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A Good Man Is Hard To Find By Flannery O Connor

1244 Words5 Pages

A Good Man Is Hard To Find, written by Flannery O’Connor is a Southern gothic short story. A Good Man Is Hard To Find is about a family from Georgia traveling to Florida for a vacation with a grandma begging every second of the way to go to Tennessee insead, but stopping for a detour near a plantation she recognizes. The theme of A Good Man Is Hard To Find toes the line of morality and redemption, leaving the clear theme of perspective as an obvious one to catch on to. A Good Man Is Hard To Find has many potential influences too, with this story being written in 1953, there are many factors that played into the inspiration for Flannery O’Connor writing of A Good Man Is Hard To Find. Analyzing A Good Man Is Hard To Find, written by Flannery …show more content…

Flannery O’Connor was a “God-conscious writer” she states in one of letters to a young woman in 1955, July 20th; documented by themarginaliam.org. Flannery O’Connor was an orthodox Catholic and disabled, she saw the hypocrisy many Catholics held themselves with and how disabled people were treated. A Good Man Is Hard To Find is a wonderful example of Catholic hypocrisy, showing the grandma seeing herself as a woman of god, “‘If you would pray,’ the old lady said, ‘Jesus would help you.’” The grandma acted as if she did not actually believe in her faith, instead merely embracing the finery it gave her and not genuinely having her religion be a good change in her life and as a person. This supports the thesis because being completely unaware of yourself leads to a person ignoring morality and instead flowing with whatever is the strongest feeling in the moment. That stuff becomes dangerous when it’s selfish decisions, anger, the need of constant attention and said by florbes.com, “overconfidence, poor judgment and the inability to learn from mistakes, build teams or relate to …show more content…

The grandmother is a bad person. That is something never directly said within A Good Man Is Hard To Find, it is an interpretation of her character as a whole. The Misfit and grandmother are more alike than thought, with their brief interaction it is clear they think in opposite ways. They’re both using belief systems for their benefit, the grandma’s being the Catholic religion and the Misfit’s being redemption. The Misfit doesn’t try to change, he believes it’s far too late to even make an effort. While the grandmother is selfish and manipulative, she uses the excuse of religion for how she acts and how she views herself. These people are evil, in opposite ways. The grandma is the personification of evil and so is the Misfit. Their similar characteristics of hypocrisy, lack of empathy and lack of religious understanding. The Misfit seems unhappy in the state of mind he’s in. He looks like he’s aware of his flaws, but unwilling to put in the effort to change them. Which is in contrast to the grandma who’s flaws are entirely invisible to her. The grandma doesn’t see any reason for her to change, so she doesn’t make an effort to. Their only difference is the Misfit is unhappy with his way of life while the grandma is more than content to stay as she is. Even with interpretation, the title references them both, A Good Man Is Hard To

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Compare And Contrast A Good Man Is Hard To Find By Flannery O Connor

830 Words | 4 Pages

So, when reading the story initially I was left with the impression that The Misfit was least sympathetic because he just killed an entire family forcing the grandmother to come to terms with their death before killing her off. As blunt and brutal as this situation is, it is also the most symbolic as the true villain of Poe's story is actually the grandmother. For instance, the grandmother constantly insists that The Misfit must be a good man, "I know you're a good man" (O' Connor 504) and "I just know you're a good man" (O'Connor 505). Moreover, instances of the grandmother claiming that if The Misfit pray, Jesus will guide him, while she herself never does it and simply goes on to say in a cursing manner, "Jesus, Jesus" (O'Connor 507) insinuating The Misfit needs the saving. O'Connor cleverly implies this as the grandmother being sympathizing with his past, all the while her tone is almost becoming forcing, as a means of psychological attack.

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Summary Of A Good Man Is Hard To Find By Flannery O Connor

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“She would have been a good woman,” the Misfit said, “if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.” The Misfit was the antagonist in the short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor. O’Connor’s piece takes place during a road trip from Georgia to Florida. There is a Grandmother, her son, daughter-in-law, and three grandchildren, as well as the Grandmother’s cat, headed down to Florida on this eventful trip. O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to find” illustrates the difficulty in finding good-natured people.

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A Good Man Is Hard To Find By Flannery O Connor

688 Words | 3 Pages

One of the Misfit's partners says, "She was a talker, wasn't she?" (409) and the Misfit replies saying, "She would of been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life" (409). This dialogue should easily convince any reader that the grandmother was the real villain in the story and was the main reason the entire family was

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Similarities Between A Good Man Is Hard To Find And Where Are You Going Where Have You Been

1074 Words | 5 Pages

In “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, the grandmother is held at gunpoint. She pleads relentlessly, trying to persuade the Misfit to let her live. In an essay by Anna Woodiwiss, she explains that “The grandmother's acceptance of someone so different from her is wrenched out of her by extraordinary circumstances, and she is only partly conscious or rational as she expresses it.” The grandmother was senile and was devoted to her traditional views, which would make her less accepting of the thoughts and ideas of others. The Misfit was the exception to her personality and her willingness to show contempt by saying he is one of her own children.

