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Pride In A Good Man Is Hard To Find

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According to Dictionary.com, pride is “a high or inordinate opinion of one's own dignity, importance, merit, or superiority, whether as cherished in the mind or as displayed in bearing, conduct, etc”. In the Christian religion pride is one of the deadly sins that are punishable in the after life. The characters that Flannery O’Connor uses to attack the sin of pride are Joy Helga in “Good Country People” and the grandmother in “A Good Man is Hard To Find”. In “A Good Man is Hard To Find” the grandmother is very prideful and this actually leads to the death of her family. When the family’s car breaks down the grandmother identifies the Misfit. Then the Misfit says “but it would have been better for all of you, lady, if you hadn’t of reckernized me.” The grandmother is also prideful in the way that she says “You wouldn’t shoot a lady would in.” She didn’t even care for her family; the only person that she really cared about was herself. This was selfish and prideful and even lead to her death, which is symbolic of pride killing you. June Star is prideful when she says “I don’t wanna hold hands with him” and “he reminds me of a pig.” Also another thing that Star says is “I wouldn’t live in a broken down place like this for a million bucks.” This insult of Red …show more content…

Hulga has a major problem with Pride. First she’s prideful of how smart she is. She hates the name Joy because it is a Christian name and is in the bible. Hugla is prideful through her knowledge, she does not respect other religions and thinks that other religions are stupid, which is pridefulness against her mother because she knew that this would make her mad. Also she is prideful in the way that she thinks she can seduce Manly Pointer when at the end of the book she is dumb struck when Manly Pointer leaves with her wooden leg. If Hulga wasn’t prideful and humble then this story would have had a happier

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Joy/Hulga affects a cynical façade, claiming not to believe in anything. (As she tells Manley, "I don 't have illusions. I 'm one of those people who sees through to nothing.") Yet by the end of the story, Joy/Hulga 's carefully constructed façade is shattered; through the dramatic irony in her absence of self-awareness to the situational irony pervading the final scene, O 'Connor ultimately reveals Joy/Hulga as an innocent who is shocked when she witnesses the beliefs she once espoused as embodied in Manley

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255 Words | 2 Pages

In a "Good Man Is Hard to Find" by Flannery O 'Connor, the contrast of good and evil is not as evident as it appears on the surface. The road that the family in the story travels symbolizes good up until the point the grandmother all but forces the family to make a detour onto a dirt road that leads to their demise. She is the unlikely antagonist in the story. A serial killer named, The Misfit, is the protagonist despite his homicidal actions. Both characters in the story help to illustrate how a relationship with God is perceived good and sacrilegious behavior is perceived evil.

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793 Words | 4 Pages

She uses the term good country people and “nice young men” (page 3) as insults to keep those types of people at arm’s length due to her insecurity; Manly Pointer could be described by both of those terms. When Hulga’s mother calls Manly the salt of the earth as a reference to him being a good country person she makes a rude remark about getting “rid of the salt of the earth” (page 4) so she could eat. Then during the meal she ignored him because she doesn’t believe that he is worth her time, but still observes “sideways how he handled his knife and fork” (page 5) like he is a science experiment and she is recording her data not observing him as a person of equal stature. All of these actions show the reader that Hugla does not partake in real life but prefers her make believe land where all of her assumptions are right before interacting with anyone or anything. When she does this to Manly Pointer it allows him to figure out what he needs to be to contribute to her needs without her getting in the

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756 Words | 4 Pages

Joy’s mother, Mrs. Hopewell, states that it is hard to think of her daughter as an adult, and that Joy’s prosthetic leg has kept her from experiencing “any normal good times” that people her age have experienced (O’Connor 3). Despite the fact that Joy has no experience with people outside of her home, Joy has contempt and spite around her mother and acquaintances alike. In fact, when Joy changed her name to Hulga, she considered it “her highest creative act” and found a self-serving pleasure when the name brought dissatisfaction to her mother (O’Connor 3). When Joy expresses her disgust with her hometown, she also shares that she would much rather be “lecturing to people who knew what she was talking about” (O’Connor 4). Therefore, Joy suggests that the people and ideas that have surrounded her are inferior to her intelligence, and this

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446 Words | 2 Pages

Losing Doodle “It's okay to lose your pride over someone you love. Don't lose someone you love over your pride. ”(Unknown) Pride is a powerful thing. It can kill and raise up, it can keep you from admitting your wrong.

