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A Good Man Is Hard To Find Character Analysis

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Oct 27, 2015 Change of the Misfit There are two main characters in one of Flannery O’Connor’s stories “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”. These characters are the grandmother and the Misfit. It is an interesting story that tells us about the encounter of the Misfit with the grandmother. O’Connor described grandmother as highly religious Christian who is a manipulator with selfish ambitions. The Misfit is also a Christian, a very good man who is now a murderer and a destroyer. Some critics argue that, the Misfit has committed so many crimes and can never change but all these crimes mark the transition into his new life. The Misfit will change after his encounter with the grandmother. The question as to whether the Misfit will change is debatable .It is obvious that he is a killer but he is the way he is because he has been forced to be like that. They accused him for killing his father. He says “I call myself the Misfit, he said, because I can’t make what all I done wrong fit what all I gone through in punishment” (432). It is painful to be punished for crime you did not commit. This makes him violent and a killer to revenge. She clearly points out that “… [I]n my own stories I found that violence is strangely capable of returning my characters to reality and preparing them to accept the moment of grace ...” (O’Connor 460). We …show more content…

No one denies the fact that the Misfit is a murderer. Like Saul in the Bible, God changed his name to Paul. Saul, before he become Paul was torturing and killing all Christians. The Bible tells us that on his way to Damascus to prosecute Christians, Jesus met him and “he fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him Saul, Saul why do you persecute me?”(New International Version Acts 9:4-5). This marked the moment of grace for Saul to become “Apostle Paul”. If God in His own wisdom can change Saul’s name to Paul, then the He can also change the

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Hannery O’ Connor’s short story is about a Misfit that has a conflict in his life which lead him into making bad decisions in the future that harm him. In “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, O’ Connor uses symbolic archetypes by using the grandmother as a symbol of love and care and also uses the Misfit as a symbol of violence and death. The situational archetype used is when the Misfit takes vengeance on people that come his way. This is because of self-petty. The setting archetype used in the short story takes place in the dirt road where all the violence happened.

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Saul and Paul: A Powerful Team Servant; prisoner; pioneer; shepherd; miracle, and leader, he led on of the most influential lives in Christian history. Christ changed him, and turned his life completely around. Before his conversion, he modeled the Jew of all Jews: a law-abiding, law-worshiping, law-enforcing apprentice of the Pharisees, the sworn enemy of the Christians. What, or who, caused such a dramatic change? How did his conversion so immensely affect Christian history?

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The Misfit and his acquaintances were considered wolves dressed in sheep’s clothing because they portrayed themselves as good, but actually, they are evil individuals. The Misfit and his acquaintances portrayed themselves as good people by not just killing them first. Beware

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Trust and cruelty play important roles in both stories as well. In “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, the grandmother talks of praying to Jesus with the expectation that she can convince The Misfit to spare her life by appealing to his religious sense. However, it becomes evident that The Misfit has probably thought about Jesus more earnestly than she has. The Misfit’s seriousness about religious issues made him a misfit and a criminal accordant to Galileo. The Misfit's uncertainty in Jesus leads him to think that there is no real right or wrong, and no ultimate point to

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For example, when he explains why he calls himself “The Misfit”, “…because I can’t make what all I done wrong fit what all I gone through in punishment” (366). He claims that he did not kill his father. If he truly did not kill his father why would he kills innocent people? He acts like a victim in the whole conversation with the grandma. He says that “..if I had of been there I would of known

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He feeds on doing evil and think it is right. He rejects Jesus and states that Jesus was wrong to ever raised the dead and because of that he threw everything off balance. The misfit has not thrown everything away “to follow Christ,” but instead he is “enjoying the few minutes” he has left by killing and robbing

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In the short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, the author, Flannery O'Connor, demonstrates how a family vacation can quickly face a violent end, caused by a criminal known as “The Misfit.” Looking at the short story through a feminist point of view, one can quickly gather that O’Connor uses the traditional gender roles right from the beginning of the story. As reading the title, it automatically suggests the men in this short story are untrustworthy, not prevalent, and dangerous. With that being said, the female characters in this story are viewed in the eyes of how a woman should act.

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I recognized you at once” which caused the Misfit to say, “Yes’m. But it would have been better for all of you, lady, if you hadn’t reckernized me.” This causes her own son to whisper horrible things about her. After the announcement of this serial killer, the grandmother looks out for herself by asking the Misfit, “You wouldn’t shoot a lady, would you” (Kelly 362)? This shows her carelessness about everybody except her well-being.

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O’Connor has many characters in her stories that are damaged, delusional or broken. In “A Good Man,” The Misfit is a broken character. He does not know the difference from right and wrong because his father was never punished for the things he did wrong and he justifies his wrongdoing with having a good reason for doing it. The Misfit tells the grandmother that his father “never got in trouble with the Authorities” and had a “knack of handling them"(O’Connor “Good” 478).

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Even though human nature is flawed within Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”, there is a chance for redemption near the story’s ending. In “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, the Grandmother has an epiphany with the Misfit that increases her chance for redemption. Throughout the entire story, the Grandmother is known for her selfish thinking and her one-track mind that, like many humans, is only focused on what she would like to do. Redemption for

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The balance of what is good and what is bad is a rather controversial topic in the story "A Good Man is Hard to Find". Most notably, the characteristics of both the Grandmother and the Misfit. The Misfit portrays an immoral personality and seems to be the evil in the story while the grandmother is the innocent lady seeking to be the good in this story. However, the religious virtues effect both personas and in itself draws the line around them mutually as sinners. Both characters have a particular relationship with Jesus, a physical crisis crossed with a spiritual crisis and different conceptions of reality; thus, revealing how the portrayal of these characters are not what may seem.

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The misfit gains awareness of human morals when he kills the grandmother and he says, "She would have been a good woman...if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life" (O 'Connor 1020), he then realized that she wasn 't all that good. O 'Connor did a good job of interpreting the grandmother as a way to put away the values of the old Southern America; she also interprets the Misfit as a type of common man who is defiantly not perfect which can a realistic version of the new Southern America. In "A Good Man is Hard to Find", the irritating grandmother cares more about matters such as her appearance and manners, she dressed her best for the car ride and the reason for her doing this is so that "In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would at once know that she was a lady." (O 'Connor 1010). The grandmother is a very selfish woman, the first thing she said to the Misfit is "You wouldn 't shoot a lady, would you?"

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Prior to conversion, his name was Saul, the main character in this sermon, became one of the most empowered apostle ever existed or the astute radical, devoted man of God. Biographically, we can verify that he was a single man, highly educated, spoke several languages, and came from a wealthy middle-class family. The New Testament hardly mention any offspring or a family unit of his own. Historically, his past was frequently unpleasant, and most people knew this man as an activist against the new Believers rising in the Christian community.

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Saint Paul or originally known as Saul, was born in 4 bc. His birthplace was called Tarsus, a city east in Cilicia, which is now known as modern-day Turkey. When Paul was a child he grew up being a Jewish follower. He grew up in Jerusalem and was raised by Gamaliel, a leading authority in the Jewish religion. In his early daily life, he learned how to “work with his own hands” (1 Corinthians 4:12).

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