...Through the analysis of Flannery O’Connor’s works “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and “Everything that Rises Must Converge,” the distinct similarity of class can be distinguished between the grandmother of the family and Julian’s mother. The two characters share the static notions of how each class is represented in regards to race and propriety through the racist southern traditions which they were raised. In “Good,” the grandmother of the family is viewed as an older woman who clings to racism and traditional southern standards which dictated how a person was to act due to the social class which they belong. The grandmother’s static belief that race and class are joined becomes apparent during the scene when the family passes the Negro child on the side of the road which states, “‘Oh look at the cute little pickaninny!’ she said and pointed to a Negro child standing in the door of a shack. ‘Wouldn’t that make a picture, now?’ she asked and they all turned and looked at the little Negro out of the back window. He Waved. ‘He didn’t have any britches on,’ June Star said. ‘He Probably didn’t have any,’ the grandmother explained. ‘Little niggers in the country don’t have things like we do. If I could paint, I’d paint that picture,’ she said” (O’Connor, “Good” 3) In this scene, the grandmother objectifies the Negro child as if he were a caged animal to watch and then she classifies him as a lower class because he is a Negro and therefore must unable to afford pants. The objectification...
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...to the development of strong relationships through business, community gatherings and church. The south is known for being the most religious section in the United States. According to Adherents.com the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest denomination, claims roughly 16 million members. The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life reports that “more than eight in ten people in Mississippi (82 percent) say religion is very important in their lives, making the Magnolia State the most religious according to this measure.” Flannery O’Connor created her stories based on the Christ-obsessed South. It seemed as if she was incapable of writing anything that strayed away from the topics of, “Jesus freaks”, egotistical characters, prophets, or firm atheists: “Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one.”(http://www.goodreads.com) Flannery...
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...himself. In today’s society, many arrogant individuals feel that making themselves seem better than the rest of the crowd causes people to look up to them. In reality, the crowd actually believes that they are foolish. In the story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor, the author addresses the consequences of poor judgment and how this leads to the death of the main character. The grandmother attempts to talk her son and his wife into going to Tennessee instead of Florida because a man called the misfit has escaped prison. After they stop at the tower and speak with the owner, Red Sam, the grandmother remembers an old plantation that she would like to see again, and she even exaggerates about the house so her son will stop by. After having an accident on the dirt road leading to the plantation, the grandmother realizes the house is actually in Tennessee. The spoiled old lady waves down a car for help, and the people in the vehicle turn out to be the misfit and his henchmen. She makes a mistake by announcing that she knows who they are. As a result, the misfit and his crew kill her and the rest of the family, leaving her last to die. Through the author’s use of tone, symbolism, and characterization, O’Connor proves that labeling someone as “good” is only true if he has morals and grace, not selfishness and blindness. The grandmother describes someone as “good” if he is similar to her. However, she is gullible and has poor judgment. She believes Red Sam is a good man...
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...“A good man is hard to find” by Flannery O'Connor Analysis Flanery o’connor has such a quirky biting sense of humor and that resonates in this story, but even more so though it might not be so apparent this story has a deeper meaning. O’connor presents us with a moral conundrum, is anyone right by the end of this story? If not then where are we left to think as readers? We know from reading about O’connor that she likes presenting human nature in a darker light and showing that people from all walks of life can be flawed this is also present in her story Revelation through her main character. The overall theme of this story is that we have no right to judge people because in the end we are all flawed in our own ways. The story starts off with the grandmother chewing off her son’s ear about taking his family to Florida because there is a murderer supposedly headed in that direction. She says “I wouldn’t take my children in any direction with a criminal like that loose in it. I couldn’t answer to my conscience if I did” (O’connor 367). We as readers know that this is both an example of foreshowing and by the end of our read we know is a large dose of dramatic irony because she in fact take them rite to the murder. It’s also a tad ironic and comical that she suggests that they go to east Tennessee instead or Florida saying it will make the children more abroad. It’s also ironic that the grandmother is the first one in the car ready to leave even though she doesn’t want to...
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...Who was Flannery O’Connor? Flannery O’Connor was a female, American writer and an important voice in American literature, who wrote two novels and multiple short stories throughout her lifetime. In “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and “Good Country People,” Flannery O’Connor showcases a genre of themes throughout her pieces and a style that is interesting and different compared to others. Like most of her short stories, both of these writings are very interesting and narrated in a third person point of view. It is clearly obvious that O’Connor’s influence upon these two short stories illustrates her own version of southern gothic with a twist of religion, much like many of her works. There were many factors to her style of writing but two that she uses were “...distortion and exaggeration…” (Shloss 35). The focus of...
