A Good Man Is Hard to Find: a Character Analysis

899 Words4 Pages
A Good Man Is Hard To Find: A Character Analysis Written by Flannery O’Connor in the year 1955, the short story A Good Man Is Hard To Find, is an exceptional example of Southern Gothic literature. It is a tale about a family, travelling through the American South, who is met with a variety of different characters. As the story progresses, the reader observes the southern lifestyle in the given time period, and also the nature of the people involved in the story, with the help of which one might be able to build an idea of the American peoples’ psyche, back then. Like a lot of her other works of fiction, O’Conner gives her readers a very dark and vivid outlook on various topics of interest in the story, such as religion, morality, and human nature, in general. The narration is used only for descriptive purposes, and tends to have a neutral tone, unlike the dialogue, where personal opinions are often expressed. This very aspect makes the short story brilliant, as one’s opinion of the story depicts their own values, rather than that of the authors. The travelling family consists of a grandmother as the main character, whose son, Bailey, along with his wife, and two children, John Wesley and June Star, are on vacation. The grandmother is much more interested in spending time in east Tennessee, rather than going to Florida, as "the children have been to Florida before.” (O’Conner) She supports her case by showing Bailey a newspaper, which states that a criminal, who calls himself ‘The Misfit,’ is on the loose, and headed to Florida. Throughout the story, the grandmother keeps using the label ‘a good man’ loosely, to a point where it’s hard for one to judge her meaning of the phrase. She first uses the phrase when the family stops at a restaurant called ‘The Tower,’ and the owner, Red Sammy, shares with the family how untrustworthy the general public has become, as he
Open Document