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A Good Man Is Hard To Find Thesis

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In the short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Conner, an older woman, her child, and her grandchildren are faced with death. A human’s last plea for their life at the hands of any man or woman determines whether or not he or she is a good person. The grandmother’s plea for her life and intention to make the Misfit (the murderer within the story) think otherwise of himself represents the true value we hold our lives to. I believe that the Misfit represents a good man blinded by bad intentions.
A family of five, including the son’s grandmother, plan a vacation. They all desire to drive to Florida but the grandmother refuses and tries to convince the family to drive down to Tennessee. The grandmother looks for any sources that will back her up on her opinion. She claims to discover in the news that a killer, The Misfit, is running loose down in Florida. The family then ignores her claim and choose to go to the state that the majority of …show more content…

Start with explanation of the criticism of the short story. Reiterate my thesis in a dissimilar way then initially state. Connect and relate the two and bring up interesting topics on the subject that will make the reader think. Interesting proposal (May also be at the end). A human’s last plea for their life at the hands of any man or woman determines whether or not he or she is a good person. The grandmother’s plea for her life and intention to make the Misfit (the murderer within the story) think otherwise of himself represents the true value we hold our lives to. I believe that the Misfit represents a good man blinded by bad intentions. (Back up thesis) This may aswell be true considering a good man as repeated within the story is indeed hard to find. The Misfit’s confession after killing the grandmother makes me think that he was not all consumed by the evil of this world but willingly took up this lifestyle. He seems to be bored with

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Misunderstandings As represented in the story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” by Flannery O 'Connor, a good man was hard to be and had different ideas of how to pursue it. Going through the journey with the grandmother and son and learning about the Misfit, the audience can witness the actions being made by different characters to witness their fall and/or their triumph. When looking into the grandmother more deeply, the audience can detect the intensity of her self absorption. She would consider herself a lady with high standards of herself.

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In the short story, "A Good Man is Hard to Find" the grandmother's superficial goodness towards other individuals is significant to contrast with the evil "The Misfit" obtains. For the duration of the story, the grandmother fears "The Misfit" and strives to avoid the evil he possesses; however, we learn it is inevitable that his existence will eventually encompass her when they make acquaintance. The Misfit seamlessly endangers others with the careless actions he perpetrates, and in return, displays minimal remorse. Readers of the story may easily be perplexed by the motives the Misfit obtains to commit heinous acts onto innocent victims; however, lack of religious conscience, moral blindness and intermittent conversation with the grandmother

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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.

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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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Prunty states, “The people who populate O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" are flat yet exaggerated individuals facing their own meanness and mortality.” The immediate focus of the story turns to the grandmother who

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but you soon start to realize that she is shallow and selfish, only death can bring the goodness out of her. The antagonist in A Good Man is Hard to Find is the Misfit. In the end, the Grandmother reaches out to the Misfit, thinking that he’s one of her children. But the Misfit rejects the affection and shoots her, and she dies smiling. This act from the Misfit makes him the true antagonist.

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The family include; grandmother, mother, father, and two children. A family member, grandmother, expect to face the misfit who has been released from jail but granny doesn’t sound convincing. Grandmother show that she preferred to visit Tennessee instead of Florida, “The children have never been to Florida before.” Society expect people like granny to be annoying to little kids or grandmothers not approve most of the stuff grandkids cooperate in.

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1208 Words | 5 Pages

In the short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, the author, Flannery O'Connor, demonstrates how a family vacation can quickly face a violent end, caused by a criminal known as “The Misfit.” Looking at the short story through a feminist point of view, one can quickly gather that O’Connor uses the traditional gender roles right from the beginning of the story. As reading the title, it automatically suggests the men 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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948 Words | 4 Pages

In the short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor draws upon the concept of good vs. evil. The grandmother being good and the Misfit being evil. There are many ways you can characterize the grandmother, but I found her to be a caring, racist, humble and a religious person. From the get go the grandmother seems to be caring because she was really concerned if the family went to Florida they will encounter the Misfit. She says, “Here this fellow that calls himself the Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida…

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The grandmother didn’t want to go to Florida like her son Bailey suggested, but wanted to go to east Tennessee where some of her old connections were located. She tries her best to change his mind by reading a particular story in the newspaper which read, “Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida.” She insinuates that she wouldn’t dare take her children anywhere close to Florida. She claims that the children have been to Florida before, but not Tennessee. However the wife tries not to hear anything she is saying.

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Even though human nature is flawed within Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”, there is a chance for redemption near the story’s ending. In “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, the Grandmother has an epiphany with the Misfit that increases her chance for redemption. Throughout the entire story, the Grandmother is known for her selfish thinking and her one-track mind that, like many humans, is only focused on what she would like to do. Redemption for

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1054 Words | 5 Pages

“A Good Man is Hard to Find” a short story written by Flannery O’Connor, a contradiction within itself. By reviewing this short story, we can learn about justice, religion and what it means to be a good man. If we look at how O’Connor represents the conflict of interest in the characters, we will see that this short story warps the idea of humanity, which is important because internally every person has a darker side. These characters just so happen to be wearing that darker side on their sleeves as they go about their daily life.

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1393 Words | 6 Pages

In “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” Flannery O’Connor creates a story where the roles of good and evil blend together. In the short story, a family in the rural South gets caught up with a criminal named the Misfit after their wreck and they end up getting murdered. The clash between the grandmother and the Misfit highlights the religious aspects of the story and also O’Connor’s beliefs. Her stylistic traits of violence, distortion, and religion are used to convey a corrupt world that needs salvation. O’Connor’s trait of violence is used throughout to reveal the corrupt and criminal world that emanates the need for salvation.

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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.

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844 Words | 4 Pages

The misfit gains awareness of human morals when he kills the grandmother and he says, "She would have been a good woman...if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life" (O 'Connor 1020), he then realized that she wasn 't all that good. O 'Connor did a good job of interpreting the grandmother as a way to put away the values of the old Southern America; she also interprets the Misfit as a type of common man who is defiantly not perfect which can a realistic version of the new Southern America. In "A Good Man is Hard to Find", the irritating grandmother cares more about matters such as her appearance and manners, she dressed her best for the car ride and the reason for her doing this is so that "In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would at once know that she was a lady." (O 'Connor 1010). The grandmother is a very selfish woman, the first thing she said to the Misfit is "You wouldn 't shoot a lady, would you?"

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