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...At birth, one does not get to choose a name. One’s name is assigned and one’s name turns into an identity. In many instances in Flannery O'Connor's short stories, names give away a character’s moral identity. Many of the names that Flannery O'Connor uses are ironic and provide insight on how she wants the character’s to be perceived. In the short story, Good Country People, a thirty-two year old crippled girl changed her name from Joy to Hulga because she believed it was an ugly name, eventually, Joy/Hulga will have an ugly realization about her moral character. In the short story, A Good Man Is Hard To Find, it is immediately established that the bad guy on the run, “The Misfit”, received his name for a reason. Throughout these short stories,...
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...I think that Flannery O’Connor’s short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is written partially in order to “convert” people who have not yet fully accepted the Christian faith. O’Conner, herself being a strong believer in Christianity, probably thought that writing this story will help make people who aren’t really living by the Christian rules to seriously consider doing so. Flannery O'Connor was deeply concerned with the values and the direction of the youth at the time. She believed that Christ was no longer enough of a priority to the people of her generation. "A Good Man is Hard to Find" is representative of Flannery O'Connor's concern for the priorities and values of the 1940s. An example of this, in "A Good Man is Hard to Find," involves the grandmother's strong, southern heritage. She dresses with the intention that anyone who finds her dead on the road will know she was a lady, and she is always telling stories of southern gentlemen courting her. Then, the Misfit, whom she "knows" is of quality, southern blood, shoots her and her family, despite her belief in southern hospitality. Grandma is a woman who believes in God, but it seems that her belief isn’t really strong up until her confrontation with the Misfit. From what I understand, most of her works follow a similar pattern. The main character(s) are in some kind of trouble and at the end they see “the light” of God’s ways and have their redemption. Christians have often criticized her works for...
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...A Good Man Is Hard to Fine: An Annotated Bibliography HUDDLE,DAVID. “The Singular Voice of Flannery O'Connor”. Flannery O'Connor Review. Vol. 13. 2015. p30-39. Huddle describes O’Connor as one of America’s major writers. She writes about issues within southern culture and has spiritual revelations. He compares O’Connor to The Misfit in the story. O’Connor is an artist, a Catholic and a Southern Woman. She uses her traits to build upon the characters of the story. They refer to the Grandmother as a flawed human being. Religion is very important. When the Grandmother reaches out to the Misfit with her religious comment she startles him and he kills her. Even as a villain after killing the Grandmother he is looking for redemption. Larson, Susan T. “A Good Man Is Hard To Find and Other Short Stories”. Masterplots. 4th Edition. Nov. 2010. p1-2. O’Connor is recognized as a significance American fiction writer. The story A Good Man Is Hard To Find has a mixture of humor, violence and religious themes. The Grandmother and family set off to take a trip to Florida. The Grandmother did not want to go there, she wanted to go to Tennessee. She used the story of the Misfits escape but the trip was still on. While traveling the Grandmother disrupts the cat which then causes an accident. A car stops and when the men get out the Grandmother recognizes him as the Misfit. He orders the men with him to kill the family. The Misfit is with the Grandmother and she is trying to...
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...Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man Is Hard to Find Having a third-person perspective when reading through this short story gave more depth to it than if it were viewed through the eyes of one sole character. Reading the story more than once provided an attention to the irony when O’Connor wrote, “In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady. (267)” That one quote encompasses the genres that the she was trying to portray with this story: tragedy and comedy. I don’t agree that O’Connor did a magnificent fusion of the two in this story, the contradictory tone took away from the overall effect that A Good Man is Hard to Find could have had. Some of the impact that came with having a dual genre was brushed off because of the passivity in The Misfits’ character. The most noticeable shift in the story came out choppily done because of the predictability of what was going to happen. While I can’t argue that the humor was present in the story, I have to comment that it was a more subdued version due to the nature in which the story takes a sharp left turn to. If I had to choose between which of the genres was most prominent throughout the story, I’d have to say that they were almost equally split done the center. There was no merging of the two to have made the author’s effort more recognizable. On a more personal note, speaking as the reader, the more attractive of the two genres was the tragedy because The Misfits’ character...
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...The Irony in Flannery O’Connor’s Irony is a significant rhetorical technique used in demonstrating a condition which is conflicting or expression whereby the result is the exact opposite of what is anticipated. This device of literature creates absurdity in the story according to its tone. Irony has an element of indirectness hence making the writing interesting to the reader. In the story of Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” Irony has aided deeper comprehension and understanding of its themes as it provokes the readers making them to critically analyze the state, paralleling and distinguishing the actual condition with assumptions as explained in the paper. Use of irony is imbued in this work as it is a principal feature in her lifetime and limited career. She dwelt mostly in Georgia as one of the minor Catholic emphatic. What is amusing is that, she spent most of her lifetime in struggle and met her death immediately it was ripe for her to start enjoying life. At such time it is expected that people should get time in life so that they can enjoy and do whatever they had in mind but they have never got the opportunity or power to do them. It is ironical that, she becomes popular and passes away before she is rewarded for her determination and hard work. The family plans to go to Florida except the grandmother who wants to go to Tennessee. She tries to convince the family by telling them that there is Misfit, the murderer on the way to Florida but they give her...
