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Irony In Flannery O Connor's Good Country People

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Good Country People by Flannery O’Connor is an ironic tale that demonstrates the fact that there is no such thing as “good” or “bad”. Often these are the words used to characterize people, yet no one fits either extreme. No one is inherently evil. Instead, most people exhibit a combination of these characterizations. O’Connor presents this truth through the use of irony. The title Good Country People suggests that O’Connor is about to present a tale, in which the characters are exceptional people whose behavior the reader can potentially learn from to better his/her own life. However, Good Country People is infused with characters who display, so-called “good” traits, on the surface. Yet, an in-depth analysis of each character clearly …show more content…

Hopewell’s daughter, displays deep anger and bitterness toward everyone she associates with. There are two reasons for her anger. The first is related to the health problems she is facing with her artificial leg and her heart condition. The second reason is because she believes that she is too intelligent for the people who surround her and she would rather be lecturing at a University with people who understand her; instead of remaining in the countryside with people that she deems are beneath her. In fact, her inability to teach at a University is probably the main cause of her anger because she never complains about her heart problems or her artificial leg, in fact she does not hesitate to prove to people that she can function as well as anyone else; as demonstrated when she climbed up the latter ahead of the Bible salesman. However she constantly speaks philosophical statements to her mother, which suggests that she has a bruised ego, because she is unable to teach despite the fact that she earned a Ph.D. in Philosophy. These are the reasons she expresses her annoyance by making unnecessarily loud noise with her wooden leg whenever she moves around and she directs random outbursts toward her mother for no specific

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In other words, Mrs. Hopewell does not recognize the fact that Mrs. Freeman desires to know everything about Mrs. Hopewell’s life, instead Mrs. Hopewell perceives the lower class Mrs. Freeman as just desiring to work hard; hence, Mrs. Hopewell ’s sense of superiority causes her to become ignorant of Mrs. Freeman’s true intentions, alike to

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O’Connor successfully conveys humanity through realistic and uncomfortably relatable or recognizable characters. She illustrates the human ability to be redeemable, but amplifies it with characters who require the grace of God to get them there. It is almost a challenge to her readers to be better people. O’Connor grew up in the rural south, seeing discrimination with her own eyes, but was still able to hope that humans could change for good. It’s a good idea to read her works because they include messages like the one in this, and could help people see the world more clearly, in a less selfish way.

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Flannery O’Connor’s success as a writer was indubitably related to her own personal physical and mental failures; without them it is doubtful that she would have become one of America’s greatest fiction writers. It was through her suffering that she was able to relay so much allegorical understanding of her characters and bring them to life (and sometimes death.) Because of her debility with Lupus she became a fearless alliterator that disturbed the entire literary world, even until today. One of her greatest short stories provides insight into her personal life of misfortune above and beyond the others. A biographical and psychological analysis of "Good Country People” is that it was written by the author Flannery O'Connor as an emotional

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In 1790, Judith Sargent Murray, a writer and publisher from Massachusetts, published an argument regarding the equality of sexes. In Murray’s opening sentence she states, “our souls are by nature equal to yours.” The statement provides insight of the purpose of her argument, that men and women are equal. The men and women breathe the same breath of God, and that neither is lower than the other. Murray says that from her observations there are “as many females as males, by the mere force of natural powers, have merited the crown of applause.”

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Flannery O’Connor, in her short life, wrote one novel and many short stories that impact literature to this day. She wrote two superb short stories, A Good Man is Hard to Find and Good Country People, which have many similarities hidden in the theme of their complex text. While both stories include themes about religion, identity, and the way we view others, the endings are astoundingly different. Nonetheless, O’Connor’s main theme concerning the way we view other people, is the most significant in both short stories. In Good Country People, Mrs. Hopewell repeatedly states that the bible salesman is the “salt of the earth” meaning that he is just a good and simple country boy.

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The use of irony in “A Good Man is Hard to Find” Flannery O’Connor makes liberal use of irony, an important literary tool, in her story “A Good Man is Hard to Find”. The author juxtaposes a seemingly sterling protagonist, the Grandmother, with an abominable antagonist, the Misfit. The meeting of these two main characters culminates in the unexpected murder of a family of five who had set off, innocently enough, on a vacation. Through irony, the author elicits doubt as to which of the two main characters may be the more steadfast and congruent person.

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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 the 1953 short story titled “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor, readers are given a glimpse of what the end of the story may look like through use of foreshadowing, symbolism, and other literary techniques. Although the story looks to be an innocent story of a family who travels to Florida for vacation at the start of it, readers soon find out that the story has a darker twist to it. This family trip turns violent and this gruesome ending can easily represent the violence taking place in America during the time this story was written by O’Connor and even today. The short story starts off with a family of six- parents, a grandmother, and three children-

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O’Connor’s use of satire and how morbid the characters give the reader to not sympathize with them because of their pettiness, ludicrous, and so irredeemably gauche character. “O’Connor creates hearty guffaws and cries of horror, then

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Flannery O'Connor's stories gave the idea of what she wanted to show, which was to show humor with a violent twist. She wanted to be able to change her stories which made her write in a different way. For instance, her story “ Good Country people”, showed irony as well. There was a part where Mrs. Freeman said “ Some can't be that simple. . I know I never could.

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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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Everyday, she excels in her job of caring for the children and making a difference in the community. Due to her kindness she would always bring thoughtful gifts for the children. She doesn 't have to do the classes with the children everyday but she continues to do it like Sylvia says “school supposed to let out in the summer I heard, but she dont never let up” (Bambara 96). The lessons learned while earning her degree has lead her to becoming a positive role model in the children 's lives; nonetheless, teaching them lessons that may never learn from others. She shows her passion in the story by saying “she said, it was only her right that she take responsibility for the young ones’ education.

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A convict and a grandmother are more alike than the common one may think. In Flannery O’Conner’s story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”, demonstrates a similarity between the Misfit and the grandmother showing that good and evil are not the same in all individuals. O’Conner uses these certain characters to show the difference between good and bad, but in the end both the grandmother and the Misfit show a change in character. Flannery O’Conner’s catholic background has influenced all her stories. O’Conner’s family was one of the first to live in her hometown of Milledgeville, Georgia she also attended parochial school.

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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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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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