Misfit Vs Grandmother

“A Good Man is Hard to Find” tells a twisted story of a typical family going about a road trip embedded with ethical pit stops along the way. The story revolves around a cynical grandmother and how her unconventional attitude and habits set the stage for an interesting turn of events. Through manipulative antics, a prejudice character and an ironic story line, author Flannery O’Conner creates a captivating tale that shines a lights on readers’ own moral codes. The author does this by making an example of a woman completely unaware of her own immoral acts.

The word evil is most often associated with death or physically harmful things. But in Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” the Misfit shows that evil is not only in physical actions but by also how you judge and treat people as demonstrated by the Grandmother in the story. The Misfit although is not seen as a fully developed character, he brings contradiction to the definition of evil and is also a main character of the story.

An ardent Catholic as she was, Flannery O’Connor astonishes and puzzles the readers of her most frequently compiled work, A Good Man Is Hard to Find. It is the violence, carnage, injustice and dark nooks of Christian beliefs of the characters that they consider so interesting yet shocking at the same time. The story abounds in Christian motifs, both easy and complicated to decipher. We do not find it conclusive that the world is governed by inevitable predestination or evil incorporated, though. A deeper meaning needs to be discovered in the text. The most astonishing passages in the story are those when the Grandmother is left face to face with the Misfit and they both discuss serious religious matters. But at the same time it is the

In most of Flannery O’Connor’s short stories a number of characters have a hard time seeing an ultimate reality in their life. They tend to have a distorted grasp on reality but not all in the same way. In the story “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” the Misfit and the Grandmother are prime examples. The actions and the way of life of the Misfit and Grandmother are mostly due to the fact that they are living in an false reality where they are in their own little world, where in the Misfit’s world everything goes with no worry of repercussion in the Grandmother’s case she can do no wrong because she has a false perception of what is right.

The short story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor reflects upon various aspects of human interactions. Yet, throughout the story O’Connor reveals the importance of internalizing one’s beliefs and mores to live a more purposeful life. In correlation, this theme relates to becoming a leader of character in the Coast Guard, truly upholding and defining the core values of honor, respect, and devotion to duty for one’s self. Unlike the rhetorical analysis, in literature, writers have the challenge of relating seemingly arbitrary fictional narratives to human nature. Additionally, writers must fully conceptualize all aspects of fiction to begin conjecturing of its connection to reality; this was my central challenge for this essay.

Social status often establishes one 's credibility and integrity within a society. The power that social status has, encourages people to heavily focus on it. With this focus on social status ever pressing, one’s identity often gets intertwined with and reliant on their place in the hierarchy of society. People become fixated on one idea they have of a person in a certain social class, that anybody who breaks out of specific stereotypes may often cause anger amongst others. In the short story “Greenleaf” by Flannery O’Connor, the main character, Mrs. May, is obsessive about the way others perceive her and her place in society. Mr. May’s identity is so strictly tied to her desire to get to a higher social class and her notions how society

She was a lady through and through, so much that “In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady.” The irony of that quote is simply that it becomes factual. Flannery O’Connor really paints a vivid picture of how self absorbed this character is. The grandmother’s personality might play a role in her self-proclaimed aristocrat outlook on society but the way that she was raised probably had a much greater impact on the way she view things as proper and right. Flannery O’Connor wrote A Good Man is Hard to Find in the 1946. From this, readers can assume that the grandmother would have grown up before the time of the booming 1920’s. After the 1920’s, many women’s outlook on what was proper and acceptable was drastically changed. The grandmother saw this drastic change in the morality of the American Society, which could have given her the idea that she was a more proper and sophisticated lady then the younger people who had completely different views on what was deemed expectable. She was surrounded with people that she was much older than her, which could have also given her the thought that she was among the hierarchy. This is because of the time period that she was brought up, she may have felt it necessary for her to teach other people the ways that to days younger people seemed to have lost. One could see the influence that her

The grandma thinks being a Christian goes along with her being a “good” woman. Her religion is instead more of an accessory to her look and useful when she needs it. “"If you would pray," the old lady said, "Jesus would help you"”(O’Connor, 1953). The grandma suggests to the Misfit many times to pray when she herself can’t. Through all of her hypocriticism, she is still granted grace. “"Why you're one of my babies. You're one of my own children!" She reached out and touched him on the shoulder” (O’Connor, 1953). The grandma’s last gesture is genuine and represents her final moment of grace. She finally puts aside her superficial definitions of “good” and being “a lady” and realizes she is somewhat responsible for this man’s actions and shows true love for him (Shmoop Editorial Team, 2008). Finally in her last movement alive, the grandmother receives her moment of

