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Analysis of Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man Is Hard to Find

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on May 25, 2021

Frequently anthologized, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” exemplifies Flannery O’Connor’s southern religious grounding. The story depicts the impact of Christ on the lives of two seemingly disparate characters. One is a grandmother joining her son’s family on a trip to Florida. Accompanied by a silent daughter-in-law, a baby, two unpleasant children, and her smuggled cat, she wheedles the son into making a detour to see a plantation that she remembers from an earlier time.

Moments of recognition and connection multiply as the seemingly foreordained meeting of the grandmother and the killer she has read about in the paper takes place. She upsets the basket in which she has hidden her cat; the cat lands on her son’s neck, causing an accident. Soon three men appear on the dirt road, and the grandmother recognizes one of them as the notorious killer the Misfit.

how to write a research paper on a good man is hard to find

Flannery O’Connor/National Catholic Register

O’Connor weaves the notion of punishment and Christian love into the conversation between the Misfit and the grandmother while the grandmother’s family is being murdered. Referring to the similarity that he shares with Christ, the Misfit declares that “Jesus thrown everything off balance” (27), but he admits that unlike Christ, he must have committed a crime because there were papers to prove it. When the grandmother touches his shoulder because she sees him as one of her own children, she demonstrates a Christian love that causes him to shoot her.

This story typifies O’Connor’s mingling of comedy, goodness, banality, and violence in her vision of a world that, however imperfect, most readers inevitably recognize as part of their own. O’Connor views the world as a place where benevolence and good intentions conflict with perversity and evil, and her protagonists frequently learn too late that their lives can crumble in an instant when confronted by the very real powers of darkness.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Kessler, Edward. Flannery O’Connor and the Language of Apocalypse. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986. Orvell, Miles. Flannery O’Connor: An Introduction. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1991

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A Good Man Is Hard to Find: Essay Topics & Samples

Flannery O’Connor’s short story has many more underlying ideas and symbols to discuss than you may think. If you decided to write a critical essay on A Good Man Is Hard to Find , don’t forget to read through the sections of the guide made by Custom-Writing.org experts!

Our specialists will write a custom essay specially for you!

First thing first, find a perfect topic for your essay. Ask yourself some questions regarding the motifs of the characters and the central conflict of the story.

  • What is the essence of being a “good man” for the Misfit and the Grandmother?
  • Why is the aspect of religion so important there?

The first section of this article contains a list of ideas that might help you write a great essay. The second one contains A Good Man Is Hard to Find essay samples that you are welcome to use for inspiration.

  • 💡 Essay Topics
  • ✒️ Essay Samples

💡 A Good Man Is Hard to Find: Essay Topics

Don’t panic if you don’t know where to start. Check out the prompts to help you write a successful A Good Man Is Hard to Find essay!

  • The age of the characters in A Good Man Is Hard to Find . Why do you think the main character has to be an elderly lady? Why does age matter in this case? Flannery O’Connor describes the Grandmother’s life in a pretty negative light. She is lonely and often relives the memories from the past. What does it hint at?
  • The meaning of being a “good man,” according to Flannery O’Connor . There’s no doubt that the concept of “goodness” is the main theme of the story. We can see that none of the characters can be an example of a “good man” because everybody’s perception of goodness is different. Is it possible to sum up the author’s point of view?
  • A Good Man Is Hard to Find : character analysis essay . This topic may be more complex than it seems! First of all, don’t forget to use our guide with the summary and analysis provided. Then, choose what character you want to write about. And don’t forget to include some quotes to prove your point!
  • How does the setting affect the plot and character development in the story? Undoubtedly, the Grandmother’s change is the story’s major plot point. You don’t want to miss that! In this analysis essay on A Good Man Is Hard to Find , you would need to focus on the literary devices that highlight the grotesque setting of this event.
  • How is the theme of the family represented in A Good Man Is Hard to Find ? Here, you should write about family dynamics in the Bailey family. You may want to start with the Grandmother, who seems to be such a nice lady but ultimately doesn’t care about her family.
  • The role of Red Sammy Butts in Flannery O’Connor’s story . What is this character’s function in this story? To drop the line that becomes the title of the story, or is there something more? Think about how Red Sam affects the Grandmother’s point of view.
  • The Grandmother’s epiphany as the main idea of the story . This A Good Man Is Hard to Find essay prompt focuses on the Grandmother’s revelation in the end. Only when facing her death could she understand what true grace and divine love are. Study this idea and write down your thoughts!
  • A Good Man Is Hard to Find and violence. Good vs. evil is the short story’s major theme , but think about whether all the victims are so necessary. The Grandmother is forced to hear her whole family killed. Is facing death the only way for her to experience an epiphany?
  • Symbolism in Flannery O’Connor’s short story . The author uses many literary devices, such as allegory and various symbols. For instance, the Grandmother’s hat is one of them, and the fact that it gets destroyed after the car crash has a meaning.
  • A psychoanalytic review of the Misfit’s character from A Good Man Is Hard to Find . This character is the most exciting one to analyze. The ever-changing beliefs and his point of view make the Misfit an extremely complex person. You would need to conduct a complete psychological analysis based on the description given in the story.

