CHARACTER ANALYSIS Character Analysis The grandmother in Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is selfish and manipulative. The very first thing that is learned about her is that she does not want to go to Florida because she has relatives in Tennessee that she would rather go visit. Then the second thing about her is that whenever something runs up against the grandmother's will, she still tries to have it her way. She never does this openly or bluntly, though. Her style is always a bit more indirect.
The first thing we learned about the grandmother is that she does not want to go on the family vacation to Florida. She has relatives to see in Tennessee so she tries to persuade Bailey, the father in the story, not to go. The grandmother tries to scare him with reports of a criminal on the loose and guilt trip him about taking his children there. She states, "Just you read it. I wouldn't take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it.
After the grandma is unable to persuade the family not to go to Florida, they do so anyways. Still in fear of the misfit, the grandma says: “I wouldn’t take my children in any direction with a criminal like that a loose in it. I couldn’t answer to my conscience if I did” (2). Ironically, the family ends up meeting the Misfit later in the story because of the grandma’s lack of knowledge of directions to a house with a “secret panel.” The reader is able to identify from the beginning that the grandma is one to not stick by her word and also thinks of herself more highly than she really is. She portrays herself as a “lady;” however, she does not know the true definition of
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).
The thing that Hope was protecting Andy from was the voices in her head. She would hear the voices telling her that someone were going to take him or hurt him in some way. Hope had many problems because she did not have the parenting skills that she needed to take care of Andy. Hope needed people in her life to help her care for Andy and to tell her what she was doing right and what she was doing wrong. Social services should have removed Andy from her care because she could not care for him.
I came here to take my son home and realized he already is home..I’m not going to take him with me”(NPAG Benton). Here Joanna reveals again that she only wants what is best for Billy even if that means she doesn’t get him. Nora reveals she also wants what is best for her children. When Torvald found out what Nora did to him (and his pride), he was furious and mentions he doesn’t trust Nora to
The real misfit !! In Flannery O’Connor “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” she identifies hat the fugitative is the misfit although the grandmother is more likely to be the misfit. It seems as like the family doesn't like her, and she is the oldest on the road trip. For instance it says in the story when she tries to tell bailey and the children's mother that is a bad Idea to go to Florida because of the fugitive that is loose going to Florida. When she was trying to tell every one about the fugitive they acted like they couldn’t hear her for instance in the “ The grandmother when she showed her son Bailey the newspaper about the fugitive he just continued to to his reading ignoring the grandmother.
Title effectiveness 1. Unstable Situation: The conflict in this story is the grandmother being unloving and manipulative. She always thinks she’s always right and never wrong. Some examples from the story are as fallow: “The grandmother didn’t want to go to Florida. She wanted to visit some of her connections in east Tennessee and she was seizing at every chance to change Baily’s mind” (pg.
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.
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.