Though the family did not turn to violence like the Misfit, they still had their own set of issues. The other members of the family seem to be embodiments of society’s most self-interested and materialistic. O’Connor illustrates that with each generation of this family, there were no positive role models. Each generation had no effective parent to exhibit the correct way to function in society. Each generation then was stuck in

The Misfit is our antagonist in the short story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” written by Flannery O’Connor. He is a mysterious man who’d give you the sense of trust, but his actions are not pardoning. He’d show the qualities of a good man and the qualities of a psychopath. His background and stories don’t quite fit his actions, that is why he calls himself “The Misfit.” Although The misfit’s actions are ringing the bell of a psychopath, his inner-self shows otherwise. The Misfit is full of flaws but he is no psychopath, he’s just a man who is forced to live a life that was not meant for him. Deep down inside he’s a good man, but life forced him to act differently.

At the initial meeting of the Misfit and the Grandmother, it was easy to see the Misfit as the bad guy and the Grandmother as the innocent one. But from the moralistic perspective, their positions can't be justified. The grandmother is selfish, as the story illustrates from the beginning, and the misfit is a criminal who takes pleasure in killing, both of them are in some way serving their own causes, and portraying self-love. Both of them bring these selfish desires into the closing dialogue of the story. The misfit is out to kill and the grandmother is out to save herself. She begins to tell the misfit who she hasn't met until that moment that he's good, thereby attempting to save herself. And the misfit is determined to do what he came to do. All during the ordeal, the Grandmother asked The Misfit to pray. She acted as if she

Exploring the idea that all men are born sinners, O’Connor demonstrates immoral indulgences entertained by various characters. Readers are introduced to grandmother, an elderly woman whose consistent unscrupulous behavior exhibits her inner motives. Grandmother uses subtle, indirect confrontation to get her way until she is faced with The Misfit, a runaway criminal who believes that crime is a justifiable. In “A Good Man Is Hard To Find,” Flannery O’Connor uses characterization to display a loss of morals, imagery to portray evil in society, and symbolism to emphasize the struggle of obtaining grace to prove how life is nihilistic without religion.

While writing “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, Flannery O’Connor uses a modernist lens to fully flesh out the characters and theme of her story. One of the most visible examples of Modernism in the story, is when the Grandmother, staring down the barrel of a gun, tells the Misfit “To pray so that Jesus will help him,” (O’Connor, 306) which the Misfit replies with “I’m fine on my own.” (O’Connor, 307) The interaction between these two characters near the end of the short story exemplifies modernism, as it departs from long time, set, orthodox religious thought and defies tradition. Another example of modernism in this story, is the misfit himself. Established in the beginning of the story, the stereotypical, religious, traditional

When the grandmother and the Misfit are alone the grandmother’s selfishness becomes apparent to readers. Even though her family had just been murdered, largely because of the consequences of her selfish acts, she is focused on saving her own life. Furthermore, she tries to convince the Misfit that he is a good man. "I just know you 're a good man." (O’Connor “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” 148) The Misfit replies with, "Nome, I ain 't a good man…but I ain 't the worst in the world neither.” (O’Connor “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” 148) He accepts the fact that he has done wrong but knows there are others who are worst. The grandmother speaks of prayer to the Misfit but is unable to recite one single prayer. She just repeatedly uses Jesus name, almost as if she is cursing. This symbolizes her weak understanding of being a Christian.

In the various works provided to the class many themes are present in all of them, this paper will be focusing on the authors methods of critiquing social norms. The short story, A Telephone Call by Dorothy Parker paints a harsh reality from the perspective of a highly anxious woman forced into a lifestyle that many would relate to in the 1900s. “My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning exposes the duke and the terrible social norms he reinforces through a poetic format allowing the reader to interpret his strange behavior on their own. Their Eyes Were Watching God, a novel, by Zora Neale Hurston attempts to defy social norms and showcase the positive outcomes of such. Lastly, A Streetcar Named Desire is a play by Tennessee Williams which satirically points out the extremist behaviors that are approved and even rewarded by society. These pieces of literature from different genres still point out the same issues in social norms in regards to the power struggle between men and women and gender roles. Although the perspective changes, as the characters are different or the economy of words is different between the genres the message stays the same.