skills as a writer because of the characterization he used, the structure of the story and the overall plot of the story. The characters were described in great detail. The actions of each

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1743 Words | 7 Pages

Because the Grandmother's intentions still remain unclear of what she really wanted and meant. As well of her point of views of her religion and approach towards it. (The Moment of Grace).The religion of the grandmother is not very clear. She tends to be unpredictable, she doesn’t explains what she reallys means by certain things she says or the way she expresses herself. The grandmother is the center of the family, for she is the grace.

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1254 Words | 6 Pages

In Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” she uses writing skills such as symbolism and imagery to get across her different themes to the reader’s with plenty of room for self-interpretation. Though O’Connor’s work could be defined as cynical, she does an excellent job of writing in the third person with her uncomplicated structure of sentences leaving plenty of room for her character 's thoughts, feelings, and actions to get across the realism of our world. "A Good Man is Hard to Find" is a battle between a grandmother with a rather artificial sense of goodness, and a criminal who symbolizes evil. The grandmother treats goodness as having good manners, and coming from a family of higher class, but at the end of the story comes to

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