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DIRECTIONS: Read each sub-set of directions and answer all questions, using text evidence when necessary. Answer all questions in complete sentences, unless directly stated.…
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Important Aspects In "A Good Man Is Hard To Find" In "A Good Man Is Hard To Find," Flannery O'Connor hints that the story will involve coincidence. She tells us in the opening paragraph that the grandmother has second thoughts about traveling to Florida for a vacation because she has a bad feeling about a loose Misfit she had read about in a news article. This foreshadows the trouble to come, and coincidence advances the plot in the direction of this trouble.…
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In addition it demonstrates the lack of compassion and fatherly representation he was given as a younger child. For most of his life he had been struggling with adapting to the values of the everyday society, and inevitably ends up killing more people as a way to survive the torment of “punishment”. His previous life, in the penitentiary, didn’t serve as a force of justice, but rather it provided a way for Misfit to undergo a disturbing transformation into a spiteful murder. In addition, Misfit’s dialect demonstrates how the hateful and misjudgment of our society can negatively affect the way a person carries on with their…
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1. In the short story, A Good Man is Hard to Find, the characters portrayal gives the grandmother a special quality. Bailey, the grandmother’s son, is a hardnosed man that seems to be gripey and annoyed with his self centered mother at most times. He makes the grandmother seem needy and pesters him. For example when the grandmother asks him to make a pit stop at the house, “Bailey looks straight ahead. His jaw bone was as rigid as a horseshoe. “No,” he said.” (par.49) Both of the children, John Wesley and June Star, are obnoxious rowdy children that seem to not know respect or manners in any case. The way June Star refers to Red Sammy’s as a “broken down place” and is rude to Sammy’s wife, is just an example. (par. 31) I think that all of the characters help show how self centered and manipulative the grandmother really is. While getting dressed, the grandmother gets dressed to the hilt so if there were an accident, “anyone seeing her on the highway would know at once that she was a lady.” (par. 12) The Misfit is a mean and ruthless convict that will take anything into his own hands. The way he interacts with the grandmother makes me think that she is even more selfish. The grandmother pleads for her own safety and her life as the rest of the family is killed. All of the family and the Misfit help paint the picture of the grandmother’s character in their own way. Overall, I think that the grandmother is a selfish, self-centered woman.…
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In the story the grandma considers herself being superior to others due to her being a “lady”. She frequently passes judgment on others and claims that her conscience is a guiding force in her life, such as when she tells Bailey that her conscience wouldn’t allow her to take the children in the same direction as the Misfit. She criticizes the children’s mother for not traveling to a place that would allow the children to “be broad,” and she compares the mother’s face to a cabbage. The grandmother never turns her critical eye on herself to inspect her own hypocrisy, dishonesty, and selfishness. For example, the conscience the grandmother invokes at the beginning of the story is conveniently silent when she sneaks her cat into the car, lies to the children about the secret panel, and refusing not to reveal that she made a mistake about the location of the house. When the Misfit sends his sidekicks to murder her family, the grandmother never once begs him to spare her children or grandchildren’s life. She does, however, plead for her own life because she can’t imagine the Misfit wanting to kill a lady. She seems positive that he will recognize and respect her moral code, even though he is a criminal that might not care about her moral code. She tries to draw him into her world by assuring him that he is a good man, but even though he agrees with her compliment of him, he does not see this as a reason to spare her. Only when the grandmother is facing death, in her final moments alone with the Misfit, does she understand where she has gone wrong in her life. Instead of being superior, she realizes, she is imperfect like everyone else. When she tells the Misfit that he is “one of…
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When Jeannette is a toddler, she tumbles out of her parents’ car as her father was taking a sharp turn. She sat, injured, and waited…
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The Misfit keeps the grandmother as his two accomplices’ handle the rest of the family. He explained to the grandmother “’it would’ve been better if you hadn’t reckernized me’” (492). As the time passes, the desperation in the grandmother’s survival grows. She begins to tell the Misfit that Jesus will forgive him for what he has done and repent all his sins. As he disagrees in self-doubt she takes the chance to save herself and explains it’s never too late all he needs to do is pray.…
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Many people struggle with the idea of what it means to be a “good” person and what it means to be a “bad” person. The human quest to be good drives virtually everything we do but sometimes in the end may not amount to enough. We all want to be good, but it 's not easy. If you ask an evil person and a good person the same question, "Are you a good person?" Who do you think is more likely to say yes, the good person or the evil person? Everyone has their own opinion about certain issues, and they depend on their values, judgment, and beliefs to see them through their difficulties. Flannery O’Connor, an American writer, was quoted as saying "I see from the standpoint of Christian orthodoxy. This means the meaning of life is centered in our Redemption by Christ and that what I see in the world I see in relation to that" (Contemporary Authors 402). In the short story "A Good Man is Hard to Find," Flannery O’ Connor illustrates her argument of good and evil through a grandmother who struggles with her own insincere sense of goodness, and the Misfit who represents evil. Only true goodness illuminates when in the face of something bad. In the story a character who views herself as good comes to realize that this goodness that she believes she has cannot protect against the works of evil.…
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Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is a traumatic short story about a family, that is taking a trip to Florida, but never makes it because of their run in with the outlaw the Misfit, who in the end kills the whole family. Throughout, the story O’Connor shows what a good man is through the Characterization of the Misfit, the grandmother, and Bailey.…
