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.
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.
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.
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).
February 4, 2014 A Misfit Vacation Life is filled with unexpected twists and turns, some of which are positive and others negative. In Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man is Hard to Find, she conveys a story about an average every day family that goes through turmoil. This short story is not a story that allows you to read it half fast. You must be sure to keep in mind all the details thrown into the plot because you find out at the end, that every decision that is made throughout the story affected the turnout of the family. The story follows the point of view of grandmother, as she accompanies her family on a roadtrip to Florida.
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 cat symbolizes the things in life that the wife wants but something is keeping from them. The idea of the cat being caught in the rain represents her dreams and wants being put on hold. When she goes out into the rain the cat has disappeared within a matter of minutes. This symbolizes her dreams constantly being pushed away by her husband. At the end of the story the maid brings a cat to the room; however, we do not know if it is the same cat that she saw in the rain.
Her husband left early on in Emily’s life and her mother was forced to leave her with friends or send her to day care. “…and I did not know then what I know now- the fatigue of the long day, and the lacerations of group life in the kinds of nurseries that are only parking places for children” (Olsen 707). Emily got nowhere near the amount of attention she needed. Maggie, on the other hand, was always with her mother. Maggie’s mother was also older and better suited to be a mother because she was older and more experienced however, Maggie’s father also left the family.
Income has always been a concern for families and losing one income can be devastating to a family, and on the other hand there is the single mother that really does not have a choice, but to go to work and support her child. The loss of income could mean that the family cannot meet their basic needs such as housing, food, clothing and additional worries of saving for the future such as college expenses and retirement. Families might also have concerns about future employment if mom decides to leave the current workforce. The work force seems to be constantly changing; consequently, making future employment harder to come by when mom is ready or a need arises to return to work. Some would argue that the cost of child care is too great and the income generated by the working mom is not worth the cost or the time lost with the child.
Maggie selflessly insists that her sister can have the quilts (128). Maggie is also not a very strong character; instead she stays in the background most every situation that she can. For example, Dee and her friend rapidly approached the house in their car. “Maggie attempts to make a dash for the house…” but her mother quickly takes hold of her, making sure that she does not escape. Maggie was very uneasy around her sister; her mother tells her anxiousness in regard to Dee’s visitation: “Maggie will be nervous until after her sister goes: she will stand hopelessly in corners, homely and ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs, eyeing her sister with a mixture of envy and awe” (119).