✒️ A Good Man Is Hard to Find: Essay Samples

Below you’ll find a collection of A Good Man Is Hard to Find essay examples. You are welcome to use them for inspiration!

  • Literary Devices in “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by O’Connor
  • A Good Man Is Hard to Find Analysis
  • A Good Man Is Hard to Find: Main Ideas
  • A Good Man Is Hard to Find: Literary Analysis
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find: Themes

A Good Man Is Hard to Find: Themes

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A Good Man Is Hard to Find: Characters

A Good Man Is Hard to Find: Characters

This Custom-Writing.org article contains all the information about A Good Man Is Hard to Find characters: the Grandmother, the Misfit, Bailey, June Star, John Wesley, Red Sammy Butts, and others. In the first section, you’ll find A Good Man Is Hard to Find character map. 🗺️ A Good Man Is...

A Good Man Is Hard to Find: Summary

A Good Man Is Hard to Find: Summary

Flannery O’Connor created a short story, A Good Man Is Hard to Find, as a part of a collection under the same name. The plot follows a family that goes on a road trip to Florida. They are not worried about the escaped criminal in that area, and it turns...

Discovering Good | Analysis of A Good Man is Hard to Find

By David Dingfelder

Flannery O’Connor explores the meaning of the word “good” through her short story A Good Man is Hard to Find . After a series of deceptions and wrongdoings, O’Connor depicts a grandma leading her family to be killed by a runaway outlaw named “The Misfit.” While the family was traveling to Florida for vacation, the true journey follows the grandma as she begins to understand the true meaning of the word “good” – the most general and most frequently used adjective of commendation in the English language (Oxford English Dictionary). To define a word so commonly overused and socially defined, O’Connor builds the concept of her definition of “good” through the grandma’s interactions with the other characters in the story. By virtue of her interactions with her family, Red Sammy, and “The Misfit,” the grandma transitions from complete ignorance, to misunderstanding, and finally to acceptance of what it means to be “good.”

Initially depicting the grandma as a flawed character with an entirely misconstrued understanding of the word enables O’Connor to establish what does not qualify as “good.” In addition to the grandma’s heedless acts of deception, the narrative uses children as a pure and untainted lens of judgment to expose the flaws in the grandma’s character. In response to the Grandma’s opening efforts to switch the vacation destination, the little girl June delivers a deeply profound critique: “[The grandma] Wouldn’t stay home for a million bucks… She has to go everywhere we go” (1). The establishment of Grandma’s flaws continues as O’Connor parallels the grandma’s perception of herself with the games of the children. Prior to departing on the trip, the grandma dresses with trimmed “collars and cuffs” so that “anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady” (2). This insight into the grandma’s mindset is soon followed by the description of the children identifying clouds in the sky. While seemingly insignificant, the sky serves as an extended metaphor for the grandma’s understanding of goodness across the work. The children identifying clouds signal the grandma’s clouded understanding of what it means to be “good.”  Rather than worrying about the wellbeing of her son or her family in the event of an accident, the grandma is primarily concerned with others perceiving her as a lady. The clouds symbolize the opinions of others that block to the true meaning of goodness, the sun.

The interaction between the grandma and Red Sammy initiates O’Connor’s discovery of the misunderstandings and contradictions involved in the word “good.” Early into the grandma’s discussion with Red Sammy, the definition of the word “good” becomes confounded as the grandma calls Red Sammy “a good man” immediately after Red Sammy defines a car as “good.” Instead of taking this as a compliment, Red Sammy is “struck with this answer” (6). Juxtaposing these uses of the same word exemplifies its overuse and stale meaning – explaining why Red Sammy feels no sense of satisfaction when complimented. O’Connor furthers the problematic use of the word when Red Sammy states, “a good man is hard to find” (6). This statement is riddled with irony as the word “good” is used profusely but a “good man” is uncommon – creating a paradox with which O’Connor argues that a word that represents anything also represents nothing. The conversation with Red Sammy also highlights the inconsistency in Grandma’s definition of “good.” The grandma compliments Red Sammy for being naïve and gullible with his interactions with the two boys stealing gas, yet condemns her granddaughter for her insightful and honest comment earlier. It becomes apparent that the grandma is not only flawed but she is also unsure of how to become good.

