Preview

Critical Analysis Of A Good Man Is Hard To Find

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1041 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Critical Analysis Of A Good Man Is Hard To Find
The woman in “A Good Man is Hard to Find” has a hard way of supporting the “feminine” side of this short story. Woman are considered to be strong opinionated leaders. The Grandmother disregards the ethnic stereotype. Not shy at all, the Grandmother is very opinionated and does not hesitate to voice her opinions on a range of different subjects. The grandmother pays attention to small details others would ignore, such as the millage on the car before the road trip started. The criticizing Grandma is the cause of the downfall of the family trip by sneaking her beloved cat on the road trip. The risks of “forgetting” seem strong in the relation to many aspects of feminist practice. The Grandmother ever so graciously “forgets” that the house she …show more content…
She typically goes out of her way to “be on top” and show off. While at Red Sammy’s barbeque restaurant she snaps at his wife for the comment made towards June Star to come be her little girl because of how cute she is. June Star responds in a snarky manner, “No, I certainly wouldn’t…I wouldn’t live a broken down place like this for a million bucks!” (O’Connor 140) This section of the text implies that June Star wouldn’t settle for anything less than she wants, and what she wants is to live like a princess. Another section in the text that talks out of term for June Star is when she is bantering her grandmother, saying “She wouldn’t stay home to be queen for a day…She wouldn’t stay home for a million bucks […] She has to go everywhere we go.” (O’Connor 137) June Star is implying that she doesn’t want her grandmother to be included in the family trip, with the possibility that she might take precious June’s “spotlight”. June Star’s reaction to her grandmother’s story is more evidence. June Star is offended by her grandmother’s story. However, June is not offended by the story’s racism. In fact, she reveals her materialistic side when she explains that she “wouldn’t marry a man that just brought her a watermelon on Saturday.” The Grandmother introduces June into the world of picking her men based on wealth and materialistic things. Throughout the story the Grandmother try to initiate June into the appropriate gender

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    In “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”, O’Connor seems to suggest that only through conflicts can the “good” in people be found. The way that the grandmother seems to dwell in the past suggests that she believes that it would’ve been easier to find a “good” man a long time ago. To the grandmother, trying to find goodness today would prove to be very challenging and possibly even useless. Through the use of symbolism, foreshadowing, and metaphors, O’Connor develops the story’s theme.…

    • 946 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    O’Connor purposely wanted readers to think this way to distracted what it’s actually meant to mean. If your one of the reader’s who fall into this trap then the story’s conclusion will leave you completely shocked. So what does O’Connor mean by a good man is hard to find? Several clues, if not carefully read, presents us with an idea of what the main character means by “good.” One would be when the grandmother and her family are at a small restaurant called Red Sammy’s. Her and the owner get to talking about how good men are hard to find. ”A good man is hard to find.....I remember the day you could go off and leave your screen door unlatched. Not no more.” Here, the owner says exactly what the reader believes the title to be, but when the grandmother speaks her interpretation of “good man” is different. The first clue is how she…

    • 731 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor, a family plans a vacation to Florida, in which it does not turn out as they had expected. The story begins with a family from Georgia consisting of the father Bailey, his wife, baby, two kids John Wesley and June Star, and their grandmother whose name is never announced. Among planning their trip to Florida, the Grandmother suggest they go elsewhere, justifying herself saying that there is a misfit on the loose and he’s heading that direction. The rest of the family does not take her suggestion seriously, and so the next day they all leave for Florida, including the grandmother. The grandmother makes the decision to bring her cat along for the trip as well while not telling any of the other family. During the trip, the grandmother tells the children stories and plays games with…

    • 1307 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Flannery O’Conner short story “A Good Man is hard to Find” Is about this grandmother who is plotting to get her own way through whatever means is necessary. So the fact is “The grandmother’s whole personality is built upon the fictions she tells herself and her family” (Schenck, 340). “She creates the stories behind the visual phenomena she sees and explains the relationships between events or her own actions which have no logic other than that which she lends them” (Schenck, 340). The grandmother who imaged a life she once had that turn to a tragedy of reality for her and her family. She does not admit it, but her thoughts manifest themselves physically and emotionally. The grandmother got so embarrassed that her cheek was red and her eyes widen and she begins to stomp her feet and this really upset her at that moment.…

    • 733 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The tragic heroes and narcissists in the short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor are the Grandmother and the Misfit. However, the focus is on the Grandmother and how she is in the grandiosity phase of being a tragic hero. There are personality characteristics associated with this phase, some of which the Grandmother has. She feels entitlement to get and do what she wants. In the story she takes her pet cat with her on the trip even though Bailey tells her not to. The Grandmother is a judgmental person. She judges other people based on petty things like clothes or first impressions. Finally, the Grandmother’s omniscience personality gets her killed.…

    • 846 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    You are sitting in your living room at home watching the nightly news. The lead story for the night is about a family of four that were murdered. After seeing and hearing about something like that we often ask ourselves, What could possess a person enough to kill another human being? What is it that drives a person to kill? Will we ever know? Many authors use this unique mentality in short stories. They write about what the killer thinks and how he/she acts on his/her thoughts. One of these stories is "A Good Man Is Hard To Find", by Flannery O'Connor. In this story O'Connor's victim, The Misfit, is an escaped convict. He was in the Federal Penitentiary for killing his father. Throughout the story O'Connor builds up this killers mentality through his words and body language. Like many other murderers, The Misfit could not distinguish the difference between fantasy and reality.…

