A Good Man Is Hard To Find Violence Essay

Violence is something of a common occurrence nowadays -- bombs in the Middle East to shootings in schools. Those are reckless acts driven by impulse but the opposite it true for literature. In some works it appears to be one of those random or wild act but there is a hidden meaning to all the violence; there is a story behind those hostile words. In Flannery O'Conner’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” she finds a way to present a quadruple homicide into a mindless act, with heartless diction and torpid tone to illustrate the theme of conflicting definitions of what makes a good man. The facade of the story is that of a family vacation that goes terribly wrong, yet, O’Conner waved violent scenes with lackadaisical diction to purposefully undermine

To try and find any good with a murderer is a task no one could do yet, the grandmother tried desperately to. The violence is never with any passionate emotions much as though it is something that everyone goes thru. This is expressed when O’Connor explains the last murder “... and shot her three times through the chest” (pg. 459). The relaxed, mindless way the murders are presented to the reader sets the tone that the homicides are nothing more than a character's exit, thus blurring the definition of what defines a good man, illustrated when the grandmother's hope of calling the Misfit good, would stop him from murdering her but, the misfit was unfazed and actually rebutted the statement. O’Connor hides little hints of the murders throughout the story, most prevalent on page 457 “ The grandmother couldn’t name what the shirt reminded her of” wheres as the previous page the grandmother uses her son's shirt as a plea for safety. For those that made the connection start to feel the disregard for the family that the Misfit feels. The tones O’Connor presents are amenable yet, at the same time have an overall sense of