In A Good Man is Hard to Find, mistrust and grace are continued throughout the story. Grace is an important theme to O’Connor. O’Connor depicts the grandmother and the Misfit as characters of grace, although, neither of them are deserving of the title. The grandmother implies grace by praying to Jesus that the Misfit won’t kill her or her family, and that he will help the Misfit be a “good” man. The Misfit refers to grace at the end of the story when he mentions that the only pleasure in life was meanness.…
In A good man is hard to find, the grandmother had a complicated set of moral codes that did not compel with the natural moral codes that a catholic would be known to have. The catholic values are set to be the most reliable and trustworthy person one can be. Unfortunately the grandmother's intention…
Flannery O’Conner portrays many messages through her story “A Good Man is Hard to Find”. Religion is shown throughout the story from the Grandmothers point of view. She is a classy lady and judges many on her knowledge of Christ to determine whether or not they should be considered “good”. This story displays that God’s grace can be received by anyone, in any form and that each and everyone can be saved, according to the Grandmother’s judgment, actions, and epiphany. The Grandmother spent most of her life criticizing others on how to achieve her view of gods expectations. She believes that if you are good then you must come from a good family and live through the beliefs of the church. In the end, during the Grandmother’s epiphany she receives gods grace and tries desperately to pass it on to the Misfit, believing that anyone can be saved by god. However, he is pure evil and does not understand the feeling of “good” even though it may lay deep inside him. The Misfit rejects the presence of God in his heart, and that is the main cause of his evilness. The Misfit conscious threatens his evil and he then, decided not to accept his chance to receive God‘s Grace. The Grandmother lived her life judging what is “good” and in the end ironically ended up in the most evil hands, the Misfit.…
“A Good Man Is Hard To Find” is written by Flannery O’ Connor. This cynical short story takes a dive into this family’s lives while they are on a road trip to Florida. During this supposed to be long-lasting vacation, the reader gains a grasp of each character and their personalities. As this ‘not so close’ family travels through Georgia, the grandmother and children convinced the father, Bailey, with their whining, to go off course to some house the grandmother remembers. Unfortunately, the grandmother forgot to mention that the detailed house she remembers is in Tennessee, not Georgia. At the same moment the grandmother’s cat latches onto Bailey’s neck as panic sweeps through when their car flips twice into a ditch. The overwhelming feeling of being saved arises as they watch strangers slowly pull up, quickly fades when the grandmother screams, “You’re The Misfit”. Throughout this story, both the Misfit and the grandmother are unable to see the truth about themselves and are in deniable about their self-concept. The grandmother is a self-deluded, manipulated woman who is convinced that she is a good person and comes from ‘good blood’ and her grandchildren, John Wesley and June Star, see right through it. Her son, Bailey, is only tolerant of her because she is his mother, up until her ignorance is too much for him to handle during the accident. The Misfit, a criminal and a murderer, is equally if not more self-deluded than the grandmother. Ironically, he has a seriousness about life’s meaning (of lack thereof) and a searching need to look below the surface of events that the grandmother lacks. It takes the murder of the grandmother’s family and the immanent threat of her own death to break through her hard shell of denial and open her eyes to her common humanity with the lowly Misfit at the end of the story.…
The tragic heroes and narcissists in the short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor are the Grandmother and the Misfit. However, the focus is on the Grandmother and how she is in the grandiosity phase of being a tragic hero. There are personality characteristics associated with this phase, some of which the Grandmother has. She feels entitlement to get and do what she wants. In the story she takes her pet cat with her on the trip even though Bailey tells her not to. The Grandmother is a judgmental person. She judges other people based on petty things like clothes or first impressions. Finally, the Grandmother’s omniscience personality gets her killed.…
In A Good Man is Hard to Find, Flannery O’Connor tries to show that we are all one of the same and that all man can receive God’s grace. In the short story we are compelled by the completely opposite mannerisms of The Misfit and the grandmother; one character who believes she has no faults and with weak moral convictions. O’Connor uses irony to exemplify two individuals with different moral codes to reveal the notion that all men are ultimately punished, but can achieve grace through attainment of self-awareness and compassion.…
The story A Good Man is Hard to Find raises a point on violence and grace, which is emphasized in these three points: the grandmother calls the Misfit her son, where he represents her grace, also the story raises a argument that there is no pleasure on earth, and finally the grandmother accepts her grace but sometimes grace doesn’t respond nicely. The relationship between the Misfit and the grandmother is rather complicated because it is not exactly clear what he is to her. The grandmother mentions this, "Why you're one of my babies. You're one of my own children!"(O’Conner, 10).…
After reading Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find" for the first time, I was left with one question that perplexed me, why did the Grandmother call the Misfit one of her own children? It's a question that many believe they have the answer to, they research and analyze coming up with theories and ideas. Like many others I will now be putting my theory on the Grandmother's final words, what they meant and why she said them. Opinions on her final word vary, with authors like Brandy saying the Grandmother's final act as a selfish attempt to save her own skin. I however begun to see the Grandmother's sudden compassion for the Misfit not as an act of selfishness but an act of mercy brought upon by a form of grace, drawn O'Connor on faith.…