Through the grandma’s interaction with “The Misfit,” the story paints the grandma’s reverse bildungsroman moment by depicting a profound environment that accompanies her change in grieving and perceptions surrounding what it means to be good.

A raw and honest atmosphere is developed as O’Connor describes the cloudless sky with nothing around the grandma but the woods (9). Contrary earlier in the work, the clouds that blocked the sky had cleared, symbolizing the clarity in the grandma’s perception of goodness. Further, this moment of reckoning takes place on the side of a dirt road with the woods in the background – a natural and profound environment. The use of imagery hints towards the deeply philosophical understanding of morality and goodness that the grandma gains from this interaction.

The shift in the grandma’s grieving signifies the acknowledgment of what it means to be good. Immediately after the grandma realizes that the man was “The Misfit,” she selfishly questions, “You wouldn’t shoot a lady, would you?” (11). The use of the word “lady” again demonstrates that the grandma is still solely concerned about the perception of others, in addition to her not caring about her family. However, her grieving changes as she starts wailing “Bailey boy” for her son (12). This appears to be the first time in the work that the grandma is concerned about someone other than herself. This transition expresses O’Connor’s belief that goodness is an internal trait that is portrayed to – rather than perceived by – others. When the grandma stopped worrying about her perception and started worrying about her family is when she became good.

Further, O’Connor argues that goodness transcends superficial actions such as practicing religion. Despite the grandma’s attempts to pray, “she opened and closed her mouth several times before anything came out” (15). Her inability to pray symbolizes that prayer and religion do not equate goodness.  This realization is what causes the grandma to understand that no actions define what it means to be good. Despite their differences, the grandma now understands that little differentiates her and the misfit, stating, “Why you’re [The Misfit] one of my babies. You’re one of my own children” (16). In denial, The Misfit recoils at the accusation that he is good too and shoots the grandma three times. The grandma dies happily with “with her legs crossed under her like a child’s and her face smiling up at the cloudless sky,” tying back into the innocence and purity associated with children (16).

O’Connor’s development of a definition for the word “good” ultimately serves as a social critique. Due to the overuse of the word, the definition of “good” has been spread too thin, depriving the word of true meaning. While a grave ending, this short story serves as a reminder of that “goodness” is not obtained through performative demonstrations or self-centered thoughts. O’Connor’s choice to never fully define the word “good” indicates how the definition of “good” continues to elude us. On the path to becoming good, the first step is identifying what does not qualify as good.

Sources Cited

“Definition of Good.” UNC-Chapel Hill Libraries, Oxford English Dictionary,

www-oed-com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/view/Entry/79925?rskey=d7aiwZ&result=1#eid.

O’Connor, Flannery.  “A Good Man is Hard to Find.”  American Studies at the University of

Virginia, 2009, http://xroads.virginia.edu/~drbr/goodman.html.   Originally published in

T he Avon Book of Modern Writing .  New York: Avon Publishing, 1953, pp. 27-33.

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Interesting Literature

A Summary and Analysis of Flannery O’Connor’s ‘A Good Man Is Hard to Find’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘A Good Man Is Hard to Find’ is one of the best-known short stories by Flannery O’Connor (1925-64), who produced a string of powerful stories during her short life. First published in the collection A Good Man Is Hard to Find in 1955, the story is about an American family who run into an escaped murderer at a plantation.

Before we offer an analysis of some of the key details of the story, here’s a brief summary of its plot.

‘A Good Man Is Hard to Find’: plot summary

The story is about a grandmother, her son named Bailey, Bailey’s wife, and the couple’s three children, named June Star, John Wesley, and simply ‘the baby’. The family are going on holiday to Florida. At the beginning of the story, the grandmother points out to her son that a notorious criminal, known as the Misfit, is on the loose and she doesn’t think they should be going on vacation to Florida when the Misfit is rumoured to be heading there.

On their way to their destination, the grandmother tells the children a story of how she was courted by a wealthy man who used to leave her a watermelon every day with his initials, E. A. T., inscribed in it. However, one day a black boy saw the word ‘EAT’ on the watermelon and ate it. This story amuses the children.

The family then stop off for lunch a barbecue diner, The Tower, run by a man named Red Sammy, who talks to the grandmother about the Misfit. It is Red Sammy who remarks, ‘A good man is hard to find’, in reference to the dangerous convict on the loose.

