Through the development of the story, readers may draw the conclusion that there is no straightforward answer to what is good and evil in the world. The grandmother is a pretentious character who considers herself as a moral lady with a faithful belief in Christianity, However, she only cares about herself and pretends to be considerate of others. In the beginning of the story, she uses the report about the Misfit to try to convince her family not to go to Florida for vacation. She tells Bailey, her son, “ I wouldn’t take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn’t answer to my conscience if I did”(O’Connor, 9).
English Composition "A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor" A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor begins with the grandmother who doesn't want to go where the family wants to go on vacation. Instead, grandmother wants to meet up with some of her connections in Tennessee, not even people the whole family knows. The setting takes place in route, in the south, Georgia, and ends on an untraveled, desolate, dirt road. Several mannerisms of the speech from the South are evident, especially when grandmother calls a Negro a "pickaninny". When the eight year old grandson, John Wesley, asks his grandmother where the plantation is, she answers, "Gone with the Wind."
This negative thinking quite possibly could have led to the ultimate rendezvous between the convict and the family. The following day the family heads off to Florida. Another major point of irony happens as the story revolves around the grandmother’s traditional southern values of respect for other people, especially elders. At the same moment as the grandmother is lecturing her grandkids, John Wesley and June Star, about respecting their home state she sees a young Negro boy and says: "Oh look at the cute little pickaninny!”. Her hypocrisy becomes evident as she wants the family to do what she says not what she does.
O’Connnor In Flannery O’Connor’s short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” the steady plot, character structure, and symbolism play the most compelling roles as the story progresses. The story begins with an unnamed grandmother who desperately wants her family to take a vacation to Tennessee, and not go to their already planned out trip to Florida. More selfish acts by the grandma pan out throughout the story, and they all go to form a bigger picture. She ends up going on the trip to Florida with her family, and in the car she decides to dress up so that way, in the event of an accident, she would still look like a lady while she’s dead. This thought of hers goes to show that she is not necessarily considerate of others, because while she may look like a lady while she dies, she doesn’t keep in mind that if the car were to get into an accident, the rest of the family would probably die as well.
A Good Man Is Hard To Find A Good Man Is Hard To Find, a short story written by Flannery O’Connor, is about a selfish, dishonest woman, who thinks as herself as a superior being. However, in the end, she realizes that she too has faults of her own. The Protagonist of the story is the grandmother. In the beginning of the story, she tries to convince her son Bailey, and his wife, to take their family trip to east Tennessee rather than to go to Florida. The grandmother reads in the newspaper about a convicted killer, The Misfit, who has escaped from the Federal Pen, and is headed towards Florida.
The grandmother wanted to go and see her friends in Tennessee instead of Florida, which is where the family wanted to go. The Grandmother lied and said that the Misfit would be in Florida instead of Tennessee. She did this so Baily, her son, would change his mind about where the family would go for the trip. Throughout the story, the Grandmother is very noisy. She is very concerned with small ideas.
Flannery O’Connor should have titled the story “A Good PERSON Is Hard to Find” this would have fit with the theme of what she was trying to get across to the audience. O’Connor used gestures to grab her audience and what better than an old Southern woman and a sociopath killer. In the end after years of acting like a good lady and good Christian the Grandmother has a revelation and understands that it is not her life that needs salvation and hopefully for the Misfit one good deed deserves another and he will be able to change his course in life and become a man that looks to help instead of hurt the fellow
A Good Man is Hard to Find describes the murder of a family with peculiar members by a band of criminals led by The Misfit. The story relates to religion as a form of salvation used by the grandmother as her last chance to save a life lived with the wrong moral values. There is a contrast of opinions in what ways a man can be describe as good or evil and how the social status can affect such definitions. The use of Christianity is visible the end of the story as a mechanism of defense from the grandmother. She thought that maybe if she looked like a good Christian, The Misfit would have mercy on her.
In the beginning of the story, the grandmother was a selfish and manipulative person. By reading the first few sentences, you can notice that she does not want to go Florida because she wants to go to Tennessee to see some relatives. Whenever something runs up against the grandmother’s will, she tries to get it her way. She does not say I want to go to Tennessee, but she try to scarves him with the report of a criminal on the loose who is heading to Florida. She said, “Just you read it.
as grandma starts to hear loud noises in the woods her bad ways of living make good things into bad things by telling the Misfit “Jesus, Jesus, meaning Jesus will help you but the way she was saying it, it sounded as if she was cursing” (pg340). What does she know about Jesus when she told others they should be living a life like her in which she contradicted because she talked bad about them when in her religious belief it should not matter how poor or how they looked as long and they lived