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You Must Read This

The 'mystery and manners' of flannery o'connor.

Aimee Bender

Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose By Flannery O'Connor Paperback, 256 pages Farrar, Straus and Giroux List price: $15

I was at a friend's house the other day and we were talking about the constant struggle to stay aware, in the day-to-day juggling of our lives. She went to her fridge where she'd written down and stuck under a magnet this quote, from Flannery O'Connor's book of essays, Mystery and Manners: "Reality is something to which we must be returned at considerable cost," she read aloud. Then we both made the same pensive grunt people do at poetry readings when they've heard an especially good line.

Like all of O'Connor's work, the meaning of a sentence like that expands over time like a sponge. Mystery and Manners is packed with them. It contains talks about the act of writing, about teaching, about the art of raising peacocks, about the South, and Catholicism. But what I value most when I read these essays is how unbelievably deeply she takes on the task of being human. The shimmer of the unknown and the depth beneath our flaws. Her finest territory is how we wrangle with mystery.

A story is good, she says, when you continue to see more and more in it, and when it continues to escape you. In fiction, 2 and 2 is always more than 4.

How apt, then, that her own talks perform this same new math, adding up to more with every rereading I do. I'd listen to her tackle any topic. She compares the use of the grotesque to how a kid draws a face, with too-big ears and eyes and mouth. The kid, she explains, is just drawing what he sees; it's his way of showing what his world looks like. She talks about teaching literature in schools, and how she gets aggravated by the reduction of novels or stories to one pithy theme sentence. Like separating a string, she says, from a sack of chicken feed.

Aimee Bender is the author of The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, An Invisible Sign of My Own , Willful Creatures and The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake. Courtesy of Aimee Bender hide caption

O'Connor was a devout Catholic and she talks about the process of getting her characters, her difficult, crotchety, narrow-minded characters, to a moment of grace. Her voice often has a scolding edge; at times, you can almost hear her sigh with frustration as she addresses her audience's questions. But behind her crankiness there's a true call to arms, a battle cry. She has figured something out and she really wants us to get it.

To do this, she blasts us all -- she blasts religious people who are acting poorly in the name of religion. She blasts writers who are pretending to say writing is important while only wanting to get published. She blasts all the ways we take shortcuts from meaningful experience, from looking at the world closely and truthfully. Reading her feels chiropractic -- she drives to the core, to the big stuff, to the spine, and in this way, she's asking us, over and over, to be better.

She's a teacher, a back-cracker, a preacher, a visionary.

Even if my friend and I papered our refrigerators with quotes from every line of this book it would still be impossible to pin down the depth of O'Connor's thinking. As it should be.

You Must Read This is produced and edited by Ellen Silva.

Mystery and Manners

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Flannery O'Connor's Stories

By flannery o'connor, flannery o'connor's stories essay questions.

Choose one story in which a mother is present. How is her importance demonstrated?

Answer : In "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," The Grandmother is the most important mother, since in her moment of Grace she realizes that The Misfit, who is about to kill her, could be one of her own children. In "The Life You Save May Be Your Own," the elder Lucynell Crater dominates her daughter's life and dooms her by convincing Mr. Shiftlet to marry her. In "Good Country People," Mrs. Hopewell's conviction that Manley is just a good country person is a misjudgment. She also suffocates her daughter, Hulga, and does not appreciate Hulga's education. In "The Enduring Chill" and "Everything That Rises Must Converge," Asbury and Julian blame their mothers for their misfortune and take it out on their mothers with rudeness and disrespect. Julian realizes where he has gone wrong at the end of the story when his mother has a stroke.

Racism is an important theme in many of the stories. Choose one story in which is is relevant and explain how it affects the characters' lives.

