A Good Man Is Hard To Find Literary Analysis

In the three Flannery O’Connor stories we read there is a theme that is present of disrespectful and ungrateful children. This theme is a driving force for the action in each story. It plays a major role in the destruction of security of the major characters. That destruction alters the path and events of each characters life. In the story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” the grandchildren are mean and disrespectful to both the grandmother and the parents. They have no manners and there appears to be no rules that they must follow. Their unruliness is used by the grandmother to force the father to take the side trip with in the end causes their deaths. If the children in the story had been ones with manners and respect then the side trip down a deserted road would probably not have happened and the family would not have been murdered. In “Good Country People” the daughter is miserable person who feels sorry for herself. She projects her self-loathing onto those that are around her. She is especially hateful and nasty to her mother. The daughter feels that she is smarter and therefore better than any of the country people she is forced to reside with and near. This condescending attitude is her ultimate undoing when the traveling sales man manages to trick her

He forgets easily how much his mother has struggles and sacrificed to give him the education and things that he has in life. He seems to forget that his progressive ideas and thoughts were reinforced by his college education and that without it he might have the same ideas and views as his mother. His lack of caring and choice not to shield his mother causes her ultimate death. If he had been able to so some compassion and understanding for the culture shock that his mother was experiencing then he would have been able to protect her from the events that bring about her