ipl-logo

A Good Man Is Hard To Find Conflict Essay

1645 Words7 Pages

A Good Man Is Hard to Find The story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor (1953), has an emotional, moral and spiritual theme. This account describes multiple conflicts; however, I want to address a conflict that occurred in the beginning of the story. The conflict begins with a battle of the wills. Grandma longs to see her family in Tennessee, but her son has made his decision and that is final; they are going to vacation in Florida. Even though, grandma has expressed her concern that a criminal escaped from prison and is heading in the same direction as they are. There are many reasons how the family would benefit by going to Tennessee for instance, meeting the other family members, the gorgeous views of the landscape, the smell …show more content…

He thought how peaceful she looked lying there on the ground with her arms wide open alongside her. She lay there with an angelic and peaceful smile. The Misfit pondered over the things grandma said. He felt something it was what she said to him that made him question the things he did and why he done wrong. What made him so angry and why his life turned out like it did. Maybe what grandma said was right about Jesus being forgiving and if he could forgive us, maybe just maybe he could forgive him. As the men approached their leader they commented on how “grandma sure was a talker”. He responded “there is no pleasure in killing.” The two men noticed that something was different about him and they couldn’t put their finger on it, but there was something. The three men placed the bodies of the family in the woods together side by side. It was the Misfit who suggested that they put each family member’s hands together to him it was a sign of respect. He then took a blanket and placed it over their bodies to protect them from the elements he turned to walk away. He couldn’t stop thinking about the words that grandma said to him he remembered them verbatim. The thoughts produced feelings he wasn’t accustomed to. Bringing back memories to the forefront of his mind, it was like a searing knife cutting his heart in

Show More
Related
255 Words | 2 Pages

Grandmother creates the families down fall by forcing them down a memory, which doesn 't exist. "The thought was so embarrassing that she jumped up...the house she

Read More
927 Words | 4 Pages

Midterm Exam A Good Man is Hard to Find #2: What is the role of chance or fate in the story? •In Flannery O ' Conner 's “A Good Man is Hard to Find” the roles of chance and fate help to drive the plot to its high point. Chance is present when the grandmother, at the preamble of the story, refuses to be persuaded to travel to Florida in fear of a loose criminal nicknamed The Misfit. Instead, she decides on a whim to visit a friend in Tennessee.

Read More
1640 Words | 7 Pages

When faced with death, the grandma desperately tries to utilize religion as a last attempt to save herself as she remarks “”If you would pray,”...”Jesus would help you””(O’Connor, 130) , it acts as her final act  of selfishness. Her immaturity in her faith is exposed when she begins saying “” Jesus, Jesus”” … “as if she might be cursing” (O’Connor, 131). Her egotism was so rampant that she was even willing to attempt to take advantage of Jesus to try and get her own way. However, the grandma goes through a genuine remarkable transformation at the end of the story as God “cleared her head for an instant” and allowed her to see her flaws and how similar her and the Misfit were. She realized that no matter how bad the things the Misfit had done were, her sins were just as bad as his.

Read More
696 Words | 3 Pages

The grandmother spends all of her last moments attempting to convince a man who is already decided in his actions. She tells him he is a good man multiple times (pg 7, 8, 10) and believes that God is on her side which will bring the Misfit to her senses. Although the Misfit has thought about God before, the conversation about Jesus has no impact on him. He claims he has always been alright on his own and the grandmother remains powerless but continues to plead with the Misfit. As one can assume by the chaotic ending, the grandmother’s undying attempts were unsuccessful as the Misfit did not agree nor sympathize with her or her

Read More
1491 Words | 6 Pages

the grandmother aska this to try to show him that he doesn't know if it will work if he has never tries. This comes as a shock to the readers because before she didn't seem christan or like she prayed. O’connor is trying to show the reader that you can’t really tell people what to do unless you analyze and judge yourself and know you have that experience first. After a long discussion the misfit ends up kipling the grandmother anyway. The misfit also shocked readers in the way he talked about her death.