When the family get back on the road, the grandmother persuades her son to take a detour to a plantation she remembers from her youth. She embellishes the story by inventing details, such as the idea that a secret panel concealed the family silver in the house.

However, she has misremembered where the plantation is: Tennessee, rather than Georgia (where the family are). When the grandmother’s cat escapes from his basket and frightens Bailey, he crashes the car into a ditch.

Another car approaches them. It contains three men, one of whom the grandmother recognises as the notorious Misfit. He seems familiar to her, as though she has known him for years.

When she blurts out that she recognises him, the Misfit tells them that it would have been better if she hadn’t recognised him. He talks to the grandmother while his two accomplices lead Bailey into the woods and shoot him. They then do the same with Bailey’s wife and the children. The grandmother tries to flatter the Misfit into sparing her life, telling him that she knows he’s a good man, but to no avail.

The story ends with the grandmother addressing the Misfit as one of her own ‘babies’ or ‘children’; the Misfit shoots her dead. The Misfit has the final word, observing that the grandmother would have been a good woman if she had had someone there ‘to shoot her every minute of her life.’

‘A Good Man Is Hard to Find’: analysis

The character of the grandmother is central to the dramatic power of ‘A Good Man Is Hard to Find’. The first two words of the story are ‘The grandmother’; the story begins with her warning her son about the escaped Misfit and ends with her being shot dead by the Misfit; the story opens with the third-person narrator’s reference to Bailey as the grandmother’s ‘only boy’ but ends with her addressing the Misfit as one of her ‘own children’.

And although ‘A Good Man Is Hard to Find’ is narrated by an impersonal third-person narrator, in terms of the story’s focalisation we remain close to the grandmother’s perspective on events, seeing things through her eyes and gaining access to her thoughts and feelings as the story approaches its shocking and dramatic climax.

The skill of O’Connor’s writing lies in her ability to shuttle rapidly between comedic moments poking gentle fun at the grandmother and darker plot developments. The point is not that the shift between these two very different modes seems awkward or out of place, but that O’Connor lends the already shocking moments at the end of the story an even more alarming element, through juxtaposing them with lighter comic interludes.

A central theme of O’Connor’s story is, as the title makes clear, goodness: note how the grandmother and Red Sammy’s repeated references to a ‘good man’ meet their match in the Misfit’s statement at the end of the story that the grandmother would have been a ‘good woman’ if someone had been there to (threaten to) shoot her at all times.

This statement of the Misfit’s also highlights another theme O’Connor is exploring: that of crime and punishment. The Misfit tells the grandmother that the punishments he has undergone don’t match with the crimes he has committed. But the story contains a religious angle, too, as exemplified by the grandmother’s epiphany at the end of the story, in which – when confronted with her own imminent death – she reaches out and acknowledges her killer as one of her ‘children’.

This blessing is in stark contrast to the Misfit, who – in almost Dostoevskian fashion – characterises Christianity as a case of either giving up anything and following Christ or rejecting him and doing as one pleases. Anything – murder, burning down someone’s house – is permissible and constitutes the only true pleasure one can get from life.

The grandmother’s final act of blessing (forgiveness, or a last desperate attempt to save her own life?) raises this petty, racially prejudiced, and comical old woman far above the level of the nihilistic Misfit and all he represents.

Of course, it may also be significant that the Misfit – who was accused by one of the prison psychiatrists of killing his own father – personally kills the grandmother, who represents an old and outmoded America. Flannery O’Connor’s story is about a changing America, and the text is marked by the Grandmother’s continual reminiscences about a better, simpler life when she was younger.

The story’s title, taken from Red Sammy’s conversation with the Grandmother in which they lament that the world has become debased and degraded during their lifetimes, places this mood and tone at the centre of the story.

In this connection, the grandmother’s attitude towards African-Americans is already outdated, even in 1955 when the story first appeared.

Her racial stereotypes , such as associating African-Americans with watermelons, the offensive words she uses to describe the black boy they pass in the car, and her casual presumptions about the lives of black people all mark her out as a representative of an older American outlook which is about to be entirely laid to rest with the onset of the US Civil Rights movement. (The Montgomery Bus Boycott , for example, occurred at the end of 1955, the year the story appeared.)

Viewed this way, ‘A Good Man Is Hard to Find’ might be productively analysed alongside a another key American text from the 1950s: Tennessee Williams’ play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof , also from 1955, similarly deals with the generational gap between an older America and the younger Americans who represent a new attitude, especially regarding race.

