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Good Man Is Hard To Find Symbolism

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In “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” Flannery O’Connor uses symbolism to give a grander meaning to her shorty story. The story focuses on a good vs evil theme, the Grandmother vs the Misfit. “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” starts out with a family preparing to go on vacation in Florida. Their trip takes them down a dirt road, and into the waiting arms of the Misfit. This scene is where we see the direct contention between the Grandmother and the Misfit. Eventually leading to the deaths of the family and Grandmother. O’Connor uses nature, faith, and cars to influence the idea of the Good Vs Evil struggle between the Grandmother and the Misfit. The Grandmothers character is the embodiment of good, she is depicted as the savior. The clearest indication …show more content…

She puts a lot of focus on the sky, clouds, trees, and the sun. All of these hold a lot of symbolic significance in this story. The sky being representative of heaven, and the sun of god. The Misfit says “Don’t see no sun, but don’t see a cloud neither.” (127) Viewing the sky as heaven, and the sun as god it becomes apparent what the Misfit truly means here. In the middle of the day with no clouds, it would be virtually impossible to not see the sun, he’s insinuating that The Grandmothers faith is fading or there was nothing there for her to begin with. He also says “Ain’t a cloud in the sky”, referring to the fact that there is nobody around for miles, the family is indeed alone in this predicament. After the Misfit kills the Grandmother it’s said “her face smiling up at the cloudless sky” even in a tragic death she held her faith looking up at heaving and knowing her good heart transcended this world. The struggle of Good Vs Evil is very apparent in Flannery O’Connors “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” from the symbolism in the entrance with a hearse, to the cloudless sky death looking up at heaven. There’s enough evidence hear to understand that this stories core was truly about the power struggle of the Grandmother and the Misfit, both playing a role as black and white, or good vs

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Flannery O’Connor is a renowned Southern author, noted for her gothic works and heavily Catholic themes. She focuses predominantly on racial tensions, morality, and divine grace. The religious and moral themes of her short story, A Good Man is Hard to Find, converge on the character of the grandmother. Despite the self-proclamations of fulfilling what it means to be a Southern lady, Grandmother holds a superficial grasp of her religion. Throughout the story, the Grandmother never truly changed, only her ostensible actions did.

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In “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor, the author portrays the grandmother as self-centered, dishonest and prideful woman. The grandmother is an old, southern, Caucasian woman who describes herself as a good woman. Throughout the story, O’Connor shows how the grandmother’s pride, and selfishness leads her to unappreciated her family. She does not care about them, she only cares about herself and what will benefit her. The grandmother’s selfishness, judgmental actions, dishonesty put the family in danger.

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This notion of redemption is primarily seen with the Misfit and his character development away from the pleasure of a murderer. Had it not been for the collision of the Grandmother and his paths, redemption would have been unlikely, even unachievable, for him. O’Connor intended for this story to have a positive ending, despite the death toll that is present at the end of the story. With her Catholic beliefs, the small act of the Grandmother’s compassion and the Misfit’s questioning of his morals are rather impactful to each of their redemptions. Perhaps O’Connor’s religious views could be insightful to religious scholars on the question of whether human nature is

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The grandmother uses Jesus as a scapegoat to show how she is a child of God while the Misfit tells of how he really perceives Jesus and that there is no justification of his actions. In the event of the car accident, the Grandmother was left with a physical crisis that quickly showed as her family was sent off into the woods to be killed one by one. This soon transitioned to a spiritual crisis both between the Grandmother and the Misfit as she uses Jesus's name to try and escape her fate. This spiritual crisis leads the characters to express their personal conception of reality and how they perceive the revelation of the situation that they are in. The Grandmother has a sense that reality should revolve around her and that she should manipulate tools such as religion to benefit her outcome.

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The grandmother grew in that moment of death more than she ever did in the little parts that we read about her life, and she dies in peace. Her actions may have even changed the Misfit too. At the end, he says “she would have been a good woman if he 'd been there all her life to shoot her.” (366). This line confused me the first time reading it, but the second time around it made more sense.

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