Answer : In "The Displaced Person," Mrs. Shortley is racist toward Europeans, and is suspicious of the Guizacs for this reason. Mrs. McIntyre decides to do away with Mr. Guizac because he is trying to organize a marriage between his white cousin and Sulk, a black farmhand, even though her financial success will be negatively affected by his departure. Racism is important in "The Artificial Nigger;" though neither Mr. Head nor Nelson feels explicit hatred toward the black people they encounter, they certainly view them as Others and are nervous around them. A level of racism is apparent in Asbury’s interactions with Randall and Morgan in "The Enduring Chill," although he doesn’t believe himself to be racist. The very idea that he would be writing a play about “The Negro” is, of course, racist. Last year when he was writing the play, he had spent time with them on the job, and they had bonded over breaking one of his mother’s rules by smoking in the barn. In "Everything That Rises Must Converge," Julian’s mother is clearly racist. She is afraid of the black people who board the bus, and of black people in general, even saying aloud that they would be better off if they had remained slaves. This results in her demise, as she has a stroke after the black woman knocks her down.

Choose one story and explain how weather is used as an indicator of the characters' moods and intentions.

Answer : For example, in "The Life You Save May Be Your Own," weather is an important indicator of characters' moods and important moments. As Tom Shiftlet drives off with the younger Lucynell Crater in the car, supposedly to go on a honeymoon, "The early afternoon was clear and open and surrounded by pale blue sky;" he still has a chance to redeem himself. But after he abandons her at The Hot Spot, he has lost his chance at salvation, and the significance of this moment is enforced by the weather: "Deep in the sky a storm was preparing very slowly and without thunder as if it meant to drain every drop of air from the earth before it broke." After the hitchhiking boy has thrown himself out the passenger door, all is really lost for Tom Shiftlet, and "there was a guffawing peal of thunder from behind and fantastic raindrops, like tin-can tops, crashed over the rear of Mr. Shiftlet's car." The intensity of the weather is increased by its personification throughout the story. When Tom Shiftlet approaches the house of the Lucynell Craters at the beginning of the story, he leans to the side "as if the breeze were pushing him," with his face turned toward the sun "which appeared to be balancing itself on the peak of a small mountain." As Tom Shiftlet drives along slowly after the boy in the overalls has leapt from his car, "A cloud, the exact color of the boy's hat and shaped like a turnip, had descended over the sun, and another, worse looking, crouched behind the car."

Choose an example of a character whose glorification of a past time is a major identifying factor. Explain how this preoccupation affects the action of the story.

Answer : For example, the glorification of the past is prevalent in "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" in the character of The Grandmother, who expresses nostalgia for the way things used to be in the South. Her mistake about the "old plantation that she had visited in this neighborhood once when she was a young lady" leads to the demise of the whole family when they get in a car accident while driving down the dirt driveway. Before she realizes that the plantation is actually not in Georgia but in Tennessee, she remembers "the times when there were no paved roads and thirty miles was a day's journey," imagining the beautiful scene she believes they will soon find.

Explain how the symbols of the sky and sun represents an openness to faith in Christ in two of the stories.

Answer : The sky represents an openness to faith in "The River." As Bevel preaches in the river, his eyes follow the paths of two birds. They eventually settle "in the top of the highest pine and sat hunch-shouldered as if they were supporting the sky." When Harry tells the preacher that his name is also Bevel, jokingly, the preacher's face is "rigid and his narrow gray eyes reflected the almost colorless sky," in this moment before Harry's baptism. But when he is displeased, after Harry tells him that his mother is in fact only suffering from a hangover, "the sky appeared to darken in his eyes." As Harry runs into the river to drown himself, "The sky was a clear pale blue, all in one piece - except for the hole the sun made - and fringed around the bottom with treetops." Here, the sky represents Harry's mentality: he is focused and determined, and the only thought in his mind is faith, represented by the sun.

The sun is a symbol of Catholic faith in "A Temple of the Holy Ghost," and its intensity mirrors the characters' embodiment of that faith. After Wendell sings to the girls, they use the Latin songs they have practiced at school to make him and Cory feel confused and embarrassed; accordingly, "The sun was going down and the sky was turning a bruised violet color." After the child has achieved Grace in the chapel of the convent school, during the drive home, "The sun was a huge red ball like an elevated Host drenched in blood and when it sank out of sight, it left a line in the sky like a red clay road hanging over the trees." The Host, which Catholics like O'Connor believe is literally transformed into the body of Christ, is also linked to the hermaphrodite's body when the child thinks of the "freak" during the mass ceremony.