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Sample Research Paper On A Good Man is Hard to Find

Type of paper: Research Paper

Topic: Literature , Connor , Flannery , Ethics , Family , Life , Story , Suffering

Words: 1600

Published: 03/30/2023

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A Good Man is Hard to Find

Among American writers of the twentieth century, Flannery O’Connor holds a special place and has solid reputation as a representative of the unique American fiction subgenre – southern gothic. Despite being rather short, most of her stories convey important moral, cultural and philosophical messages while her peculiar techniques and choices reflect her own background. Indeed, Flannery O’Connor is among the writers whose literary legacy is closely intertwined with her biography, her family background, beliefs, experiences and challenges she was burdened with in the course of her rather brief life. The complex set of environmental factors which shaped her as a writer finds its reflection in one of her most popular short stories, A Good Man in Hard to Find. Probably, one of the most obvious aspects of O’Connor’s biography finding their reflection in her prose is the geographical and hence cultural setting she was born, raised and lived her entire life in. The writer’s family history is interwoven of the history of Georgia beginning with the nineteenth century, and both maternal and paternal lines of her relatives originate from either Milledgeville or Savannah (May 18). While the South is O’Connor’s birthplace and the location she was raised in, she spent her entire life in seclusion in a farm near Milledgeville and did not receive much public attention (May 18). However, southern mentality and culture really shaped her artistic vision which is mirrored in her stories and in the discussed short story as well. The connection of O’Connor’s geographic environment with her prose finds an obvious expression in her choice of location for A Good Man is Hard to Find. In the short story, the writer locates the narrative in Georgia, an authentically ‘southern’ state, and eventually counterposes it to Florida. As Hendricks (129) brilliantly notes, O’Connor depicts two modern families – those of Red Sammy and Bailey “who are far gone in spiritual exile”, with Bailey’s family being “completely indifferent to their roots in the old South”. As the family are on their way to ‘artificial’ Florida for vacation, the author goes on briefly describing landscapes and nature of Georgia, the location she knows so well. Flannery O’Connor might have implied criticism of the spiritual detachment from one’s native place, and in this case Georgia and the South in general, opposing it to her own attachment to her origins and native state: the boy in the story states that “Tennessee is just a hillbilly dumping ground” [] and Georgia is a lousy state too” (O’Connor). In addition, the story contains elements of racial issues which were especially visible in the southern states of O’Connor’s childhood and youth. Such traces of race relations are observed in the stories the grandmother tells to her grandchildren, for instance, the story about a noble man who brought watermelons to a lady and a ‘nigger’ boy. It is even quite possible that these stories are somehow rooted in the author’s own experiences and memories of living in the racialized South. In his biographical account, May (17) states that Flannery O’Connor was born with the two key factors which formed her literary style, and one of these factors is her inherent predisposition to development of lupus, a disease which cut her father’s life short and became the burden dominating over her adult life. Once she was diagnosed with lupus in 1952, she settled down in her ancestral farm in Milledgeville and struggled against her disease growing ducks and travelling to give lectures on literature and faith from time to time despite her health condition. Being burdened by this disease, O’Connor suffered from it throughout her adulthood and hence produced multiple characters characterized by various illnesses, disabilities or deformities – in different aspects. At the same time, it is quite obvious that the writer accepted her challenge and literally embraced the thought about her death sentence. Quite naturally, such a significant factor could not be overlooked in analysis of the writer’s contribution to literature. A Good Man is Hard to Find, in turn, contains subtle hints at the author’s disease and suffering, and the overall tone of the story is dominated by a kind of grotesque dark humor. In the story, the convict recognized by the grandmother states that “she would have been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life” (O’Connor). Indeed, the gun pointed at the entire family and at the grandmother in particular seems to be a symbolic expression for suffering, and a remarkable fact in such symbolism is that O’Connor does not equal suffering to evil. In fact, she seems to be promoting her own perception of suffering as that of an inseparable companion of goodness. “The gun of lupus shot her father and she lived with it pressed against her side” (Basselin 82); and the gun of suffering seems to keep all people at gunpoint. Thereby, O’Connor’s own perception of suffering as an inevitable aspect of goodness is conveyed in her character’s struggle. Indeed, the grandmother seems to be a skilled manipulator and a somewhat selfish woman until she comes across the callous convict on the run and faces the danger of death. It seems that for the writer good lies not in the lack of suffering but in the way a person accepts and embraces it. Apparently, in O’Connor’s life the disease was a kind of purifying suffering which fostered her moral improvement, while the gun pointed at the grandmother is a ‘creative’ force which evokes her best moral traits; yet it is too late. The second inherent biographical feature characterizing O’Connor’s life which was mentioned by May (17) is her ardent Catholic background, for she was born in one of the oldest and most devout Catholic families in the South. In fact, her religious background and influence of the church shaped her worldview, morality and perception to the great extent. Growing up in the Bible Belt state in the traditional Christian environment produced a great impact on her moral concerns, perceptions and experiences. Remarkably, the untimely death of Flannery’s father caused – as in her own case – by lupus did not destroy her faith or evoke anger or the sense of injustice in relation to God. Instead, O’Connor gripped on her faith even harder, and it generally helped her to understand herself as well as behaviors and imperfections of other people. In the discussed story, Flannery O’Connor’s religious background finds a vivid reflection, for the critical episode of the story, the one featuring the Misfit and the grandmother involved in the discussion, reveals the allusion to the fundamental religious mysteries of good and evil, as noted by Desmond (144). “A central principle of O’Connor’s Catholic theology, expressed by St. Thomas Aquinas and other theologians, is that evil has no being, and that evil always appears as a good to the one who commits it, i.e., as something good for him” (Desmond 144). Thereby, this principle supported by O’Connor literally blurs the line between the protagonist and the antagonist, between good and evil, between righteous and villainous characters. Moreover, O’Connor herself called the Misfit a “spoiled prophet” and was deeply interested in the role of the prophet in development of culture (Hendricks 128). The character of the convict reflects these facts through comparing himself to Jesus, musing over the latter’s resurrecting the dead and reflecting on good and evil. According to Hendricks (128), “the role of the prophet is to maintain the purity of the nation’s spiritual life”, and as O’Connor supported this prophetic view of history, it is quite natural that she positioned the Misfit in the place of a wretched prophetic figure who either purifies the grandmother’s thoughts or simply makes her wheedle. The common and completely plausible assumption is that the author’s background and experience influences art s/he produces, for art and literature are not produces in vacuum. As it can be seen from O’Connor’s short stories and particularly through closer reading of A Good Man is Hard to Find, family, religious and cultural background of Flannery O’Connor produced a great impact on her literary work. A writer with the distinctive and rather challenging life path enclosed in the cultural environment of the South, O’Connor produced the reflection of her Christian identity, her struggles with lupus and her cultural experiences in Georgia in themes interwoven in the plot, literary symbolism, narrative locations and characters of A Good Man is Hard to Find and other stories.

