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A Good Man Is Hard To Find Literary Analysis

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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 …show more content…

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

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He can’t imagine knowing the man that raped his mother was living around his town like nothing has happened. He can see what Linden took from his mother, her compassion and way of life. He doesn’t want to his mother to live her life in fear and the only thing he can think about is killing the attacker. It is sad though

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Yichen Guo Ms. Carroll Lit of the South April. 12 , 2017 Symbolism in Flannery O'Connor's stories Flannery O’Connor is one of the greatest southern female writer, and her use of literary techniques is masterful. Most significantly, the uses of symbolism such as sky, name, and Christianity in Flannery O'connor's stories give more depth and meaning to those stories, as it links the themes and develops the plot of the stories. The sunset and the sky have important symbolisms in Flannery O'connor's stories; mostly they not only indicate the emotional stages of the characters, but also signify the start of character's epiphany.

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The Works of Flannery O’Connor: An Analysis of Racism and Self-Righteousness The ego is a force of the human mind since its beginning. The ego is what drives us to reach our potential, no matter the area of achievement. However, many times our ego can prove to be our downfall when we let it get the better of us.

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His indifference is shown when he says “he was right, I thought deep down, not daring to admit it to myself. Too late to save your old father…you could have two rations of bread, two rations of soup…” (111). His thought was when his dad dies maybe he will have a better chance of surviving. The responsibility of his dad would be gone and he could take care of himself.

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In literature, we can find Southern Gothic traits. They are most common in American Literature. The three stories that we have read have the Southern Gothic traits in them. One can tell these traits quite easily. There are a few traits in the story, A Good Man is Hard to Find.

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Flannery O’Connor expresses the theme of pride in her short stories, “Good Country People”, “The Life You Save May Be Your Own”, and “The Displaced Person”. Hulga Hopewell thinks she is above Manley Pointer and can out smart him. Mr. Shiftlet claims everyone else is slime and should b washed away when in reality it is him who is slime. Mrs. McIntyre watches a worker get killed to save herself the trouble of firing him.

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Before his father died he was trying to help but supporting him kept getting more difficult as time passed until he became incapable of helping. This can be seen in quotes right after his father died when he says, “I could see that he was breathing--in gasps. I didn’t move.” He knew his father was dying and did not help. After his father dies he realizes that it was not that he didn’t want to help, he was incapable of it.

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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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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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Since her time, readers have been fascinated with Flannery O’Connor as a person and author. Perhaps the reason they find her so engaging is her use of Southern Gothic. It becomes immediately apparent to the reader that her tales tend to rely on a variety of dark, recurring patterns. O’Connor explores religion and morality, highlighting often how the two correspond and collide, and also introduces grotesque characters that simultaneously elicit empathy and disgust. Representing these vastly different worlds are O'Connor's two major groups of protagonists: the traditional elderly, and their young urban children ( Tony Magistrale 111).

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2. For this week’s reading, I chose “A Good Man is Hard to Find” written by Flannery O’Connor. For the short story, the author describes in details what the characters do and provide great detail on the places. I think that all the details so carefully provided for us are used to make us, readers, dive into the story and feel like we take the trip with the characters. Reading the final scene, I felt like I was there walking among the characters and seeing their faces.

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He feels guilty and ashamed of himself for he did not look after his sister. As a result, he struggles to face his guilt and loses the meaning of his life. In order to run away from his misfortune, he enlists into the war. Even

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Will never experienced the childhood life of innocence and happiness. He missed out on one part of his life when mistakes we quickly fogotten and when attention were drawn from every eyes. Instead he had to learn how to depend on himself at a young age. This is how his fear of abandonment developed. At the same time he began to blame himself for the way he was treated.

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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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844 Words | 4 Pages

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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