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Analysis Of A Good Man Is Hard To Find By Flannery O Connor

1371 Words | 6 Pages

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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Overshadow The Misfit

959 Words | 4 Pages

Do you believe that everyone is born good? Immoral acts can be extremely tempting. Not everyone is strong enough to resist giving into the evils of the world. In A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor, the main theme that prejudice and sin can overshadow the goodness in a person, unless a conscious effort is made to be good, is shown through the thoughts and actions of the grandmother, Red Sam, and the Misfit.

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Foreshadowing In A Good Man Is Hard To Find

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The Misfit kills her but she still dies with a smile on her face. In this story, O’Connor uses foreshadowing, symbolism, and metaphor to establish the theme of the story that everyone has the potential to receive a moment of Grace, gain redemption, and die as a “good” person, no matter how impious their actions in life. Instances of foreshadowing occur several times in “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” One example appears when the family prepares for the trip, the grandmother purposely wears a navy polka-dot dress so that “in case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady.”

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Manipulation In A Good Man Is Hard To Find

786 Words | 4 Pages

She is only trying to convince the misfit that he is a good man because she wants to be freed, and her life is in shambles. Also, the grandmother has already gone back on her word multiple of times, calling the misfit a big, bad, and scary man. Now all of the sudden he is a good man. Therefore, the grandmother still has not changed a

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Flaws Of Perception In A Good Man Is Hard To Find

1101 Words | 5 Pages

Now, the reader can see that the grandmother is not a good lady. She is a liar, and selfish. The encounter with the Misfit reveals the grandmother’s true colors. She is trying to save her own life; not once does she tell the Misfit to spare her son’s life or her grandchildren’s lives. In the beginning, she says that “I[the grandmother] wouldn’t take my children in any direction with a criminal like that[the Misfit] in it” (O’Connor, par. 1).

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A Good Man Is Hard To Find Thesis

1115 Words | 5 Pages

The grandmother’s plea for her life and intention to make the Misfit (the murderer within the story) think otherwise of himself represents the true value we hold our lives to. I believe that the Misfit represents a good man blinded by bad intentions. (Back up thesis) This may aswell be true considering a good man as repeated within the story is indeed hard to find. The Misfit’s confession after killing the grandmother makes me think that he was not all consumed by the evil of this world but willingly took up this lifestyle.

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Redemption In Flannery O Connor's A Good Man Is Hard To Find

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This notion of redemption is primarily seen with the Misfit and his character development away from the pleasure of a murderer. Had it not been for the collision of the Grandmother and his paths, redemption would have been unlikely, even unachievable, for him. O’Connor intended for this story to have a positive ending, despite the death toll that is present at the end of the story. With her Catholic beliefs, the small act of the Grandmother’s compassion and the Misfit’s questioning of his morals are rather impactful to each of their redemptions. Perhaps O’Connor’s religious views could be insightful to religious scholars on the question of whether human nature is

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Good Man Is Hard To Find Response

1016 Words | 5 Pages

In her short story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”, Flannery O’Connor introduces the reader to a world of family issues, danger, and murder. The story was written in 1955 during a period of social and racial unrest in the southern United States. Mostly, the story follows O 'Connor 's basic Southern Gothic writing style. A work that is "cold and dispassionate, as well as almost absurdly stark and violent" (Galloway). While the quote gives major insight into the theme of the story, it does not offer a glimpse into O 'Connor 's real message of the story.

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The Grandmother And The Misfit's A Good Man Is Hard To Find

1601 Words | 7 Pages

The grandmother uses Jesus as a scapegoat to show how she is a child of God while the Misfit tells of how he really perceives Jesus and that there is no justification of his actions. In the event of the car accident, the Grandmother was left with a physical crisis that quickly showed as her family was sent off into the woods to be killed one by one. This soon transitioned to a spiritual crisis both between the Grandmother and the Misfit as she uses Jesus's name to try and escape her fate. This spiritual crisis leads the characters to express their personal conception of reality and how they perceive the revelation of the situation that they are in. The Grandmother has a sense that reality should revolve around her and that she should manipulate tools such as religion to benefit her outcome.

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Symbolism In A Good Man Is Hard To Find

1254 Words | 6 Pages

(6:27). O 'Connor presents both the view of the Misfit as a fellow human being in pain, and the feeling of love for him, as a gift from God. The grandmother as a human being, is prone towards evil and selfishness, so she could never have come to feel such love without God 's help, as this man was going to kill her. This moment of grace is incredibly important in the story. The Misfit kills the grandmother, withdrawing from her and what seems foreign to him (human compassion), but the grandmother already had her moment of redemption.

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Southern Gothic Elements In A Good Man Is Hard To Find

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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