Read More
581 Words | 3 Pages

The Grandmother is the only member of the family still alive at this point. The misfit holds the grandmother at gunpoint. The grandmother uses faith as a way to escape death and pleads for the character to spare her life. “Pray!” The grandmother pleads pathetically.

Read More
1111 Words | 5 Pages

In the beginning of the story, the family is preparing for the trip or, in other words, preparing for adulthood. Also, the grandmother tells her family about her life when she was young. She says that when she was a maiden lady, a man named Edgar Atkins Teagarden would bring her watermelons. Next, the family travels on the treacherous dirt road southeast to Florida. The dirt road serves as adulthood.

Read More
1192 Words | 5 Pages

(O’Connor) The grandmas impression of solace is twisted by recollections and beliefs ruminating in her subliminal mind as she always searches for and sticks to signifiers that mirror the world she wants, one in which goodness as she would like to think still exist and can be characterized along certain lines that enable her to fit into it. This is the part of her struggle, the battle between her cognizant and intuitive personalities. As the story advances, nonetheless, the reader starts to comprehend that it's not goodness that has been consumed, but rather the thoughts against which the grandma has constantly characterized as goodness, leaving the grandma attempting to accommodate a perspective that does not reflect reality, which is a very serious situation, and which is eventually the wellspring of her torment. Along these lines, the agony from which the grandma looks for alleviation does not originate from the world, but rather from her view of it.

Read More
299 Words | 2 Pages

The first line of the story is “The grandmother didn’t want to go to Florida” (O’Connor 3). The grandmother spends the first two paragraphs trying to convince her son and his family to go to Tennessee instead of Florida, mainly so she can reconnect with some acquaintances of hers. The kids have a discussion about how their grandmother would never stay home, but they were all fine with it. As they rode

Read More
915 Words | 4 Pages

The first sentence, “The grandmother didn’t want to go to florida,” (Lawrence 406) gives the reader a glimpse into who the grandmother is as a person. She is depicted as a selfish and manipulative person. In the beginning of the story she was always trying to change her son Bailey’s mind to get the family to go to Tennessee instead of Florida. “The children have been to Florida before, you all ought to take them somewhere else for a change…” (Lawrence 406).

Read More
1004 Words | 5 Pages

The grandmother didn’t want to go to Florida like her son Bailey suggested, but wanted to go to east Tennessee where some of her old connections were located. She tries her best to change his mind by reading a particular story in the newspaper which read, “Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida.” She insinuates that she wouldn’t dare take her children anywhere close to Florida. She claims that the children have been to Florida before, but not Tennessee. However the wife tries not to hear anything she is saying.

Read More
641 Words | 3 Pages

Without the narrator’s courage, Grandma would have been buried in Bakersfield, where she didn’t want to be buried. Finally, Grandma is helpful when she brought the narrator’s family together. “When you’re family, you take care of your own” (Haslam 251). After Grandma passes, even though it is sad, she had helps her family bond and come

Read More
394 Words | 2 Pages

His eyes closed.” (147 ) expresses how Mattie and Grandfather certainly do not take each other for granted. They cherish, and respect each other. Furthermore, this conveys that Mattie fought for her grandfather, though Grandfather was dying, she fought until the end. The author, Laurie H. Anderson's craft of an epilogue enhances the reader's understanding of the theme.

Read More
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.

Read More
1743 Words | 7 Pages

The Role of Family in “A Good Man is Hard to Find” “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, written by Flannery O’Connor is a short story that brings out mystery and cruelty. Manipulation plays a big role in this story by the grandmother. She tends to manipulate her family and tends to get her way by playing with them. Although the author wanted to give many perspectives of the grandmother, we as reader got our own views of her.

Read More

More about A Good Man Is Hard To Find Conflict Essay

Related Topics

Open Document