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When Misfit was in prison, he had this continue thought in this mind that he is not fairly treated. Which changed his definition of good. So, what is bad for other is good for him. Also when he has fired three bullets in the grandmother’s chest, he says she might have been “a good woman… if it had been somebody to shoot her every minute of her life.” (O’Conner 11). Thought, when the grandmother touches him in the end, it was a moment of grace for her, which comes to her through Misfit. The gesture of grandmother and her words to misfit “you are one of my babies” were completely misunderstood by the Misfit and he shot her. By killing her Misfit believes he is killing the most presumption of grandmother that he is any child of her. Because for Misfit being a child means accept anything without questioning it. When grandmother touched her, he thinks that she is trying to be sympathetic to him, but when she says “you are one of my babies” Misfit thinks that she is also talking for the society and telling him to understand everything without question (Hendricks 207).…
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As the Misfit and his men slowly kill off her family and her death becomes inevitable, she begins to reflect on her own life. The Grandma begins by trying to convince him to turn to faith. However, as she continues, she sees many of her qualities within the Misfit. She says, ‘“ Why you're one of my babies. You're one of my own children!’ She reached out and touched him on the shoulder.” At this moment, she realizes all of the bad things that she has done in her life and sees that the way she lives her life is the kind of life that breeds a serial killer. Not very many people have the ability to raise a serial killer, allowing the reader to conclude that she lives a life disjointed from society and does not conform to the beliefs that many people live by. As a quick reaction and an attempt to distance himself from the humanity of the grandma, the Misfit, “sprang back as if a snake had bitten him and shot her three times through the chest. Then he put his gun down on the ground and took off his glasses and began to clean them.” This type of connection frightened him, as this is the first sense of connection and care that the Misfit has felt throughout the killing spree. This is much different than how others would face a serial killer. This comes as the grandma comes to good terms with her life. As a result of this, the grandmas deceased body, “half sat and half lay in a puddle of blood with her legs crossed under her like a child's and her face smiling up at the cloudless sky.” This is not how we typically imagine a dead body. The way she is described makes her sound much like a buddha, with her legs crossed and smiling towards the sky. This is something that is typically associated with peace and comfort. This means, that the grandma had come to terms with the bad things that she had done in her life and could now relax and die…
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The Misfit. The Misfit, The Misfit, The Misfit. So many questions are raised about character called “The Misfit”. Was he born to be a killer? Was he a victim of childhood curiosity? Was he simply a good man turned bad over time? Or was his whole attitude a struggle of his true belief system? The Misfit stays on his own moral code regardless of the evil that he has committed. His morals are his own right, not by traditional standards, but by his steadfast and consistent actions. He’s an unlikely source, seeming to have not a moral fiber in his being, but demonstrates deep convictions that others in the story are not able to reveal. As deviant and depraved as The Misfit might have been, he still relied on his moral code to guide his actions. There are several parts of this story that show where The Misfit doesn’t actually take pleasure in his crimes. Was he simply a good man turned bad over time? When he first meets the family, The Misfit mentions that children make him nervous. If he is a strong, armed man and they pose no threat to him why is he so nervous? It seems to be that in his mind the children represent his own innocents, and in turn they could pose a threat to his conscience. The children make him nervous because he knows he will be taking their lives so possibly he feels like he is killing his own inner child, his innocents.…
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O’Connor uses the gun that The Misfit carries to symbolize fear. Until the climax, the family was enjoying their road trip to Tennessee. When The Misfit, Hiram, and Bobby Lee arrive with their guns, the characters in the family slowly begin to show symptoms of fear. “There was a pistol shot from the woods, followed closely by another”, (O’Connor 63). Even though the characters remaining with The Misfit don’t directly see who Hiram and Bobby shot at that moment, they start to fear. The children’s mother begins to make heaving noises as if she couldn’t breathe. When The Misfit asks if she would like to join her husband and son, she replies “‘Yes, thank you,’ the mother said faintly” (O’Connor 64). At that same situation, the grandmother also begins to fear. “‘Pray, pray,’ the grandmother began, ‘pray, pray…’” (O’Connor 63). The grandmother starts to fear even more when she hears the “pistol report” for the second time after the children’s mother and June Star were taken to the dark forest. “Pray! Jesus, you ought not shoot a lady. I’ll give you all the money I’ve got!” (O’Connor 65). She is so consumed by fear that she begins to negotiate for her life. The grandmother is the last member of the family to persist with The Misfit before she is killed. As a result of fear, her attitude has the most dramatic change from how she behaves when the story started. In contrast, Munro uses the gun to symbolize shame. The narrator quotes “I shot two rabid wolves who…
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By reading “A Good Man is Hard to find”, lectors experience a tragic story. In this short story readers learn the significance of life. Things happen in any second, whether you planned it or not. There will be times when things will happen to you by just doing something out of place, not having any intentions to do something out of order. The author from “A Good Man is Hard to find” makes readers realize various things at the same time.…
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Throughout literature there is a theme that seems to be constant, the protagonist against the antagonist, good versus evil. It is a theme that reoccurs throughout time because it provides the audience with an interesting conflict and reveals more about the true nature of humans. In Flannery O’Connor’s short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” she exposes her audience to the veracity of human nature; through various rhetorical devices and the demeanor of her characters, O’Connor reveals a new perspective on good versus evil.…
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