A Good Man Is Hard To Find Rhetorical Analysis

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Flannery O'Connor is the author of the short story"A Good Man is Hard to Find”. Many people view the story as cynical. However others view it as the story of a egotistical woman who manipulates people just to access her devotion. Throughout the story, her actions and word choice prove her beliefs wrong. O'Connor exploits irony as a literary element to create multiple angles of the characters in the story such as those of the deceitful grandmother and The Misfit. A good use of characterization in literature always helps the reader to better relate to the events that are happening in the story (Characterization). Authors use this literary device to describe a character and help the reader relate to the character(s). It provides the reader …show more content…

Authors use these comparisons to convey their ideas and opinions through expressive word pictures. In the text, examples of similes are "a young woman in slacks, whose face was as broad and as innocent as a cabbage and was tied around with a green head-kerchief that had two points on the top like rabbit's ears” (O’Conner). This simile, together with the previous words, stress the mother's fairness and novelty, making it fairly easy for her family members to manipulate her. “There were two more pistol reports and the grandmother raised her head like a parched old turkey hen crying for water and called,” (O’Conner). This simile makes a direct description of how the grandmother quickly raised her head up. Metaphors are a figure of speech which makes an implied or hidden comparison between two unrelated things but share some common characteristics (Metaphor). Metaphors allow for authors to be creative and to express the distinction of emotions and images. An example of a metaphor in the short story is “The trees were full of silver-white sunlight and the meanest of them sparkled” (O’Connor). Imagery is meant to represent objects, actions and ideas in such a way that it appeals to our five senses. Usually imagery makes use of particular words that create a visual representation of ideas in our heads (Imagery). After the accident, Bailey was,