ipl-logo

A Good Man Is Hard To Find Character Analysis Essay

792 Words4 Pages

In the account of “A good Man Is Hard to Find,” grandma shows her true colors throughout the story. She is convinced that she is morally right and just through her thoughts and actions. She portrays herself as better than the rest and a lady. However, in the end the grandmother tells the Misfit he is just like one of her own. This reference shows that in her final moments of life the grandmother realized they were very much alike. They share some of the same character traits such as being deceitful, insouciant, and egocentric. The first glimpse into the grandmother’s deceitfulness is when she tries to talk Bailey into changing the trip destination to Tennessee. Even though she wasn’t up for going to Florida she made sure to be the first to jump in the car when it was time to go. She even managed to get the cat in the car when she knew bailey did not want him along. She hid him and how she really felt. The next time we see her true colors is when she recalls the plantation she visited once as a young girl. While driving through Georgia, the grandmother longs to see it again and tells the family it has a secret panel that was a hiding spot for a pile of silver. In her mind she admits it is a lie. She will not, however, admit that the plantation …show more content…

A prime example is when the Misfit’s buddies take her son Bailey and grandson in to the wood and shoot them. She doesn’t try to stop them or tell them to take her instead. Her main concern is trying to convince the Misfit that he is good and was not the type of person to shoot a lady. These actions correlates with her mentality that ladies are more worthy. She also does not try to save her daughter-in-law or other grandkids when it comes time for them to enter in to the woods to meet their doom. Throughout her entire encounter with the Misfit and his buddies she maintains her conniving ways and tries to only save

Show More
Related
911 Words | 4 Pages

Debby and Grandma have many different traits but a few of their similar character traits are their boldness and mean-spirited attitudes. Debby and Grandma are both extremely bold because they say whatever comes to their mind no matter how rude and disrespectful it is. When Debby speaks of Lady Franklin, she never has anything nice to say, “They call her a whore, which she is.” (Rinaldi 190). She has never met Lady Franklin and not many people have the audacity to say such horrible things.

Read More
688 Words | 3 Pages

When the family is on the trip, they pass a little black boy with no pants on, and the grandmother says, "little niggers in the country don't have things like we do" (398). This is just one instance where the grandmother shows how judgemental she is. She did not know anything about the boy or his family, but continued to talk bad about people who live in the country. After the wreck and being discovered by the Misfit, the grandmother knows she is in trouble and begins telling the Misfit

Read More
581 Words | 3 Pages

In the story, “A Good Man Is Hard To Find,” by Flanner O’ Conner the story deals with a character who appears to be a dark caged animal .The Misfit is actually a fallen angel whom has been sent to eliminate the bad people of this world. The Misfit, is the antagonist in the story who is a convicted murderer aloose from the state penitently of Florida. The story describes the Misfit as being a ‘bad guy’ he kills an entire family. From a reader’s perspective, the misfit feels as though he does not belong in the world and battles a severe mental disorder.

Read More
1097 Words | 5 Pages

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

Read More
772 Words | 4 Pages

As she hides the cat away, it is almost as if she is hiding herself and hiding her “mistakes”. As the story moves on, they meet Red Sam. He complains to the grandmother about an incident with a customer, “”Two fellers come in here last week,” Red Sammy said, “driving a Chrysler. It was a old beat-up car

Read More
786 Words | 4 Pages

The Grandmother is a well-dressed and a proper southern lady. She is also the center of action in the short story, "A Good Man Is Hard to Find". The grandmother seems very suspicious at first, and thinks her son Bailey will be forever small and has to abide by her rules. In her eyes she is never been wrong but knows it all. When we become up-close and personal with the grandmother we see that she's this bad person, which she appears to be old-fashioned, manipulative, and self-serving as a whole.

Read More
787 Words | 4 Pages

The short story A Good Man is Hard to Find is about a family who takes a road trip to Florida with the family cat even though her son does not want her to bring the cat along with them on vacation. As they are driving from Georgia to Florida the Grandmother is telling June Star and John Wesley about this huge house on a dirt road a few miles back and how on the side of the house there is a secret panel. The kids and their grandmother beg Bailey to turn around to see the house on the plantation so Bailey finally gives in and turns around. They arrived to the dirt road the grandmother realizes that the house was not in Georgia but it is in Tennessee. Since the grandmother is embarrassed she had to make a distraction, she kicks the box that

Read More
985 Words | 4 Pages

Bailey's shirt was what finally made the redemption and forgiveness aspect to click for the grandmother. I took till the grandmother saw the misfit in baileys shirt to realize that she was the one that needed to forgive the misfit for the crimes he committed and see him as her child because that is the only way she will truly be able to receive and find grace and

Read More
1559 Words | 7 Pages

It is the grandmother’s selfishness that leads to the death of her family. The short story “A good Man is Hard to Find” teaches us that nothing good come from being selfish. Being selfish has plenty of consequences. One of them is that when you are selfish you or your loved once suffer. In the short story by O’Connor, the grandmother’s selfishness leads to the death of her family.

Read More
1287 Words | 6 Pages

The grandma could also be recognized as being the protagonist of the story and as a round character (Hamilton 137 & 141). In the beginning of the story, we are able to see that the grandma believes she is morally superior to everybody. This can be seen from the quote, "I wouldn 't take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn 't answer to my conscience if I did" (O 'Connor 205). From

Read More
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.

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
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
1254 Words | 6 Pages

In Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” she uses writing skills such as symbolism and imagery to get across her different themes to the reader’s with plenty of room for self-interpretation. Though O’Connor’s work could be defined as cynical, she does an excellent job of writing in the third person with her uncomplicated structure of sentences leaving plenty of room for her character 's thoughts, feelings, and actions to get across the realism of our world. "A Good Man is Hard to Find" is a battle between a grandmother with a rather artificial sense of goodness, and a criminal who symbolizes evil. The grandmother treats goodness as having good manners, and coming from a family of higher class, but at the end of the story comes to

Read More
844 Words | 4 Pages

(O 'Connor 1016) in order to save herself; trying to save the rest of the family doesn 't even cross her

Read More

More about A Good Man Is Hard To Find Character Analysis Essay

Related Topics

Open Document