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Similarities Between A Good Man Is Hard To Find And Where Are You Going Where Have You Been

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In the stories “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” by Joyce Carol Oates, and “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” by Flannery O’Connor, both of the main characters go face to face with evil. There are many similarities and differences though the two short stories. Both stories use the effects of epiphany to generate a newfound description, as well as different types of dialect and characterization to describe each of the characters. In “A Good Man Is Hard To Find”, epiphany is displayed as the Grandmother tries to convince the Misfit to let her go. The grandmother cries, “Why you’re one of my babies. You’re one of my own children!” (O’Connor 28). O’Connor displays that the grandmother finally realizes with epiphany, that she is very sinful …show more content…

Instead Oates uses very descriptive words to describe the characters. Oates describes Arnold Friend as having “shaggy, shabby black hair that looked crazy as a wig” (Oates 2). This simple little description is packed with detail that gives readers a good sense of what Arnold Friend looks like and how he acts as he is pulling up the driveway. Through description, he has “traits of that arch-deceiver and source of grotesque terror, the devil.”(Wegs 3). Oates also describes Arnold Friend’s Car as having distinct characteristics such as, “being painted bright gold” (Oates 2), “ARNOLD FRIEND was written in tarlike black letters on the side, with a drawing of a round, grinning face that reminded Connie of a pumpkin, except it wore sunglasses” (Oates 3), and “the left rear fender had been smashed and around it was written, on the gleaming gold background: DONE BY CRAZY WOMAN DRIVER.” (Oates 3). By describing everything in the story in great detail, Oates creates a differently presented story straying away from O’Connor’s southern dialect …show more content…

Specifically in “A Good Man Is Hard To Find”, O’Connor places the grandmother, who continues to live in the past connecting everything to her time, face to face with a dangerous escaped inmate. Before the accident the grandmother says, “In my time, children were more respectful of their native states and their parents and everything else.” (O’Connor 5). The grandmother is trying to drag the attention to herself on the long car ride and she wants everyone to live her false world with

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Myles Hypse February 3rd, 2017 English 1B 3:30-4:40pm Two Psychopaths Both of these stories give the reader a good look into the eyes of two psychopaths, who both refuse to take no for an answer. One of them, Arnold Friend although at first appearing friendly, is nothing more than a malicious predator, similar in kind to The Misfit, who greets his victims in a much more sinister way. The two characters, when stood side by side, almost seemed as they become one, yet are polar opposites. When one compares the character Arnold Friend to that of The Misfit, more similarities come forward than differences.

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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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688 Words | 3 Pages

In the story "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor, there is no doubt the reader should consider the grandmother a villain. Throughout the story, it is easy to assume the grandmother would eventually lead the family to some sort of downfall. The grandmother has many traits that make her a villain, and through her judgemental nature, selfish acts, and inability to stop talking, she leads her family and herself to their death. Throughout the story it is obvious that the grandmother is very judgemental of people and seems to consider herself as better than everyone.

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1595 Words | 7 Pages

AF arrived to the house wearing sunglasses but when he takes them off Connie sees that “his eyes were like chips of broken glass that catch light in an amiable way” (par. 55). The Devil has bright little slits as eyes that look as if they glow and reflect light. AF has the same type of eyes and covers them with sunglasses at the beginning. After lying to Connie about his age, AF smiles to reassure her showing that “his teeth were big and white” (par. 84). Arnold’s teeth are scary like the Devil’s, who has big, monstrous teeth that look ready to devour easy targets like Connie.

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1137 Words | 5 Pages

With the stories “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” by Flannery O’ Connor, and “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates, happen to have some common ideas throughout each story. One common idea happens to be that their is a main antagonist or predator, who seem to attack/prey on the women. In each story, it shows that there was a part where each woman took time to talk to these men who were controlling the situation and deceiving the women, using violence to kill the poor innocent women. Both antagonists are good at ‘killing’ and they both know that they are, because they know what they are doing- causing tragic problems. Ideas like these are important because you see how men, in that time period, were being perceived and portrayed-

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1142 Words | 5 Pages

Her final act towards the Misfit was not out of charity, but in attempt to save herself. Set in the South in the 1950s, the grandmother dutily satisfied the stereotypes that blossomed within her generation. She speaks of the older days, when children were more respectful, and good men were easier to find. However, she never expresses what defines a good man, which suggests her unsteady moral foundation. The grandmother also explicitly articulates the racism that was unfortunately common in the South, ironically prevalent in the religious and upper middle class circles like the ones she belonged to.

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1371 Words | 6 Pages

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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1097 Words | 5 Pages

The grotesque psychopathic nature of the characters in Flannery O’Connor’s, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” ironically shows how a good man does not truly exist through the revelation and proclamation of what characteristics a good man possess. In the story The Misfit shows characteristics of a psychopath by escaping prison and killing an innocent family. However, The Misfit isn’t the only character in the short story to show psychopathic tendencies. The grandma also shows some characteristics of a psychopath because she does not care or show remorse for her family who was brutally murdered

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1094 Words | 5 Pages

In "A Good Man is Hard to Find," despite the grandmother's apparent belief in her moral supremacy-which she expresses through her self-proclaimed identification as a

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Freeman Bailey Freeman Hensley English 11/ Fourth Period 05 March 2018 Part 14: Rough Draft #2 In Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” she writes, “If you would pray,’ the old lady said, ‘Jesus would help you.’

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In the stories “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and “Cathedral”, Flannery O’Connor and Raymond Carver use unexpected figures and characters as a way to change the main character’s personality and thoughts. In both stories, the authors create characters that are introduced in order to change the main character’s thoughts. In “A Good Man is Hard to Find”,

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1559 Words | 7 Pages

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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946 Words | 4 Pages

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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1743 Words | 7 Pages

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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1254 Words | 6 Pages

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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