Summary Of A Good Man Is Hard To Find By Flannery O Connor

In the short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, Flannery O’Conner uses, for the most part, limited omniscient third-person narration; its use establishes the misconception of what a “good” man really is. During her story, O’Conner paints the picture of a dysfunctional family, a self-righteous grandmother, a misfit, and a confused society. The story begins with the third-person narrator explaining the grandmother’s desire to visit old friends in Tennessee; when her son rejects her, she resorts in using manipulation (Kirszner & Mandell, 2012). Throughout the story we realize that the “Christian” grandmother is self-absorbed, materialistic, controlling, racist, a liar, etc. During the family’s trip the grandmother reminisces about her life; it is at this point that we learn what a “good” man really is. A good man is wealthy, comes from an influential family, has authority, and social status. Two examples of “good” men, from the

Miraculously, there is a car that comes along and the family believes they will receive some aide. Unfortunately, the group that gets out is the misfit and his two accomplices. The series of events that take place following their meeting is grim. One by one they are shot to death, leaving only the grandmother and the misfit to converse about life. Oddly, the grandmother repeatedly calls the Misfit a “good” man; this is her effort to manipulate her way out of her situation. As the story comes to a close, she receives one moment of clarity before being shot to death and thrown in the ditch with the rest of her family. The misfit comments that she would have been a “good woman” if she had been shot everyday of her life (Kirszner & Mandell, 2012). Essentially, the grandmother was only a “good” person when she faced her own mortality; this is what it would take for her to see her own hypocritical self truthfully and