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A Good Man Is Hard To Find Style Analysis

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Southern gothic is a unique style of writing that takes a certain finesse to utilize. Flannery O’ Connor does it splendidly in her short story, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”. She takes dark humor, a southern twang and combines them to bring that unique to her southern gothic style. O’Connor graduated from Georgia State College in 1945 and went on to earn her Masters in Fine Art at Iowa State University in 1947. She even went on to go on to win a National Book Award. Primarily, the author focuses on writing short stories and, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” is no different. This story is about a family vacation that goes terribly wrong. From an ill-tempered grandmother with a bad memory to a car accident with a few problematic witnesses the author employees foreshadowing throughout the entire story. O’Connor uses a unique blend of setting, tone, irony, and character development to make this short story a quick yet fascinating read. One of the fundamental elements of the southern gothic style of writing is roots in the American south. …show more content…

The ironic twists in the story are dark and grotesque. The sub-plot of the story is about an escaped convict on the loose heading toward Florida. Ironically, this is the same destination that the family is headed toward. Early on in the short story the grandmother says, “The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida and you read here what is says he did to these people. Just you read it. 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.” Due to a couple of wrong turns, the family has the misfortune of being in a car accident witnessed by no other than The Misfit himself. He orders the family out of the car, and the family does not survive the encounter. The Misfit proving the grandmother quite right, that he was not a good

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1142 Words | 5 Pages

Her final act towards the Misfit was not out of charity, but in attempt to save herself. Set in the South in the 1950s, the grandmother dutily satisfied the stereotypes that blossomed within her generation. She speaks of the older days, when children were more respectful, and good men were easier to find. However, she never expresses what defines a good man, which suggests her unsteady moral foundation. The grandmother also explicitly articulates the racism that was unfortunately common in the South, ironically prevalent in the religious and upper middle class circles like the ones she belonged to.

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1371 Words | 6 Pages

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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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

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965 Words | 4 Pages

She put her imperfect characters in often times disturbing conditions. Her writing delved into religion and the morality of her characters when such situations arose. O’Connor brilliantly uses dark twists and foreshadowing to give her stories an additional appeal. In “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”, the story opens with the grandmother not wanting to go to Florida on account of the fact that a murderer had escaped and was on the loose(361). This exemplifies O’Connor’s proficient use of foreshadowing.

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Freeman Bailey Freeman Hensley English 11/ Fourth Period 05 March 2018 Part 14: Rough Draft #2 In Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” she writes, “If you would pray,’ the old lady said, ‘Jesus would help you.’

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915 Words | 4 Pages

The family stops for lunch at “The Tower and meets a character called Red Sammie Butts. This is where the grandmother strikes up a conversation with him. They talk about how it was back in the olden days when there were good people and Red Sammy states, “A good man is hard to find,” (Lawrence 410). The Misfit is the second major character in the story after the grandmother. The Misfit is an escaped criminal who comes in contact with the grandmother and her family when they get into an accident on the road.

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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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1321 Words | 6 Pages

One of O’Conner acclaimed work is “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” A family plans a vacation to Florida, but the Grandmother suggests to go to Tennessee, the place she grew up, instead because a serial killer, The Misfit, is in the loose headed to Florida. The family dismisses the Grandmother attempt and embark on a trip to Florida. The Grandmother, using her cunning ability, convinces the family to take a detour to visit an old house "with treasure". The family listens and heads toward the old house.

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1016 Words | 5 Pages

The story opens with a man named Bailey who is going on a trip with his family to Florida. However, his mother had other plans and becomes the "manipulative grandmother lecturing her apathetic son" (Sparrow). At first she tries to convince her son to change the trip destination saying ""(O 'Connor). It might be inferred that she meant well by warning Bailey about the prison escapee traveling in the same direction. Unfortunately, later in the story the reader finds out that .

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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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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.

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734 Words | 3 Pages

The story begins with a discussion about the trip's location and the grandmother's immediate abrasive behavior. The family's journey to Florida is set up as a road trip through the rural South, adding to the setting's significance. As the story progresses, the family takes an isolated road, that the grandmother thinks is the right road, that leads them into the path of an escaped convict known as "The Misfit. " The setting of the story serves as a strong inner feeling of impending doom or misfortune, foreshadowing the danger that awaits the family.

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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

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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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