Many characters in O'Connor's stories demonstrate a disgust with the state of the world. Elaborate on this tool of characterization as it applies to three characters.

Answer : In "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," disgust with the world is evident in Red Sammy Butts' conversation with The Grandmother. The Grandmother states that, "It isn't a soul in this green world of God's that you can trust." This belief contradicts her Christian faith, of course.

In "The Life You Save May Be Your Own," Tom Shiftlet is disenchanted with the state of the world. After the elder Lucynell Crater tells him that her car no longer runs, he says, "Nothing is like it used to be, lady... The world is almost rotten." Later, when he is fixing the car, he comments that "the trouble with the world was that nobody cared, or stopped and took any trouble." By the end of the story, after he has abandoned the younger Lucynell Crater and caused the hitchhiking boy to jump out of his car, he "felt that the rottenness of the world was about to engulf him."

The title of the story “Good Country People” refers to Mrs. Hopewell’s judgments of people whom she believes she can trust. These people are distinct from the majority of the world, since “in this day and age, you get good country people, you had better hang onto them. She had had plenty of experience with trash.”

In "Everything That Rises Must Converge," Julian’s mother complains about the state of the world. Out of nowhere, while they are discussing her hat, she says, “With the world in the mess it’s in, it’s a wonder we can enjoy anything. I tell you, the bottom rail is on the top.” This is a reference to racial integration, which she sees as disempowering to white families like theirs. Aboard the bus, before any black people are on it, she says to another white woman about integration, “The world is in a mess everywhere. I don’t know how we’ve let it get in this fix.”

Many of Flannery O'Connor's protagonists are deformed or suffer from disabilities. Choose one of the characters and describe how he or she becomes defined by the deformity or disability.

Answer : In “Good Country People,” Hulga used to be insecure about her wooden leg, but she has come to value it and to keep it sacred. She almost worships it in place of God, since she has no faith. This ends up leading to her betrayal by Manley. Mrs. Freeman relishes hearing about deformities, and Hulga has heard Mrs. Hopewell relating to her the details of the hunting accident that cost Hulga her leg. Rufus Johnson has a club foot in "The Lame Shall Enter First," and protects it much in the same way that Hulga protects her artificial leg. He refuses to wear the special corrective shoe that Sheppard buys for him, because he identifies himself by his club foot.

Eyes are an important symbol in many of O'Connor's stories. Choose a story in which they are described as violent and explain how this is effective.

[Answer]: For example, eyes are often violent in "The Enduring Chill." When Mary George tells Asbury that if she looked as bad as he does she would go to the hospital, “Her mother cut her eyes sharply at her and she left.” As Doctor Block examines Asbury for the first time, his “drill-like gaze swung over [his mouth] and bore down.” Similarly, when Doctor Block has reported that he is suffering from undulant fever and will not die, “Block’s gaze seemed to reach down like a steel pin and hold whatever it was until the life was out of it.” When Father Finn chastises Asbury for being ignorant of the Holy Ghost, Asbury “moved his arms and legs helplessly as if he were pinned to the bed by the terrible eye” through which the priest sees. Since the story is told from Asbury's perspective, the reader gets the impression that Asbury only interprets these gazes from the doctor and the priest as violent. In reality, the men want to help him, but he is scared of them and aggressive toward them.

In "The Displaced Person," how is violent imagery associated with language used to enforce the characters' racism?

Answer : In "The Displaced Person," Mrs. Shortley's fear of the Guizac family manifests as an imaginary battle between the Polish language and the English language: "She began to imagine a war of words, to see the Polish words and the English words coming at each other, stalking forward, not sentences, just words, gabble gabble gabble, flung out high and shrill and stalking forward and then grappling with each other." When Mrs. McIntyre yells at Father Flynn in Part III, "her voice fell across his brogue like a drill into a mechanical saw." As Father Flynn preaches to her, Mrs. McIntyre does not listen, but rather waits for "an opportunity to drive a wedge into his talk." The mention of Father Flynn's "brogue" identifies him as originating in Ireland and thus as being different from Mrs. McIntyre.

