Flannery O’Connor’s, “A Good Man is Hard to Find”

Flannery O’Connor’s, “A Good Man is Hard to Find”

            The story is regarded as the Southern Gothic because the setting has to occur in the South.  It will often demonstrate about the past versus the present. The Southern Gothic men present a group of gentlemen.Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is a classic example of the Southern Gothic story.Grandmother and the Misfit exhibit traits of the southern “lady” and “gentleman.”  The grandmother defines a ‘good man’ as the characteristics that a good man should possess. She believes that the actual definition of a good man is a southern gentleman: brave and respectful when necessary. The grandmother perceives the Misfit as gentleman as she is attempting to save herself. She uses the phrase to Misfit as his incapability to shoot a woman. Even though the moral conduct, behaviors, and social values of Misfit vary from those of grandmother’s, she desperately regards him as a gentleman. Her definition of a gentleman lies in the perspective that he lacks common blood (O’Connor 578). Grandmother perceives herself as superior to others by being a ‘lady,’ and she passes verdict on others. She contends that her conscience guides her when she notifies Bailey that her conscience would not permit her to take the children in a similar direction as the Misfit. Grandmother criticizes the mother of the children for not traveling to a venue that would enable the children to ‘be broad,’ and she considers the face of the mother like garbage. She punishes John Wesley because she believes that she lacks respect for Georgia State(O’Conner 137). She utilizes every chance to judge the lack of goodness in individuals across the world. In this period, she boastfully wears her cautiously chosen dress and hat; sure that being a southern lady is the most crucial virtue of all..

O’Connor assesses the battle between good and evil through the characters of the Misfit and grandmother. I believeO’Connor is attempting to evaluate whether being individuals are the way they occur, whereas the exploration between good and evil is apparent (O’Connor 32).O’Connor paints Grandmother and the Misfit as a symbol of good and evil, respectively. The author symbolizes the grandmother as a typical southern Christian woman, whereby the former describes the appearance of a grandmother when they leave for family vacation. She describes how Grandmother is wearing and the reason for choosing such attire. O’Connor says, ‘the grandmother had on a navy blue straw sailor hat with a bunch of white violets on the brim and a navy blue dress with a small white dot in print….and at her neckline, she pinned a purple spray of cloth violets containing a sachet…anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady (O’Conner 33). O’Connor is attempting to portray the Grandmother as a lady and demonstrate a stark contrast when comparing how the wife is dressed. Grandmother meets Misfit, a serial killer who is narrated as the sole figure who possesses a certain level of integrity.

Flannery O’Connor crafts a story from characters fashioned and explained by the traditions of their settings: the South. The personalities of the characters drive the tale, clashing, and molding to formulate the action that makes the story work. The fictional work, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” shows these notions. The absence of the Southern flares of the grandmother and the Misfit will imply that the events would not hold altogether and successfully grab the imagination of the audience.

Work cited

O’Conner, Flannery. A Good Man is Hard to Find . Flannery O’Connor: Collected Works the Library of America. 1953.