A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor is a short story that depicts a family road trip to Florida that ends in an abysmal tragedy when they meet the Misfit, a remorseless convict who has escaped from prison. In the beginning, the Grandmother is obsessed with everything worldly and superficial. She is completely focused on herself in relation to how others think of her. Towards the end of the story, the grandmother finds herself in ominous dialogue with The Misfit. In the story, The Misfit represents a quasi-final judgment. He does this by acting like a mirror. He lets whatever The Grandmother says bounce right off him. He never agrees nor disagrees with the grandmother, and in the end, he is the one who kills her. At the end of the story, before the Grandmother meets her fate, she has a moment of redemption. She finally distinguishes The Misfit for who he really is, not a psychopathic killer on the loose; but a person just like herself. The Misfit, being a man who is not created from social class; he is a simple human being just like the grandmother. At this point she sees herself in relation to everyone else. She finally realizes that she is not made by her class. Society makes the class, and she just fits into it. She shows this by claiming that The Misfit could be one of her own children. This story is meant to be interpreted as a parable, whereby O'Connor made skilful use of symbolism to bring about messages such as the social-superiority and the lack of spiritual faith that exist amongst common people; and the grace in humans is exposed, only when facing adverse and fatal circumstances.…
One example shown in "A Good Man is Hard to Find" involves the grandmother's strong southern heritage. She dresses with the intention that if something should happen and she was found dead on the road, anyone that found her would certainly know she was a lady. She also was always telling stories of southern gentlemen courting her. At the end, the Misfit, whom the grandmother knows is of quality southern blood, shoots her and her family despite her belief in southern hospitality. The grandmother is seen as a woman who believes in God during her encounter with the Misfit, but we see early on in the story that her belief isn’t very strong through all the lying and deceitfulness she continues in. Not until her confrontation with the Misfit, do wee see her become so passionate about her faith.…
herself writes, “I write the way I do because (not though) I am a Catholic” (O’Connor, “On Her Catholic Faith” 435). Without keeping her Christian background in focus, it is impossible to fully understand and interpret O’Connor’s stories. Her major subjects, according to Frederick J. Hoffman, include the struggle for redemption, the search for Jesus, and the meaning of ‘prophecy’ (33). It often takes a personal crisis to awaken someone to spiritual matters. In the context of eternal spiritual realities, the crises in life, despite their ominous outward appearances, take on a lesser significance than the spiritual realities that these crises often uncover. These interpretations accurately describe the journey that the grandmother takes in “A Good Man Is Hard To Find.” It is critical to read this story in light of O’Connor’s Christian focus and to look for the faith message embodied by the characters and their experiences. In this story, the grandmother's journey from manipulative self-absorption to grace symbolizes a Christian's journey toward salvation.…
The grandmother in “A Good Man is Hard to Find” exemplifies what it means to be a fake. She is a liar, racist, and judger. All of these attributes go against the beliefs of the Catholic Church, but the grandmother does not have the self-awareness to notice. Her racist remarks are most clearly shown during the drive when the…
In accord with Miss O’Connor, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” portrays an explicit description of a mentally, physical and spiritually deformed character, the grandmother. O’Connor introduces the grandmother that is self involved, insincere, manipulative, and deficient in good judgment. O’Connor paints the grandmother to seem to be perfect and uphold the characteristics of a good man but her actions are all superficial. Richard Giannone in “Flannery O’Connor and the mystery of Love,” agrees on the grandmother’s act of excessive self indulgence as he states that “the grandmother couches self interest in a language of morals that shifts responsibility to others.”(48). The grandmother’s moral deformity is lucid as she firstly…
The South in the 1960s was a very difficult time period. It was the Southern Gothic. Flannery called this “the action of grace in the territory held largely by the devil” (357). “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is the perfect example of this hypocritical period. White people saw themselves superior to everyone else, but were still kind of other races. The South’s status was very troubled in which the races, social class, and the religion were discriminated very often. The grandmother in the short story is a misfit herself, seeing herself superior to others, but relies on religion when she is in a difficult situation.…
In the story “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” , the grandma is blind to the darkness that is fixing to occur to her family but in that moment she chooses to see the light of what could come out of this situation, which would be her walking away with her family, but as the situation intensifies, the dark reality is slowing creeping in and granny is beginning to see what the realistic outcome of this dark situation is going to be. Granny tries to distract the misfit by carrying on a conversation with him, explaining that he’s not really a bad person but is just someone who has made poor decisions in his…