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One of the seven deadly sins is the act of having too much pride. Pride in general is not an evil feeling to have. It is human to have pride in oneself, but having too much pride is unhealthy and will cause problems somewhere along the way. Two characters who show a harmful amount of pride are Sylvia from Toni Bambara’s “The Lesson” and Sammy John Updike’s “A&P”. A famous quotation states “Pride (arrogance) comes before Destruction... and a haughty spirit, before a fall.”

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If someone has too much pride, then it can cause them make the wrong decisions. Nobody should ever judge a book by the book’s

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To be prideful is human nature, even when it hasn 't been earned. Being proud of who you are and what you have accomplished is an important part of everyone 's life, but sometimes we are prideful without something to be proud of. This kind of pride is shown in the play A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry through the character Walter Younger. He enters the play with a false sense of pride in being a man, despite the fact that he is a chauffeur who is struggling to support his family. Throughout the plot, he struggles with acceptance of his social status and economical situations, but ends up achieving true fulfillment in simply being proud of who he and his family are as people with aspirations.

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In the short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, Flannery O’Connor’s goal is to teach her readers an important lesson. By presenting an exaggerated and flawed character, and through a peek into her life, she displays the consequences of many faults, but most importantly, the danger of a lack of self-awareness. By the end of the story, the main character, Grandmother, has had an epiphany, brought on by a traumatizing event. By giving them an outside view of the folly of her character, Flannery O’Connor hopes to warn her readers of following the same path that will inevitably lead to destruction in some way or another.

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1287 Words | 6 Pages

Characters can change a great deal throughout the course of a story. Based off of "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," we see just how much a character will change. There are many reasons for the character shift (undergoes an inner change) that are left up for our interpretation, which can be read about in The Theory Toolbox. In "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," the grandma undergoes a great deal of shifting in her character.

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868 Words | 4 Pages

“She had a vision of the name working like the ugly sweating Vulcan…” (O’Connor 484), Vulcan is the Roman god of fire and also a blacksmith, furthermore, someone similar to Vulcan is Hephaestus, the Greek god of fire and blacksmith as well. This is related to Hulga’s name change because Joy did not represent her, therefore, she decided to change it to Hulga. That is why she mentions Vulcan when she is having a conversation with her mother. Hulga can relate to him because, Hephaestus had a limp, he is ugly, and physically undesirable. Hulga fits all of those categories in a way, she had a limp because she did not have a leg, she was not physically ugly, but the way she thought of herself was, and she was undesirable because she did not take care of herself properly.

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831 Words | 4 Pages

In “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” the grandmother is a small-minded, selfish, and capable of foolish remark that transitions into a kind and righteous lady. She is drawn as a hypocritical, superficial and self-absorbed due to the fact that she does not take care or take any consideration of other people’s feelings. The grandmother grows, changing her character, attitude from the beginning of the story. The events which takes place in the story will illustrate that she is a dynamic character.

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1062 Words | 5 Pages

“Pride is a wonderful, terrible thing, a seed that bears two vines, life and death” (Hurst 2). This is how James Hurst describes pride in his heart-wrenching short story, “The Scarlet Ibis.” What speaks to me most about this quote is its profound truth. For the majority of people, pride is either a positive or negative thing, but what Hurst and I seem to agree about is the fact that pride can be both. It is an undeniable symptom of the human condition, a tool that can either create or destroy, and is responsible for the best and worst parts of history.

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Throughout the writing a tone of confidence shows through. As a reader, you can easily relate because confidence and pride go hand and hand in everyday life. To have pride you need to be confident to some degree and the same for the opposite. Considering this, the writing is very abstract and opinionated in the sense that pride is different for everyone depending on the circumstance. We realize this when reading whether it is taking pride in your store, watching your son graduate, or in your video games.

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As the intriguing storyline of Beowulf heightens and progresses, the theme of pride is consistently portrayed. Primarily, the characteristic is shown through Beowulf, the book’s epic hero. Through various predicaments and events that occur within the book, obvious signs of Beowulf’s pride are revealed, both good and bad forms of it. By demonstrating much intricacy, the author suggests that two separate forms of pride are present in the attitude of Beowulf although the reader can decipher the actual interpretation in assorted ways.

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