    • 1119 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” the author, Flannery O’Connor communicates literary symbols and prominence of Southern culture. Within the story, there are subtle yet important details that make the entirety of the piece as iconic as it is. The reoccurring theme of being a lady and moral codes both are important to the overall concept of the story.…

    • 826 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    A Good Man is Hard to Find

    • 1397 Words
    • 4 Pages

    A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor is a short story that depicts a family road trip to Florida that ends in an abysmal tragedy when they meet the Misfit, a remorseless convict who has escaped from prison. In the beginning, the Grandmother is obsessed with everything worldly and superficial. She is completely focused on herself in relation to how others think of her. Towards the end of the story, the grandmother finds herself in ominous dialogue with The Misfit. In the story, The Misfit represents a quasi-final judgment. He does this by acting like a mirror. He lets whatever The Grandmother says bounce right off him. He never agrees nor disagrees with the grandmother, and in the end, he is the one who kills her. At the end of the story, before the Grandmother meets her fate, she has a moment of redemption. She finally distinguishes The Misfit for who he really is, not a psychopathic killer on the loose; but a person just like herself. The Misfit, being a man who is not created from social class; he is a simple human being just like the grandmother. At this point she sees herself in relation to everyone else. She finally realizes that she is not made by her class. Society makes the class, and she just fits into it. She shows this by claiming that The Misfit could be one of her own children. This story is meant to be interpreted as a parable, whereby O'Connor made skilful use of symbolism to bring about messages such as the social-superiority and the lack of spiritual faith that exist amongst common people; and the grace in humans is exposed, only when facing adverse and fatal circumstances.…

    • 1397 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In “A Good Man is Hard to Find” you meet a family, but the member of the family that sticks out is the grandmother. She says many things that makes one wonder what is going on in her head. For example, when she says “In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady” (O'Connor). This is a one of the first sentences from the reading “A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor. When reading this sentence, it makes one wonder; why does the grandmother care so much about being know as a lady? The story about a family of five going on vacation and they bring their “well” mannered grandmother, who just seems very stuck in her ways. When it comes to her ways she thinks they are the “good” ways, but are they really? Even though, the grandmother in "A Good Man is Hard to…

    • 1150 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Through use of superiority and racist attitudes, the grandmother keeps the idea of the “Old South” alive. The setting of the story gives visual to those ideas through old buildings and style of roads. Together, these aspects of “A Good Man is Hard to Find” show the differences between the US now and the US of the 1950’s. Without the social prejudices of that time period, the story would lack the importance of the grandmother’s character which is to teach readers to be a more progressive…

    • 1092 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    A woman who views herself as God and a man who views himself as Jesus Christ. This man didn't go as far as to say he's bigger than Jesus as a legendary Beatle once did; he however stated the following "Jesus thown everything off balance. It was the same case with Him as with me…" As the above briefly demonstrates, O'Connor's "A good man is hard to find" not only deals with the controversy of society and the way it mold it's citizens, but focuses mainly on religion and her characters strive for self acceptance as well as survival.…

    • 717 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    “Violence in a good man is hard to find, the faces of marginality” Begins by talking about how humans live their lives without morals and ethics, they compare people in today’s world to the characters of o Connors short story. The misfits are considered the dark side of society and the grandmother is the good. This demonstrates how good and evil coexist side by side. The author says how the grandmother is good and therefore she experiences a moment of epiphany that would only be given to the protagonist of the story. O Connor says how we learn through violence and because of the tragic events of the story the grandmother is given a moment of grace for recognizing the misfit as one of her own children. They state that o Connors work serves as a paradigmatic indictment, where criminals are not only aggressors but victims.…

    • 324 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The short story I decided to do my paper over was A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor. This story is about a family that is made up of a grandma, mom, dad, son, daughter. The story starts withe the family is getting ready to go on a family trip to florida but the grandma does not want to go to florida she wants to go to tennessee to see her friends. The dad who is the grandmas son says that would unfair to the rest of the family so the grandma says fine and they hed toward florida. On the way they stop at Red Sammy’s Barbeque restaurant to get something to eat then they continue on. On the way to florid after the stoped for food the grandma says she remebers this very nice house that she wants to goes see she says the house is right off the raod they were on she made the house sound so awsome that the kids want to see the house to so the dad said the would go see the house. When the road is very bumpy and they get into crase which makes the grandma remeber that the house was not in georgia but in tennessee. After the crase three men show up carrying gun the grandma reckonizes one of the men as the Misfit who was a killer one by one the muder the family the grandma being last.…

    • 469 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Have values really change over the years? In Flannery O’Connor’s short story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” values are really portrayed as being a thing in the past. Values such as family values and people values are really important and O’Connor really tries to get her point across by using the character from the family to show how they have lost respect towards each other and other people as well. The worst thing is that the characters don’t even realize how they act with each is actually wrong and don’t seem to do anything about it because of the lack of discipline.…

    • 601 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    One example shown in "A Good Man is Hard to Find" involves the grandmother's strong southern heritage. She dresses with the intention that if something should happen and she was found dead on the road, anyone that found her would certainly know she was a lady. She also was always telling stories of southern gentlemen courting her. At the end, the Misfit, whom the grandmother knows is of quality southern blood, shoots her and her family despite her belief in southern hospitality. The grandmother is seen as a woman who believes in God during her encounter with the Misfit, but we see early on in the story that her belief isn’t very strong through all the lying and deceitfulness she continues in. Not until her confrontation with the Misfit, do wee see her become so passionate about her faith.…

    • 780 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays

Related Topics