ipl-logo

A Good Man Is Hard To Find By Flannery O Connor

486 Words2 Pages

Inquisition with Faith One of the many bible quotes states “I will never doubt that god has gotten me through every hard moment in my life.” In the short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor, the author in fact wrestles with her faith while wrestling this idea. O'Connor's questioning of faith occurs in this short story through the use of distortion, symbolism, and characterization. O’Connors constant action of wrestling her own faith is strongly shown through the constant use of distortion. In the story, the family takes a trip to Florida with a dangerous risk at hand. On the way, they turn down a dirt road with hopes of a fun experience, but instead run into the risk the grandmother was worried about all along, the murderer himself, the misfit. “God never made a …show more content…

Through this dramatic scene distortion was created of good parents ,in which their son thought so highly of, but in the end the parents turning out to raise a murderer. Also creating the thought that him thanking god for people like his parents but then deciding to act the complete opposite. It makes one question should he really be thanking god if he didn’t turn out like his perfect parents? Did O’Connor not know how readers should interpret this, making it so they can think multiple ways of god as she does? Another intriguing example of how distortion shows O’Connor wrestling her faith occurs when the subject of praying develops as people are being murdered then bringing up his past as a gospel singer. “Do you ever pray? The grandmother asked. No, but I was a gospel singer” (438). The distortion created of a gospel singer who becomes a murder, what readers are suppose to assume would never happen in a normal world. This displays that O’Connor wrestling her faith using distortion of a singer who sings praising words to inspire people in becoming of a murderer. Furthermore, distortion shows O'Connor's struggle with faith when a business couple questions their trust in

Show More
Related
643 Words | 3 Pages

Thus, O’Connor meticulously crafts the Misfit as villain, molded through unfair

Read More
917 Words | 4 Pages

“The novelist is concerned with the mystery of personality, and you cannot say much that is significant about this mystery unless the characters you create exist with the marks of a believable society about them“ (p.198). She mediates the message of God through her characters flaws and failures, because God created everything that a society is able to believe. He is universal. Finally, the communal presence about O’Conner is the robust community of the South. “The South—that is, the rural, Protestant, Bible Belt South—is a little beyond the pale of Catholic respect” (p.206).

Read More
1025 Words | 5 Pages

O’Connor has a specific way of defining and showing grace. She created tales of hypocrisy, sin, and forgiveness that are violent but honest. Often depicting grace as a decision just before death, she shows the harsh reality that one must

Read More
981 Words | 4 Pages

O’Connor implements details to convey that the Misfit was positively affected by the Grandmother. Firstly, the Misfit revaluates the meaning of his life. Before

Read More
748 Words | 3 Pages

Grace and Martyrdom Flannery O’Connor, the author “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” presents a dark humorous short story that illustrates the struggles with living true to one person's morals. The Misfit and the grandmother, O’Connors main characters, experiences the struggles of differing personalities. Superficially the grandmother considers her moral superiority to others and The Misfit experiences the desolation of nonrelgion; nevertheless, staying pure to his values. The role of foreshadowing, irony and character development in “A Good Man is Hard to Find” as a form of gothic literature set the tone for the suspense in this short story.

Read More
1870 Words | 8 Pages

It is obvious that the grandmother is a manipulator, and this idea is carried into her dialogue with the Misfit, in which she suggests to the Misfit that he “wouldn’t shoot a lady” (86). The grandmother attempts to manipulate him by questioning his morals, contending that any proper, Southern man “wouldn’t shoot a lady.” O’Connor uses the grandmother’s words to reveal one of her major obstacles to salvation: self-centeredness. The grandmother is clearly self-centered, as she only inquires about her own welfare and not her family’s. When the grandmother agreed with Red Sammy’s claim that “[a] good man is hard to find,” she portrayed herself (and Red Sammy) as superficial and arrogant, acting as if there are no good men or women like them in the world (43).

Read More
1371 Words | 6 Pages

and they are all planning a trip to Florida. Although it has been decided that they are going to Florida, the grandmother is frustrated and tries to convince her son and his family that they should go to Tennessee instead since more family lives there and there are sights to see there. She also argues that going to Florida would only put the family in danger as there was a serial killer on the loose who goes by the name of “Misfit”. This, in itself, already raises a red flag for readers since they just so happen to be travelling to a place where a serial killer is running loose. Despite the grandmother’s protests against their trip to Florida, they all get in the car and begin their journey.

Read More
473 Words | 2 Pages

Flannery O’Connor’s short story, “Good Country People,” is effective in showcasing distortion through its characters’ attributes. In the story, O’Connor gives the readers “normal” characters who later on take away their masks to reveal their true, deceiving intentions. First, is the distortion of Christianity vs. Atheism with the characters Joy and Manley Pointer. Joy is an Atheist as said in the story, “My daughter is an atheist and won’t let me keep a bible in the parlor” ( pg. 446). Meaning, Joy does not believe in a religion such as christianity.

Read More
1466 Words | 6 Pages

“Her characters, who sometimes accept and other times reject salvation, often have a warped self-image, especially of their moral status and of the morality of their actions” (Hobby). This addresses how some of the important lines in the story describe to the reader about the extreme exaggeration and the psychological realism of the church, which O’Connor wanted to express within her story. The extreme use of exaggeration and how the use of the characters bring a sense of an uncanny feeling of good and evil within each character, portrays how deep the meaning is seen in this short story.  “the story is filled with dark, grotesque humor created largely by the story 's many ironies” (Hobby). The author of this source highly emphasizes that O’Connor creates this dark humor for her characters to build on her meaning in the story and uses irony to create the distortion within her

Read More
2419 Words | 10 Pages

Many people believe that O’Connor could have better used her skill as a writer to make stories that aren’t half as depressing on life but, the message that she communicates about humanity is the dark reality without the veil of light. So, O'Connor's

Read More
946 Words | 4 Pages

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

Read More
1016 Words | 5 Pages

The Misfit 's mind is one of the most complicated of any villain in O 'Connor’s stories and in all literature. His mental state is most evident in "the scene between the Grandmother and the Misfit at the climax of the story" (Walls 3) This recent escapee 's psyche can be described as "tails short of the athlete’s morality, for he plays by no one 's rules except his own" (Fike). This mental state is typical of most criminals but the Misfit’s perception on religion is not so conventional. Usually, when a person commits a heinous act and if the person is spiritual they will say God told them to do it.

Read More
1393 Words | 6 Pages

Moreover, when the Misfit and the two men shoot the whole family in the woods, it illustrates the sinister and cruel world that needs saving. The violent car crash that causes the family to encounter the Misfit in the first place adds to the violent display that O’Connor creates of the world. O’Connor uses the violence in the story to shock the readers into self-awareness (Larson 1). She uses this self-awareness to bring to light the religious theme of redemption and grace for the corrupted. O’Connor’s

Read More
984 Words | 4 Pages

God’s Amazing Grace God loves all humankind, even the sinners. His love is so great that He sent His only begotten Son into the world to suffer and be crucified on the cross to saves us all from sin. It is through His amazing grace that sinners are forgiven of their sins and are able to live eternally in the Kingdom of God. These Christian principles are what Flannery O 'Connor uses as the main subject in many of her stories. In “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” “Redemption’” and “Parker’s Back,” O’Connor uses the theme of salvation to show how God’s love and forgiveness are available to people in everyday life.

Read More
1601 Words | 7 Pages

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.

Read More

More about A Good Man Is Hard To Find By Flannery O Connor

Related Topics

Open Document