A Good Man Is Hard To Find Essay

If a person is manipulative and their actions are paid for with people’s lives, would they be considered good? In the story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor the grandmother shows qualities that ask that question. Three reasons why are the following, she is manipulative, selfish, and fake. There is no good man or good woman in this story. The grandmother manipulates her son into going to an old plantation that she visited when she was young. She does this by saying to the kids “There was a secret panel in this house, she said craftily, not telling the truth but wishing she were” (935). If there was a secret panel actually in the house that would be really cool, but there isn’t one. She says this so that the kids are interested. They whine and complain, begging their dad to go to the house. Eventually he decides to go to the house to get them to be quiet and quit complaining. The only reason the grandmother does this is because she wants to go to that house. Like mentioned in the last paragraph briefly, she is very selfish. The

The only time she is religious is when she is threatened by death. She mentions Jesus and praying a lot at the end, saying “If you would pray, Jesus would help you” (940). Throughout the whole story she doesn’t mention her religion, but suddenly when she is facing death she suddenly becomes religious. If she would have acted like she did at the end of the story throughout the whole story, she would have been a good woman. She is a fake religious person, only believing when she might die. There are many good people in life, but the grandmother was not one of those. She was manipulative, selfish, and fake. People paying for someone else’s mistakes isn’t good. Her being manipulative and selfish cost her life and her whole families lives. Throughout this whole story there is neither a good man nor a good