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.
At the end Melinda’s dad did not buy her the television, although Melinda chose to please her mom, Melinda’s mom was mad because Melinda was not able to get the television. Melinda knew that her dad was “gone for good” because she would rather please her mom then have her dad have fake love for her, and she knew that she was not going to see her dad
As the story unfolds, the unnamed wife becomes increasingly distant from the love of her husband and son. She required alcohol to help her sleep, indicating depression or some other psychological illness. When the boy would play with her, she would lock herself in a room away from her. She even went so far as to hit the boy when the husband was there to witness. He saw her mental health deteriorating, and knew she felt trapped within the family.
Also, she insists on unnecessarily bringing her cat along for the three day trip though she knows her son Bailey does not like traveling with pets. The grandmother’s badgering takes place in front of the grandchildren and she undermines her son’s role as a parent when she says “’ "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. They never have been to east Tennessee’” (O’Connor 186). So after all of this “the next morning the grandmother was the first one in the car, ready to go”, in her Sunday best no less, a clear act of spite because her efforts have not changed her son’s resolve to go to Florida. In his critical essay “Secular Meaning in 'A Good Man Is Hard to Find'” Stanley Renner says “the grandmother is a caricature of the South, but in the way that her every impulse is tainted by instinctive, unconscious egoism, she is also a droll personification of human nature as we have come to understand it in the wake of Darwin and Freud; she is, then, Reality” (Renner).
They wake her up early and help her stretch her legs in hope that they will one day be straight/normal. They showed the compassion that her birth mother would never give to her child. Linda later recalls, “I must have been held so much that the sensation became a part of me”(65). Fifty years later when Linda and her mother Nancy finally meet for dinner, they don’t hug or even shake hands. The mother may be the birth mother and be related by blood but she sure doesn’t show any love toward her handicapped daughter that she abandoned.
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).
After a trip down a dirt road, the grandmother suddenly realizes the old plantation isn’t in Georgia, but in Tennessee. Too embarrassed to admit her mistake, she causes her cat (which she secretly concealed into the car in the beginning of the story) to jump on her son (Bailey), which then causes the car to crash into a ditch. An escaped convict, called
Eleanor tries to hide from Richie, her awful step dad at Park’s house but Park’s mother doesn’t seem to accept Eleanor until she learns about her home life and from then on Park’s parents are supportive and caring to Eleanor. After an amazing first formal date together, Eleanor comes home hoping Richie doesn’t know about Park. This is her worst nightmare, Richie found out and to top that Eleanor finds out that Richie was the one writing the obscene, sexual comments on her textbooks. Scared for her life, Eleanor runs to Park’s house and he drives her to her uncle in Minnesota. Once they arrive to her uncle’s, they come to the fact that they have to say goodbye.
She loves the boy who was four years ago and not the man who is now standing in front of her. His son tricked a girl into getting into his car where he raped her and now he is back to spill salt in her kitchen as he did after he ate his breakfast. Because she doesn’t want to look into his face, she pretends that she is sick then she goes to her room. There are many unanswered question in Myrna’s mind, and she couldn’t stay at her home anymore and be her mother so she leave with a note for Kenny that it means he should go away within a week. In my point of view Myrna made a good decision in this situation for two reasons, first it is a good punishment for Kenny as she dose’s want to be her mother any more.
But her father says that she has to help her mother with the knitting. When Eilean answer him back he hits her in the face. The next day at school Eilean meets Lewis and Angus; they ask her why she did not show up. She says that it was because of her father, but they do not believe her. And they start teasing her and they say that she is a chicken.