Works Cited

Basselin, Timothy J. Flannery O'connor : Writing A Theology Of Disabled Humanity. n.p.: Waco, Tex. : Baylor University Press, [2013], 2013. GCU Library Catalog. Web. 19 June 2016. Desmond, John, and Charles E. May. "Flannery O'connor's Misfit And The Mystery Of Evil." Critical Insights: Flannery O'connor (2011): 144-154.Literary Reference Center. Web. 19 June 2016. Hendricks, T. W., and Charles E. May. "Flannery O'connor's "Spoiled Prophet.." Critical Insights: Flannery O'connor (2011): 128-143. Literary Reference Center. Web. 19 June 2016. May, Charles E. "Biography Of Flannery O'connor." Critical Insights: Flannery O'connor (2011): 17-22. Literary Reference Center. Web. 19 June 2016. O’Connor, Flannery. A Good Man is Hard to Find, 1955. Web. June 20, 2016. <http://www.boyd.k12.ky.us/userfiles/447/Classes/28660/A%20Good%20Man%20Is%20Hard%20To%20Find.pdf>

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A Good Man Is Hard to Find: Critique Paper

Introduction.

Flannery O’ Connor’s works were paradoxical in the sense that element of religion, humor and horror appear at the same time. She has become famous especially as a short story writer and had an impressive collection in her short life of just 39 years. She died in 1964 from a disease called disseminated lupus, apparently passed on from her father. Conner’s childhood was among a deeply religious society in Georgia, which reflected in most of her writings as an adult. “Along with authors like Carson McCullers and Eudora Welty, Flannery O’Connor belonged to the Southern Gothic tradition that focused on the decaying South and its damned people”. (Flannery O. Connor (1925 – 1964), Books and Writers). The short story ‘A Good Man Is Hard to Find’ is considered by many as her finest work and appeared in a short story collection having the same name. Other notable works include Wise Blood, The Violent Bear it Away and Mystery and Manners (a prose collection). This paper is a critique of her best work ‘A Good Man Is Hard to Find’.

