A Good Man Is Hard To Find Symbolism Essay

The Story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flanders O’Connor is full of symbolism if you are willing to dig deep enough. The story is about a family heading to Florida, but their grandma is wary of the trip and would rather go to Tennessee to avoid a potential bandit on the loose. The family decides to ignore their grandmas warning and continues their trip to Florida, which in the end becomes a fatal mistake. On the surface it is just an entertaining story, but symbolism adds more depth to the story. The first big symbol of the story is the grandmother confrontation with the bandit. This symbolizes the never ending battle of good vs evil. The grandmother represents the good in life and she tries to find good in the bandit by saying that “I know you're a good man at heart. I can just look at you and tell”(190). The bandit represents the evil in this situation by showing no remorse towards others and does not hesitate to pull the trigger and “shoot the grandmother not one but three times. She was shot in the chest, which houses the heart”(193). This again proves that the bandit is evil because he shoots the heart, that symbolizes love and kindness. Another symbol shown through the grandmother is when she was shot she was laying back

The character was in prison before this story had begun, and did not understand why. It seemed as if he did not fit in at the prison, and even when he broke out of the prison he still didn't fit in with society. Since there were people always after him. Another symbol from the misfit is his “big black battered hearse-like automobile”(189). The color black itself symbols death, along with the description of hearse-like it becomes an obvious symbol of death which is made even more apparent later in the story. The hearse although was the second symbol of death revealed in the story as they had earlier passed a graveyard that the grandmother had gotten ecstatic