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

By examining her technique and inspiration for writing, readers can gain insight on the aspects of the natural world throughout Flannery O’Connor’s work. In her short stories, O’Connor develops imagery, symbolism, and foreshadowing with the use of trees and woods.
It is interesting to explore the world that O’Connor creates when reading her stories, for she gives vivid descriptions of the settings. With the view of Andalusia, O’Connor is able to detail the intriguing environment, filled with nature, that characters experience.
The land that surrounds O’Connor influences her to create a world where most of the dramatic action takes place in the woods. For example, in her short story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” Hiram and Bobby Lee takes Bailey and John Wesley away and the family hears a “pistol shot from the woods” (346). Here, we can conclude that Bailey and his son were murdered, making the trees seem not so friendly. [TALK ABOUT DESCRIPTIONS, COLOR]
The woods reveal the story’s mood, so readers get a sense of what is to come. Whenever O’Connor mentions a “line of trees” or “line of woods,” something is going to happen. The woods foreshadow the family’s death throughout the “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” It starts with the drive on the dirt road when O’Connor says that at one moment they are “looking down over the blue tops of trees” and then the next, they are depressed with “dust-coated trees” that look down on them. (344). Prophetic of the impending crash, while invoking images of trees watching the family. After the accident, the family is left in a ditch where they can only get a view of the tree tops while sitting near woods that were “tall and dark and deep”