Grace is one of the most important themes in O'Connor's stories. Choose a story in which Grace plays an important role and describe how it is symbolized.

Answer : Rather than accepting Grace, Asbury has been worshiping Art as a god instead in "The Enduring Chill." He realizes this when he overhears Mary George say that he has decided to be an invalid because he cannot be an artist, thinking, “He had failed his god, Art, but he had been a faithful servant and Art was sending him Death.” When Father Finn instructs him to pray, he responds, “The artist prays by creating.” The stain on Asbury’s bedroom ceiling can be interpreted as representing the Holy Ghost. It appears to him as a “fierce bird with spread wings. It had an icicle crosswise in its beak.” Since he has closed himself off to faith, he finds it irritating and sometimes frightening. After Father Finn leaves, having instructed him about the Holy Ghost, Asbury “looked at the fierce bird with the icicle in its beak and felt that it was there for some purpose that he could not divine.” When he realizes that he is doomed to a long life suffering from undulant fever, “the fierce bird which through the years of his childhood and the days of his illness had been poised over his head, waiting mysteriously, appeared all at once to be in motion.” It descends toward him, since he is doomed to suffer for his refusal to open his mind to Grace.

Flannery O'Connor’s Stories Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Flannery O'Connor’s Stories is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

How does the characterization of the grandmother contribute to the meaning of the text as a whole?

Grandmother is a cranky old woman who lives with her son, Bailey, and his wife and two children. She is preoccupied with appearances and snobby about "common people." The cynicism of the world really comes out through the character of...

"A Good Man is Hard to Find" The figures of speech used in this story sometimes create unflattering even grotesque pictures of the characters. A) Least 3 examples of negative figures of speech

"I'd smack his face," John Wesley said.

"Tennessee is just a hillbilly dumping ground," John Wesley said, "and Georgia is a lousy state too."

"My daddy said I was a different breed of dog from my brothers and...

How does the grandmother talk Bailey into going to the plantation?

When the Grandmother remembers an old plantation that she thinks used to be in the area they are traveling, Bailey does not want to take a detour to go find it. As a result, the Grandmother makes up a lie about how there are secret doors in the...

Study Guide for Flannery O'Connor’s Stories

Flannery O'Connor's Stories study guide contains a biography of Flannery O'Connor, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About Flannery O'Connor's Stories
• Flannery O'Connor's Stories Summary
• Character List

Essays for Flannery O'Connor’s Stories

Flannery O'Connor's Stories essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of short stories by Flannery O'Connor.

• Tempus Fugit: A Different View of Southern Hospitality
• Conflicting Identity Schemas in Everything That Rises Must Converge
• Flannery O'Connor's Intellectuals: Exposing Her World's Narrow "Field of Vision"
• A Grave Mistake: The Irony of Sheppard's Selfishness

Lesson Plan for Flannery O'Connor’s Stories

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to Flannery O'Connor's Stories
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• Flannery O'Connor's Stories Bibliography

Wikipedia Entries for Flannery O'Connor’s Stories

• Introduction
• Early life and education
• Characteristics
• Illness and death

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Critical essays on Flannery O'Connor

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Religion-Based Morality in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor Essay

One of the reasons why the short story A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor is being commonly referred to, as such that represents a high literary value, is that while exposed to it, readers become enlightened as to the fact that, while remaining affiliated with the provisions of the religion-based morality, people grow increasingly dangerous to themselves and their close relatives.

After all, as the author shows in this particular story, it is named on the account of self-righteous/pious but perceptually arrogant individuals (such as the character of Grandmother) that the saying “road to hell is made out of good intentions” continues to reflect the actual effects of this type of people being allowed to influence the society’s functioning. In her story, O’Connor also exposes the sheer fallaciousness of the Christian dogma that Jesus does help people that believe in his mission of ‘saving mankind’. In my paper, I will explore the validity of the above-suggestion at length.

