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A Good Man Is Hard To Find Rhetorical Analysis

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“A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor is a short story where the author uses irony, symbols, images, omniscient narrator as well as other rhetorical strategies to expose beliefs and personalities trough the characters in the story. Flammery O’Connor introduces the grandmother of the story as an older women from the south who considers herself morally superior than everyone because she is a lady. “You wouldn’t shoot a lady, would you?” (O’Connor 22). The narrator expresses how the grandmother thinks The Misfit will recognize and respect her moral code furthermore respecting her life. She is a women that judges people all throughout the story based on their physical appearance and outward behavior. Even when she meets The Misfit …show more content…

“You know they make me nervous.” (O’Connor 22). Trough this words the author creates a relationship between the man now and his childhood. In his adulthood, the murder has a life style deviated from normality since he is always having irresponsible behaviors and ignoring social rules. For him seeing the children makes him nervous because it connects his past with his present and even though they make him feel this way he still does not have feeling of guilt or regret towards committing murder in …show more content…

(O’Connor 23) since cloudless sky created an image in people’s minds of a clear sky but in this passage this is creating another irony in the story. In this case, the irony of the day being beautiful and the family being in the situation they are. In a beautiful day with cloudless sky is no expected a situation like the one the family is living, for this situation a death one the expected weather would be different it will normally be dark, cloudy , stormy in the middle of the woods representing death as a dark, cold

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The Misfit has the entire family killed until the grandmother is the only one still alive. During the entire story, the grandmother refers to herself as a lady. It’s not until The Misfit is about to kill her that she has a revelation that she may not be all that she has thought . The Misfit himself notices this when he exclaims “She would have been a good woman,” (Flannery 261) and “if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life” (Flannery 261). Judith Wynne thinks that “O’Connor’s irony can be seen as sacramental, not because it works with the stuff of religious belief and non-belief, which it does, but because it itself operates as a vehicle of revelation (Wynne).

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Flannery O'Connor (1925-1965) is one of the most influential Southern Gothic writers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Verde). She draws readers time after time through her grotesque and haunting short stories. Two of her most acclaimed stories, "A Good Man is Hard to Find," and "The Lame Shall Enter First" focus on the same theme; good versus evil. As well as using theme to convey her message, she utilizes irony to shock and mystify the readers. The internal struggle between a person's will power and humanity is highlighted often through her many complicated characters.

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In Flannery O’Connor story, “A good man is hard to find”, the main character the Grandmother is described throughout the story as exhibiting negative behavior of selfishness, manipulation, judgment and racism. She also, shows a positive attitude of detail oriented person. The following passage will provide compelling evidence to support my argument. First, the Grandmother is egocentric.

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The Misfit knows who he is and does not pretend to be otherwise, unlike the old lady. With a show of unpretentiousness, he clearly states, “Nome, I ain’t a good man” (O’Connor 427). In the end, the antagonist enlightens the Grandmother with his brutal honesty, and her “head cleared for an instance” (O’Connor 430). In the final moments of her life, she is able to drop all pretenses and view evil in the form of the Misfit as something she can accept within herself by exclaiming, “Why you’re one of my babies” (O’Connor 430). Ironically, at the moment she reaches out to him, he kills her.

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In her short story, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” Georgian humanist, Flannery O’Connor, uses irony, symbolism, and imagery to foreshadow the demise of the family upon encountering The Misfit. Founded in both Southern and Christian roots, the author created a metaphorical story about the journey of life, with a negative twist. With caustic diction that contributes to her cynical tone, O’Connor depicts the message that finding a good person is a hopeless undertaking. O’Connor instantly utilizes irony in the very beginning of her story to suggest the family’s dismal fate. The unnamed grandmother attempts to manipulate her son, Bailey, to change the vacation destination to her preference: Tennessee.

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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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Now she throws this term out there in an attempt to save her own life which it does not. The grandmother is very narcissistic. When she is shot the Misfit says “She would have been a good woman, if it had been some-body there to shoot her every minute of her life.” (O’Connor,

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Deemed the Southern Gothic writer of the 20th century, author Flannery O’Connor often draws her Roman Catholic roots into her literature. Her well-known short story “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” is about a family sextet (a grandmother, two parents, and three children) who, while on a drive to Florida, overturn their car into a ditch. Then, in attempt to get help, they flag down the vehicle of a wanted serial killer on the run who eventually murders the entire family and steals their clothing. Many critics agree that “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” has a lot of religious symbolism embedded in the characters.

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Viewing The Misfit as a tragic figure, we sympathize with his actions and feel remorse for who he has become. The readers see him as a victim and sympathize for his actions, including killing the elderly Grandmother. Although he is an awful person, because he is a male character, it is acceptable for him to have issues, but it is not acceptable for a woman to have any sort of issue. As the Misfits says, “She would have been a good woman...if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life” (O’Connor), this suggests that the Grandmother was an awfully annoying woman, but if she had a man there to keep her in line, she would have been a decent

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In connection to this week’s assignment, I have selected the short story entitled “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flanner O’Connor to read and give a concrete analysis. After reading this story, I got the idea that the story was being told mainly from the Grandmother's perspective; her son, Bailey, and his wife hardly said much while their children, John Wesley and June Star were pretty much talkative and fails to acknowledge those in authority. For instance, from my point of view, this story embraced several themes such as racial prejudice, self-interest, and the struggle to gain approval versus having a sense of belongingness. Additionally, the setting of this story occurred in Georgia, southeast of the United States (O’Connor, 1953).

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1274 Words | 6 Pages

In the short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, the author, Flannery O 'Connor, demonstrates how a short story can contain many aspects of feminism without one even noticing. Looking at the short story through a feminist point of view, one can quickly gather that O’Connor uses the old school gender roles from the very beginning of the short story. As reading the title, it automatically suggests the male characters in this short story are untrustworthy, not prevalent, and dangerous. With that being said, the female characters in this story are viewed in the eyes of how a woman should act.

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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 violence that we do not get to see for ourselves are the crimes the Misfit committed before the story began. The story begins with the grandmother telling Bailey to “read here what it says he did to these people’” (O’Connor 575). These crimes are violent murders that the Misfit committed beforehand. This displays the criminal world that we live in.

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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.

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