Such as when her son Bailey does not want her to bring her cat Pitty Sing on the trip. Instead of arguing about it she just hides the cat in a basket and brings it anyway. The grandmother then wishes to go visit an old plantation along the way yet knows that Bailey will not want to do this, her solution to this is to let the children persuade him. She tells the children of a house filled with secret panels and hidden treasure, this in turn gets them excited and begging Bailey to take them there for a visit. It is quite clear that through her actions that the grandmother is very selfish thus trying to satisfy her selfishness by manipulating others.
Ellie again questions herself and her actions when she blows up a lawnmower to save her friends. She battles with her decision and believes she is a murderer. Although the choices she makes may deliver pain and trauma to others, her human spirit shines through the chaos to help her succeed. Through the characters in ‘Tomorrow When the War Began’, Marsden shows the human spirit’s ability to grow and triumph. Ellie’s decisive ability and her morals are thrown into chaos when she arrives at the family house and finds her dogs dead.
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).
“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.
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 Grandmother tried to convince the Misfit he was a good man in order to save herself (O'Connor). When she could not achieve this task, she began to question Jesus herself, “Maybe He didn’t raise the dead,” the old lady mumbled, not knowing what she was saying and feeling so dizzy that she sank down in the ditch with her legs twisted under her.” (O'Connor). It’s unclear why she said what she said next. She reached out and touched the Misfit and told him, “Why you’re one of my babies. You’re one of my own children!” Upon this action, the Misfit shot
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.
The story follows the point of view of grandmother, as she accompanies her family on a roadtrip to Florida. Along the way, they are met with stops and decisions, where they eventually meet their demise. O’Connor elegantly calls on various elements of fiction to assist in her story telling. O’Connor uses setting to bring the audience into a story that contains remnants of their own personal life. Through her clever use of irony, O’Connor is able to create situations that keeps the reader enticed.
Nobody listens to her and the trip will end up in tragedy. The writer uses a simple story to show how simple events can have dramatic effects on our life. On the road to Florida they take a side road to look at an old house that the grandmother wanted to see. The father had initially refused to take that side road but he gave up after the children insisted. To gain their support, the grandmother had mentioned the existence of “secret panels” in the house.
For some reason though, we don't quite believe her. The rest of the story shows the grandmother doing more of the same. We learn that Bailey doesn't want her to bring the cat. Instead of causing a ruckus (Bailey's the type who would make a big stink), the grandmother just hides the cat in a basket and secretly brings it along. The grandmother decides she wants to go see the old plantation, but knows Bailey won't