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...A Good Man Is Hard To Find literary analysis Tracy Wooten Elizabeth Isenkul February 20, 2016 A good man is hard to find is short story written by Flannery O’ Connor. Throughout the entire story O’Connor utilizes irony as a literary element to create multiple facets of her characters in the story such as those of Bailey's mother and The Misfit. O'Connor establishes the foundation of the irony very early in the story when she gives us the reason for the grandmother getting dressed up for the car ride, “In case of an accident anyone seeing the dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady” (O’Connor, 1993) . Later on in the story this could considered foreshadowing. Throughout the entire story the grandmother judges people either as good or bad solely based on how they look. For example, the first time the reader sees the phrase "A good man is hard to find," the speaker is Red Sam at the roadside barbecue restaurant where the family is having lunch. Just before that, however, Red Sam has described his willingness to allow some strangers to charge gas, and he asks himself the question, "Now, why did I do that?" (O’Connor, 1993). The grandmother's immediate response is "Because you're a good man." (O’ Connor, 1993). She makes this assessment with very little information about Red Sam, not on the basis of any meaningful knowledge about his character. When the grandmother is first introduced to the misfit, she makes one of those same judgments of him because...
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...Cotina Moore English 1302 Essay #1 Southern Gothic Fiction 02 March 2015 “What Is In A Title” A Literary Analysis of Flannery O’ Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” “Good Country People,” and “Everything That Rises Must Converge” “I am not afraid that the book will be controversial, I’m afraid it will not be controversial-Flannery O’Connor Flannery O’Connor is considered one of the best short story authors of the 20th century. Born in Savannah Georgia in 1925, O’Connor was a devout Catholic. Her writings incorporated religious themes and her southern life (Bio). When reading O’Connor’s short stories, it is very surprising and shocking that the stories are often dark and controversial. Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” “Good Country People,” and “Everything That Rises Must Converge” use macabre, grotesque violence, irony, and grace through the depiction of her characters to illustrate that when an individual is faced with “grave” circumstances; those are the moments when grace is realized. Flannery O’Connor incorporates the use of macabre and violence in her short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” masterfully to elicit an unforgettable moment of grace from a character when faced with her “grave” circumstance. The use of grotesque violence is vividly displayed as a southern family is horrendously murdered by an escaped convict, The Misfit and his accomplices. An “eerie” sense of foreshadowing is realized when the protagonist, the grandmother...
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...making them laugh. As an author, Flannery O’Connor has always been a master at utilizing humor in her work in order to draw her readers deeper into her stories and characters. Catherine Sustana wrote in an article about Flannery O’Connor’s use of humor that “because O’Connor’s humor is so engaging, it allows her stories to pull in readers who might not want to read…her stories at all” (1). Because of this, O’Connor has also attracted a sizeable amount of attention from scholars who seek to further analyze her humor in her writing. Through her exquisite use of Bergsonian humor in her writing, Flannery O’Connor succeeds at enticing her readers and scholars alike. Only the greatest and most renowned authors can pique the interest of other authors and scholars to the point...
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...Christian Alonzo English 1302 Professor Duncan 16 June 2015 Topic Proposal: Religious affairs in A good Man Is Hard to find In Flannery O Connors southern gothic short story, “a good man is hard to find” the protagonists that are presented seem to be in a gloomy and fragile relationship in what seems to be your cliché American family. The family as you would expect from O’Connor’s writing is in its own way corrupt and what many catholic enthusiasts would say, need Jesus. The Grandmother being the worst case of them all and in the story shows examples of gluttony and lust, two major sins in the Roman Catholic faith. These sins are the eventual downfall of the entire family. This essay will view the repercussions that occur for lathering in a life of sin and argue that salvation can be disguised in many ways even as malicious at times. It will utilize research directly from the psychoanalytic concept, traumas, and realizations of the few characters who get passed they’re own demons and come to a self-religious realization. Additionally, the essay will pursue the relationships between the grandmother, the misfit, and the son, John Wesley and his Mother and their last minute, virtuous moments right before Gods jurisdiction is handed upon them. John Wesley realizes that his actions anytime before that moment were inexcusable towards his mother, but now it is too late as he is murdered in the woods and the grandmother’s having her salvation just before the Misfit eradicates her...
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...Flannery O’Connor “Good Country People”: Questions 1. The relationship between Joy-Hulga Hopewell and Manley Pointer started as an attempt for romantic relations; at least the woman believed the salesman fell in love with her or had some similar feeling. Hulga decided to use his feelings and try to seduce Manley to “reckon with his remorse… [take it] in hand and [change] it into a deeper understanding of life” (O’Connor 12); the woman thought the Bible salesman needed such procedure to become more experienced and loose “rose-colored spectacles” he sees the world through. The irony was in the fact that Manley’s job belonged to a totally opposite side than his personality. The salesman showed himself as a cynical, amoral person that know how to use others for the own benefit....
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