A Good Man is Hard to Find
A Good Man is Hard To Find
During the period of Modernism, authors and artists valued religion, morals, and also gothic. These values are reflected in Flannery O’Connor’s short story, “A Good Man is Hard To Find.” The main character, the grandmother, always gets what she wants and is worried about if she looks like a good person. The grandmother judges others if they are a “good man” or not, but in fact she is not a good person. Death follows the family through out the story, and by the authors use of foreshadowing she is portraying that death is inevitable. Through foreshadowing, death is shown to the reader on the family’s drive to Florida. “Outside of Toombsbaro she woke up and recalled an old plantation...” (O’Connor 370). The word Toombsbaro in the story is just a towns name, but if the word is broken down, it sounds a lot like “tomb”. A tomb is a burial chamber, or a house for the dead. The author makes up this name for a town to foreshadow that death is coming. Also, while the family is driving on the road, "They pass a large cotton field with five or six graves fenced in the middle of it, like a small island.”(368). When the family sees the graves, they do not realize that that will be them in the ground soon. The family also has six people in it and there were six graves. This is just one of the images that the family seems that is really their own destiny. According to Alex Link in his article “Means, Meaning and Meditated Space in A Good Man is Hard to Find.” he explains that O’Connor uses landmarks such as grave yards, so relate to the reader. So it is easier for us to understand that she is relating landmarks that we all know, to death. Death is still being foreshadowed once the family gets into a car wreck on the way to the plantation. The car landed in a ditch but ...”behind the ditch they were sitting in there were more woods, tall dark and deep.” (O’Connor 372). The woods represent death, and that it is getting close. The family is
During the period of Modernism, authors and artists valued religion, morals, and also gothic. These values are reflected in Flannery O’Connor’s short story, “A Good Man is Hard To Find.” The main character, the grandmother, always gets what she wants and is worried about if she looks like a good person. The grandmother judges others if they are a “good man” or not, but in fact she is not a good person. Death follows the family through out the story, and by the authors use of foreshadowing she is portraying that death is inevitable. Through foreshadowing, death is shown to the reader on the family’s drive to Florida. “Outside of Toombsbaro she woke up and recalled an old plantation...” (O’Connor 370). The word Toombsbaro in the story is just a towns name, but if the word is broken down, it sounds a lot like “tomb”. A tomb is a burial chamber, or a house for the dead. The author makes up this name for a town to foreshadow that death is coming. Also, while the family is driving on the road, "They pass a large cotton field with five or six graves fenced in the middle of it, like a small island.”(368). When the family sees the graves, they do not realize that that will be them in the ground soon. The family also has six people in it and there were six graves. This is just one of the images that the family seems that is really their own destiny. According to Alex Link in his article “Means, Meaning and Meditated Space in A Good Man is Hard to Find.” he explains that O’Connor uses landmarks such as grave yards, so relate to the reader. So it is easier for us to understand that she is relating landmarks that we all know, to death. Death is still being foreshadowed once the family gets into a car wreck on the way to the plantation. The car landed in a ditch but ...”behind the ditch they were sitting in there were more woods, tall dark and deep.” (O’Connor 372). The woods represent death, and that it is getting close. The family is
Cited: Bandy, Stephen. "One of My Babies ': The Misfit and the Grandmother." 33.1 (1996): Academic Search Complete. Web. 10 Apr 2012. Link, Alex. “Means, Meaning and Meditated Space in “Good Man is Hard to Find.” Vol. 44. Issue 4. (2007): Academic Search Complete. Web. 9 May 2012. O’Connor, Flannery. “A Good Man is Hard To Find.” The Compact Bedford Introduction To Literature. Ed. Michael Myers. 9th ed. Boston: Publisher Bedford. 2012. Print