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A Good Man Is Hard To Find Salvation Essay

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Through the violence of her short story, Flannery O’ Conner depicts grace and salvation. Flannery O’Conner was a southern rooted writer deeply connected to her Roman Catholic faith and with the use of spiritually conflicted characters she depicted human mortality and the flaws of humanity in her short story, “A Good Man Is Hard To Find.” In this story, O’Connor shares her views of mankind as creatures who have fallen from God’s grace and their journey to rediscover it. The characters in the story face an abrupt dissent into violence. The story is by design meant to shock the reader out of spiritual displacement leaving them to debate the classic Christian mysteries; good versus evil and God’s Grace. The beginning of the story gives the reader a view of the family as disconnected and unappealing. Each member does not respect one another providing the reader with a sense of dissension. This is O’Connor’s attempt to illustrate the dissension of the family and how far from God’s grace they have strayed. The characters will later face their own frugality and become aware that life is finite. Prunty states, “The people who populate O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" are flat yet exaggerated individuals facing their own meanness and mortality.” The immediate focus of the story turns to the grandmother who …show more content…

(McDermott) O’Connor reveals that the Misfit has had a hard life and has never truly fit in. His father was a hard man and new he was different. He bounced from job to job but nothing never settled for one until he was sent to prison. He could not remember what it was for. In the penitentiary, the Misfit was visited by a “head doctor” who said he killed his father. He objected to this notion. Although he his grotesque character the reader can sympathize with

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O'Connor makes a record out of the grandma versus the Misfit, or great versus insidious. This short story is about a family going to Florida, who goes through a turn of events, which just inspirations them to get in an incident, and be found by the Misfit. This experience kept them from routinely arriving Florida, in light of the way that the Misfit keeps coming into their lives. Using symbolism, O'Connor makes a story with much significance to the grandma, nature, sky, woods, the old house and automobiles to portray the steady battle among great and malice. In "A Good Man is Hard to Find" the grandmother is an essential character that symbolizes a savior.

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Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” was published in 1955. O’Connor was also known for her novel The Violent Bear it Away (published in 1960) and her collection of short stories Everything That Rises Must Converge (published in 1964). The author often used violence and greed to show how she saw humanity that was without God. She liked to write about pettiness and vanity in the rural south, both of which play large parts in “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” This particular piece of work is about a family who goes on a road trip that takes an unexpected turn when they cross paths with a murderer and his henchmen.

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At the end of ¨A Good Man is Hard to Find” there is the strange scene where the Grandmother says to the Misfit, “Why you're one of my babies. You're one of my own children!” (O'Connor 30) and then she reaches out and touches him. He “sprang as if a snake had bitten him and shot her three times through the chest.

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