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

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Sin is to Death as in Death is to Sin “The soul who sins shall die.” (Ezekiel 18:20) This quote is from the bible, the quote helps us understand the story more. In “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” by Flannery O’ Connor, we are surprised by the violence at the end of the story. At first we think why there were so many deaths that occurred in the story, but when we read the story again we see that O’ Connor’s use of symbols demonstrate theme within the story. In “A Good Man Is Hard To Find”, Flannery O’ Connor shows the dirt road and the hearse-like automobile to illustrate how death is foreshadowed and led upon when the grandmother committed sin. My first example of death being foreshadowed is the dirt road. O’ Connor’s description of the dirt …show more content…

O’Connor foreshadows the death of the family saying “In a few minutes they saw a car some distance away on top of a hill, coming slowly as if the occupants were watching them. The car continued to come on slowly, disappeared around a bend and appeared again; moving even slower.” (O’Connor 380) and “It was a big black battered hearse like automobile. There were three men in it.” (O’Connor380) Flannery O’Connor uses many examples of figurative language like similes, metaphors, and personification to set the plot and structure of “A Good Man Is Hard To Find.” To describe the automobile, O’Connor writes alliteration describing the transportation device as big, black, and battered. The author also describes the car using the words “hearse-like.” A hearse is a vehicle that carries a coffin to a funeral. This demonstrates imminent death and the fate of the family! The hearse like car belongs to the Misfit, a killer that had escaped from prison. The car clearly shows a symbol of death. This automobile shows great importance of the family’s death when the grandmother lied where they were going to everyone else in the car. The hearse-like automobile carries the death to their resting place. Since the grandmother committed that sin, she is the cause for everyone in that car to be

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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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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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Elements of Southern Gothic Literature has multiple impacts on the endings of stories. Flannery O’Connor used Southern Gothic Literature in her short stories such as “Good Country People”, “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, and “The Life You Save May Be Your Own”. Flannery O’Connor uses spinsters, horifing endings, and mental insibility with one or more characters in the three stories previously mentioned. Flannery O’Connor used Souther Gothic Literature in many of her short stories for example, in “Good Country Poeple” O’Connor used spinsters, horrifying endings, and mental insibility.

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In many works of literature, authors use different styles and techniques to personalize their stories. In the story “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, Flannery O’Conner uses a variety of stylistic techniques that help the story be creative. O’Conner uses foreshadowing, which happens when the author uses hints throughout the story that tell the ending before it approaches, to make the story stronger.  The story is about a family vacation that ends in a deadly bloodshed. The title itself reflects that something bad will happen in the story and catches the reader’s eye.   

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The short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is revolved around many distortions that the author O’Connor creates to build meaning within the story. The novel presents characters that are characterized through many different symbols that result in an uncanny feeling for the reader. O’Connor’s “place” is the distortion in the story that causes conflict, creating the uncanny feeling in the story. O’Connor’s “place” also represents a different variety of symbols, creating the necessary meaning of the psychological realism. O’Connor utilizes distortion to create meaning in the story within her characters who represent the conflicts within the Catholic Church and dramatizes it with a complicated sense of humor.

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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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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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The balance of what is good and what is bad is a rather controversial topic in the story "A Good Man is Hard to Find". Most notably, the characteristics of both the Grandmother and the Misfit. The Misfit portrays an immoral personality and seems to be the evil in the story while the grandmother is the innocent lady seeking to be the good in this story. However, the religious virtues effect both personas and in itself draws the line around them mutually as sinners. Both characters have a particular relationship with Jesus, a physical crisis crossed with a spiritual crisis and different conceptions of reality; thus, revealing how the portrayal of these characters are not what may seem.

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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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