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Hard To Find Theme

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The short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, written by Flannery O 'Connor is a southern gothic heavily imbued with multiple themes. The short story revolves around a family taking a road trip to Tennessee. The short story, written primarily in third person direct discourse, gives the reader clear insight into the characters’ heads. Opening up with the grandmother imploring her son, Bailey, to take her along on the road trip with the rest of the family, the reader becomes acquainted with the insolent grandchildren. Flannery does well to construct a character list with diversified personality. This story is particularly ambiguous from the start, especially as it pertains to the title. at first glance, the title could be thought of as referring …show more content…

One by one, the Misfit orders his henchmen to take a member of the family into the woods and kill them in cold blood. However, the reader is confounded when the Misfit reveals that he was falsely imprisoned for his father’s death. O’Connor states: “The Misfit sneered slightly. ‘Nobody had nothing I wanted’ he said…’It was the head doctor at the penitentiary said what I had done was kill my daddy but I know that for a lie. My daddy died.. of the epidemic flu and I never had a thing to do with it.’”(pg 148). The reader does not expect this information to be revealed. Subsequent to this revelation, the reader had been constantly bombarded with negative notions of the killer. This scene serves as an abrupt break of negative feelings towards the killer, and instead this animosity is replaced with subtle sympathy. This prompts the readers to re-evaluate the killers character, until he murders the rest of the family. Ultimately, the theme is how widespread beliefs of a person can misconstrue their nature. This misunderstanding can result in the distortion of a person’s character, transforming them into something they never would have become. This is extremely applicable to the Misfit. Throughout the story, the reader becomes aware of the inherent negative perceptions of the misfit. This elicits hatred of the misfits in the eyes of the reader. However, this particular scene

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The Misfit and Arnold Friend both provide to be effective authoritative predators in persuading their victims to follow their directives which ultimately lead to their unfortunate deaths and abduction. Both characters in each of these short stories also exhibited insinuated religious implications that related them mainly to two major figures in religion, Jesus and the Devil. After analyzing The Misfit and Arnold's relationship with their respective main characters, many differences were also noted that separated them as individual manipulators that each performed their own tasks to get what they

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O’Connor then uses the horrific events that unfold as a result of the misfits actions to show readers how allowing one’s selfish desires

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The Misfit claims he was convicted of a crime that was not committed and buried alive in prison for killing his father. Being made to suffer for a crime which was not committed does not seem fair to this character.. The Misfit quotes on page 509,” I never was a bad boy that I remember of...” The Misfit is not actually a bad person he may have been sexually abused in prison or experienced some form of domestic violence as a child. The story describes the character as a man, why then does he refer to himself as a boy?

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Flannery O’Connor’s, “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, relies on the Southern Gothic genre, specifically emphasizing the grotesque nature of humanity through the main characters. The grandmother and the Misfit, share a strange connection, which is made apparent through their confrontation. The thematic peak of the story includes an offer of grace delivered by The Misfit and the grandmother's recognition of that gift as a result of the epiphany she encounters just before her death. In this story, through allusion and imagery we perceive the grandmother’s Catholic origins and through conflict and ironic metaphor we observe her relationship with The Misfit as having parallels to the story of Jesus. O’Connor’s short story demonstrates that those in

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The Misfit is portrayed to the grandmother as an erratic criminal a loose and seeking new victims. The grandmother‘s initial instinct is to fear this individual and she even claims, “I wouldn’t take my children in any direction with a criminal a loose in it” (1285). She assumes his morals are corrupt and presumably labels him as a predator. Later in the story, we quickly see an allusive shift in the grandmother’s beliefs at the arrival of The Misfit. The importance of their conversation is centralized around the religious factor that allows readers to confer The Misfit is not as we expect.

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His anger, while powerful also shows his weakness. After The Misfit takes off his glasses, O’Connor describes his eyes as “red-rimmed and pale and defenceless-looking”. The color red in this case illustrates his passionate volatility. By using the color red with a descriptor of “pale”, the passion that red normally insinuates instead presents to us The Misfit 's emotional weakness. More on the Misfit’s frailty, when The Misfit is first introduced, his movements are rather timid and “He had on tan and white shoes and

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Throughout the story the misfit is getting introduced as a bad guy because he was in jail and killed somebody, but as the text progresses his character begins to change. The Misfit’s anxiety and ocd becomes apparent as he is further illustrated. When first seeing the family he is nice to the family, kindly saying “good afternoon,” until the grandmother recognizes him as the Misfit (O’Connor). This causes him to have a reaction which might be subtle to the naked eye. The kind of reaction that they misfit is experiencing is similar to anxiety.

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The story revolves around a man named the Misfit, Bobby Lee, a grandmother and her family. In the book, “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” by Flannery O’Connor,” the theme of the story is about how our past is always a part of us and accepting it. The misfit is a criminal in the story, it is assumed by the text that the crime he commits is most likely murder.

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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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Redemption is the act of being saved from acts of evil and sin. The debate of whether human nature is redeemable or not has been one to plaque religious scholars. In Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, this question continues in the interactions between the characters; the most notable being the Grandmother of a rather horrible family and the Misfit, a murderer. While on a road trip, these two characters’ paths collide and lead to a rather unfortunate end where the Grandmother and her family are killed. While many readers believe the ending creates and overall negative tone of the story, some believe that there is a hope for redemption; the story’s author O’Connor who is a devoted Catholic included.

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The Misfit introduced briefly at the beginning of the story and is seen as an unrealistic character and too many as a lie from the grandmother to change the family plan. However, as the story continued, we got to know the Misfit for what he really is. He’s a murderer who doesn’t feel anything anymore. The Misfit is not your typical villain. When talking to the grandmother, He seemed to have a soft side to him, even though he ends up murdering her.

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It can be made clear that the Misfit and his two Hench men stole clothes from their victims after killing them. When first seen the Misfit was without a shirt, but then the grandmother recalls saying “Thow me that shirt, Bobby Lee”. The evil portion of this is that they not only kill the family, but they take their clothes and leave them in the dark forest without a trace. The Misfit

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The Misfit is seen as being a part of reality and only believing what he sees with physical evidence. He also stays true to his morals of what he believes is right and wrong, especially when it comes to showing the equality of no mercy among the family members. Both characters reveal their use of Jesus, the spiritual battle that inhibits them and their concepts of reality. All of this gives insight to how there are no good or bad characters at the finale of this story. The battle of morality between the two characters only shows the

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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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(6:27). O 'Connor presents both the view of the Misfit as a fellow human being in pain, and the feeling of love for him, as a gift from God. The grandmother as a human being, is prone towards evil and selfishness, so she could never have come to feel such love without God 's help, as this man was going to kill her. This moment of grace is incredibly important in the story. The Misfit kills the grandmother, withdrawing from her and what seems foreign to him (human compassion), but the grandmother already had her moment of redemption.

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