A person who is unfamiliar with the works of O’ Conner might be shocked at how the story ends. There is no indication of what will happen in the end throughout the story except when the family meets with the villain of the piece. The story starts off with a family starting on a vacation trip by road to Florida. The main protagonist of the story is the unnamed grandmother, her son, wife and two obnoxious children. The morning papers were full of news about an escaped convict referred as the Misfit. The grandmother who is not too keen to go to Florida attempts to change the destination by pointing out her son (and other family members) that they should not visit a place where a dangerous criminal is on the loose. But no one takes her seriously. The grandmother had secretly taken her cat along for the trip (packed into a bag) and by the end of the day jumps out of it on to the unsuspecting son who was driving. The car crashes even though no one is seriously hurt. While waiting for help (the place was on a deserted stretch) the Misfit along with two assistants comes along. The grandmother recognizes the man and it becomes necessary for the criminal to kill the whole family. He shoots them one by one including the grandmother who keeps waiting till the last. The reader is quite literally misled into believing that the plot will move sedately along even though an encounter with the Misfit is a possibility.

The story does not contain any real positive (not necessarily evil) characters except for the Red Sammy who runs a restaurant where the family has lunch during their trip. The family is also shown to have deep rooted Southern values and is concerned with those who fit in the society based on values and color. The instance where the grandmother refers to a black boy as nigger is evidence for this. The grandmother comes across to the reader as selfish, arrogant and manipulative. The son named Bailey is quite inefficient in handling things, but thinks of himself as otherwise. Bailey’s wife is shown to be a bit dull and the two children John Wesley and June Star are obnoxious and badly behaved. They also complain a lot about things in general. The Misfit who is evil personified “looks ‘educated,’ and apparently killed his own father. He is gray-haired, smart and chillingly exact. He is also polite, and can kill without much remorse.” (The Misfit, Character Guide, Free Study Guide: A Good Man Is Hard To Find by Flannery O’Connor – BookNotes).  The most ‘interesting’ part of the story is at the very end namely the verbal encounter between the grandmother and the Misfit. The woman’s naivety is clearly shown by her belief that all good men are rich, polite and well-dressed. The Misfit actually fits in with her image of a good man and she tries to reason with him not to kill her. In that moment, she even thinks of the Misfit as a long lost son. The man on the other hand is totally remorseless. He also seems to have grasped the character of the grandmother in such a short time because his words soon after killing her were that she “would have been a good woman… if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life”.

It is difficult to understand why such a deeply religious author should create characters that are hypocritical, dull, rude or evil without too many redeeming features in any of them. A typical reader will find it difficult to understand the reason why the plot moves towards its sickening climax. This would be applicable to people with normal sensibilities and maybe those readers who enjoy reading about shocking violence may be appealed by it. Beverly Lyon Clark, a contributing editor with Georgetown University has clearly endorsed this when she wrote that “My students have trouble dealing with the horror that O’Connor evokes–often they want to dismiss the story out of hand….”. (Classroom Issues and Strategies, Beverly Lyon Clark, Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964)). A typical reader will totally agree with this sentiment about the horror that the story evokes. Literary critic and author Alfred Castle has his own views which is quite similar to what has been said above. He writes that “The alarming story of an entire family’s ruthless extermination is easily summarized, if not easily understood.” (Flannery O Conner, Alfred Castle, a Good Man is Hard to Find, Literary Encyclopedia).

But the plus point here is that this horror and violence can enable a serious student of the work to think more deeply about human values or more specifically the lack of it. The thought that can come up in the mind of the student could be that all people have in them a basic tendency towards hypocrisy, racism and even evil. Clark goes on to say that the author tries to shock people into sensibility and awareness of religion through her writings. Castle also has similar views on her style of writing. According to him, people do not have the ability to choose the right action from the wrong ones. He adds that O’ Conner intends to tell her readers that this inability can only be corrected with God’s grace. But my personal feeling here is that there is nothing in the short story that indicates this reasoning. It is up to the reader to deduce all these from his or her own personal values and thoughts.

O’ Conner in her general writings agree that what she writes will shock people. But she adds that whatever comes from the South is generally considered to be ‘grotesque’ by Northern readers. She also caustically adds that anything really grotesque in Southern writing will be called normal by the same readers. Hence there is no use in writing a normal story. This cannot be a justification to write in the way that O’Conner does in most of her works.

