“A work of literature, he believes, is the external expression of the author’s unconscious mind. Accordingly, literary works must then be treated like a dream, applying psychoanalytic techniques to texts to uncover the author’s hidden motivations, repressed desires, and wishes” (Bressler 130). In the first paragraph of the story the grandmother is trying to persuade her son to not travel to Florida. She feels like she knows better than her son. Her grandchildren had been to Florida before, and she wishes her son would take a vacation to another destination.
Lena Kaligaris is the shy, artistic and the one who overthinks everything, she is also of Greek heritage. During the summer she goes to Santorini, Greece to visit her grandparents. While there she meets a man named Kostus Dounas but then learns their families are enemies from an old family problem. Despite that problem the two secret begin to see each other later beginning a secret relationship with him. On their last night together Kostus tells Lena he loves her before answering him Lena’s family barges in, angrily pushing her away from him.
Kethia Joseph 3/7/2011 “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by FLANNERY O’CONNOR A family of six is planning a vacation trip to Florida. The family consists of the grandmother, the father, the mother and three children. The grandmother tried to convince her son to go to Tennessee instead of Florida. She is concerned about a criminal on the loose who is also going to Florida. Nobody listens to her and the trip will end up in tragedy.
The grandmother refers to the boy as a pickaninny and a nigger, two terms that are used to racially degrade African Americans, coloreds, or blacks. As the family passes a what seems to be familiar road the grandmother lies to her grandchildren, June Star and John Wesley, about a hidden passage in her old plantation home in Georgia. She lies to the children so they can convince their father to defer from the road and visit here old plantation home on a abandoned road. While traveling on the vacant road the grandmother remembers that the plantation home is in Tennessee, but is too ashamed to tell her family. After a car accident occurs the family crosses paths with The Misfit, who eventually kills the entire family.
February 4, 2014 A Misfit Vacation Life is filled with unexpected twists and turns, some of which are positive and others negative. In Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man is Hard to Find, she conveys a story about an average every day family that goes through turmoil. This short story is not a story that allows you to read it half fast. You must be sure to keep in mind all the details thrown into the plot because you find out at the end, that every decision that is made throughout the story affected the turnout of the family. The story follows the point of view of grandmother, as she accompanies her family on a roadtrip to Florida.
Irony within “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” In the story “A Good Man Is Hard To Find,” Flannery O’Connor creates a sequence of events that lead to a miserable and deathly vacation for a family of six. The family consisting of a grandma, her son, his wife and three children plan a road trip to Florida. Everyone except the grandma is fond of the vacation site, simply because she would rather go to East Tennessee. She tries to justify her thoughts be making a remark about how there is a dangerous criminal on the loose and headed straight for Florida. When this does not work, the grandma then quotes, “the children have been to Florida before, you all ought to take them somewhere else for a change so they would see different parts of the world and be broad” (3).
Symbolism in Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” In a superficial view, Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is no more than a simple story of a family travelling to Florida for the vacation and facing their last moment after confronting the escaped criminal, Misfit. However, it contains numerous foreshadows that allude to the ending of the story and O’Connor’s tremendous use of symbolism implicated in the conversations between characters at various parts of the story. It is very surprising how the author uses this symbolism and allusive descriptions to teach us a veiled lesson. One important thing needed to catch the symbolism of this story is the understanding of characters. Grandmother, the leading character of the story, is a lady who has a South-heritage deep in her heart and admires the glorious time-honored tradition of South.
Her family on the other hand seemed a bit more laid back when it came too a religious point of view. In the beginning of the story the grandmother points out on her sons newspaper the article about the misfits who escaped from jail and how she would never head in the direction of where they could be near. The family begins their road trip down south to Florida in which the grandmother wasn’t too fond of. The grandmother lectures her two grandchildren several times during the car ride while the father and mother sat up front quietly. They stop to get food along the way ran by a man by the name of Red Sammy.
Finding one’s moment of grace is challenging because it requires someone to be faced with their true identity and the choice to change who they are. After the person achieves their moment of grace, it transforms them into a new person by incorporating the aspects of inner peace and happiness. In, “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” an ordinary Georgia family began their summer vacation road trip to Florida. Half way through the trip, the grandmother makes up a story about an old plantation with a secret panel, to excite the children and cause them to beg the parents to visit it. After a trip down a dirt road, the grandmother suddenly realizes the old plantation isn’t in Georgia, but in Tennessee.
They thought they knew each other well enough to get married, but as Carl says it in the text “And once we did it seemed too late” (p.8, l.66). So now he thinks that he is stuck with this life. With a family that he feels separated from “they didn’t seem connected to him nor did he feel connected to them”(p.10, l.134). The only way for Carl to find comfort, for his sister’s illness, is in his sister’s friend, who is going through the same kind of pain. But since Carl moved to Worland with his wife and daughter a year ago, he hasn’t been able to stop thinking of Lily, a woman who attends his church.