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A Good Man Is Hard To Find By Flannery O Connor

661 Words3 Pages

One subject that was particularly prominent in Flannery O’Connor’s writings was religion. O’Connor practiced Catholicism and it had a massive impact on her writing, with many stories having some premise on Catholicism and Christianity. One of these stories, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is heavily based on the idea of redemption and Christianity. In “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, Flannery O’Connor uses the Grandma’s redemption to justify Catholicism. In the story “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, the Grandma is redeemed through her conversation with the Misfit. The Grandma in the story starts as a bad person and continues to be until she meets the misfit where she is eventually redeemed. The grandmother at the beginning was very rude and selfish. An example of these behaviors is when she talks about how the past was …show more content…

Overall, this theme manages to validate Catholicism by supporting a key difference between it and Protestantism. One may argue that the Grandma is not redeemed in this story, and therefore the connection between Catholicism and the Grandma’s redemption is not present. However, the behaviors of the characters combined with their actions would raise questions with no clear answers in these interpretations. For example, in one of these interpretations by McDermott, the Grandma is an unfaithful, hypocritical sinner who says that the Misfit is one of her children to show that they are both evil people (11). Some examples of questions that this interpretation will raise are: Why did the Grandma try so hard to get the Misfit to pray? If the Grandma is simply acting, why does she become defeated? These questions require complex explanations that break away from the story’s portrayal of the characters. As a result, the Grandma’s redemption is able to provide more thorough answers to various questions that are raised, while preventing answers from breaking away from the

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