Even though the story is laced with humor, the end result is that a person feels depressed at the end. The bleakness or negativity of the characters and the violence at the end is the reason for this feeling. There are plenty of authors who write more shocking stuff than what is seen in O’Conner’s works. Personally I feel that O’ Conner will only be an addition to that list. Of course the positive points that have been mentioned earlier (about making people think) still stand. There are other horror writers who write just to shock people (who like to be shocked) without any intention whatsoever to make people think. They do it just because there is a market for such writing. In that angle, ‘A Good Man Is Hard to Find’ does have the ability to make people think about good and evil and also about the grace of God. But that only happens if the reader also reads a well crafted criticism of the story. This is unlikely unless the reader is a serious student of literature or takes up the subject as a serious hobby. Otherwise the work my end up as being “dismissed offhand” or termed as “difficult to understand” by most readers. If not O’ Conner might be considered just as another writer who writes horror fiction (as mentioned earlier in this section). The person who enjoys her work will be a fan of horror fiction who like being shocked by such stories of evil.

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Dialogues in O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” Essay (Critical Writing)

The following analysis will be about the dialogue aspect of the narrative technique used by Flannery O’Connor in her short story A Good Man is Hard to Find and how it contributes to the story and its meaning. As the story abounds in numerous dialogue lines, it is particularly important to understand the sheer impact of dialogues on the perception of the story by readers.

The dialogue aspect of A Good Man is Hard to Find is the story’s key component for delivering the characters’ thoughts, their personalities, their points of view on the events described in the story, and, ultimately, for creating impressions of readers about each character. Therefore, the importance of dialogues to the story will be explained by analyzing certain significant quotes and indicating their contribution to the delivering of the story’s main ideas.

The nature of the Grandmother’s personality is already suggested in the very first pages of the story. When John Wesley asked the Grandmother why she would not stay home if she did not really want to go to Florida, little June Star said: “She wouldn’t stay at home for a million bucks. Afraid she’d miss something. She has to go everywhere we go.” (O’Connor 137). June’s depiction of the Grandmother was rather crude, but, at the same time, it was accurate.

Old-fashioned and dreamy, the old lady has further proved to match that depiction during the conversation with the kids in the car. “Let’s go through Georgia fast so we won’t have to look at it much,” said John Wesley during the trip (O’Connor 139). The grandmother answered: “If I were a little boy, I wouldn’t talk about my native state that way. Tennessee has the mountains, and Georgia has the hills.” (O’Connor 139). Just from these lines, we can get the idea of a certain confrontation between the old and new views on things.

The Grandmother still lived mentally in the old times, where, according to her, people were better – they were nicer and more respectful. However, she still seemed to believe in the existence of good people. When Red Sammy asked her about why he had let the two fellers charge the gas they bought the previous week, she responded: “Because you’re a good man!” (O’Connor 142). The Grandmother’s reminiscences of the past and the desire for reunification with them led to a car crash. “We’ve had an ACCIDENT!” the children shouted (O’Connor 145).

“But nobody’s killed,” June Star disappointedly said, looking at the Grandmother getting out of the car (O’Connor 145). These particular lines indicate the strained relationship between the children and the Grandmother. Probably the most important part of the story is the dialogue between the Misfit and the Grandmother. “Well then, why don’t you pray?” she said while trembling (O’Connor 150). The Misfit’s response was filled with self-confidence: “I don’t want no help. I’m doing all right by myself.” (O’Connor 151) Both characters’ specific traits of personality are discovered during that dialogue.

The Grandmother does not want to believe in the Misfit’s murderous nature; she still sees a good man in him. On the other hand, the Misfit embraces the changes in his personal views of things, even though he does not deny he was indeed a good person once. The final words of the Grandmother to the Misfit can be defined as the moment of grace, which apparently affects him in the end; she cried: “Why you’re one of my babies. You’re one of my own children!” (O’Connor 152).

O’Connor’s abundant usage of dialogues in the story is justified by its amazing ability to deliver all feelings, all emotions, and all main ideas of the story. They serve as the primary tools for reaching the readers so that they can fully understand every character. Dialogues are also the main indicators of relationship specifics between each character in the story.

Works Cited

O’Connor, Flannery. “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” Collected Works . New York, NY: Library of America, 1988. 137-153. Print.

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IvyPanda. (2023, December 19). Dialogues in O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard to Find". https://ivypanda.com/essays/dialogues-in-oconnors-a-good-man-is-hard-to-find/

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1. IvyPanda . "Dialogues in O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard to Find"." December 19, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/dialogues-in-oconnors-a-good-man-is-hard-to-find/.

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IvyPanda . "Dialogues in O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard to Find"." December 19, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/dialogues-in-oconnors-a-good-man-is-hard-to-find/.

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