The plot of O’Connor’s story is a rather straightforward one. It is being concerned with the description of the road-trip, undertaken by the members of one Southern family (the characters of Bailey, his wife, their two young children – John Wesley and June Star and the Grandmother) from Atlanta, Georgia, down to Florida. During this trip, the Grandmother never ceases to act as an ‘authority figure’, while manipulating her grandchildren psychologically.

Consequently, Bailey loses control of the car and, after having survived the accident, the travelers end up stranded on one of the secondary dirt roads. While there, they get to be approached by three dangerously looking men with handguns in their hand. The Grandmother recognizes the notorious Misfit (an escaped prisoner) in one of them. This seals the family’s fate – escaped prisoners decide to kill just about everyone that traveled in the car so that they would not be reported to the authorities.

The closer analysis of the story’s themes and motifs points out to the author’s implicit intention in making readers conclude that much of the blame for what happened to Bailey’s family can be assigned to the character of Grandmother, as an individual who was willing to misrepresent her real agenda, within the context of how she used to position herself in life. For example, even though the real reason why the Grandmother did not want to go to Florida is that she wanted to visit East Tennessee, she nevertheless never admitted to this.

Instead, the Grandmother was trying to convince Bailey and his wife that there could be very little educational value in preferring Florida, as the trip’s destination: “You all ought to take them (children) somewhere else for a change so they would see different parts of the world and be broad” (O’Connor 1). This, of course, reveals the character of Grandmother as a hypocritical person – ‘respectable’ on the outside, but strongly selfish on the inside. The author wanted to expose this particular psychological trait, on the part of the Grandmother, as being representative of how religious people go about addressing life-challenges.

For example, even though that the official reason why Catholic clergymen oppose the distribution of condoms in Third World countries, is that they want to prevent the ‘murder’ of unborn children, the actual rationale behind such their agenda is different. By acting in such a manner, these people simply want the Third World countries to continue to suffer from the problem of overpopulation, which causes poverty. After all, as sociologists are well aware, the more impoverished a particular society is, the more its members are willing to embrace religion – pure and simple. Thus, it is indeed appropriate in referring to the character of Grandmother as the embodiment of the well-meaning but essentially deceitful ‘Christian values’.

The validity of this suggestion can also be illustrated, in regards to how the Grandmother acted, after having realized that there was no ‘secret panel’ in the house, which she wanted to visit: “The horrible thought she (the Grandmother) had had before the accident was that the house she had remembered so vividly was not in Georgia but Tennessee” (4). Instead of admitting her mistake, the Grandmother decided to allow the rest of the travelers to remain uninformed that there was no reason for them to switch to the dirt road in the first place.

Enough, the Grandmother expected that her little dirty secret would remain concealed; while growing ever more self-convinced that there was no secret panel in the first place. It is understood, of course, that by continuing to keep her travel companions in the dark as to the secret panel’s non-existence, the Grandmother acted immorally. Yet, she did not act any more immoral than the Orthodox Church’s high-ranking officials, for example, who despite being thoroughly aware that the ‘miracle’ of the so-called ‘holy fire’ being ignited by God himself, during the Easter celebrations, is, in fact, a fake (they admit to it unofficially), nevertheless continue glorifying it.

Apparently, by exposing readers to this particular episode in her story, O’Connor strived to emphasize the fact that, despite the religious people’s belief that they do have what it takes to be able to lead others, this is far from being the case. This simply could not be otherwise; because one’s strong affiliation with the conventions of a religious morality naturally causes the concerned individual to adopt an intellectually arrogant stance in life. As a result, such a person becomes utterly incapable of assessing the surrounding reality adequately. Another consequence of the religious people’s intellectual arrogance is that as time goes on, they begin to accept as true the essentially nonsensical fables, such as the Biblical accounts of talking donkeys, impregnating ‘holy ghosts’ and the sun standing still in the sky.

Even though that, on a conscious level, religious people do realize the sheer fallaciousness of the earlier mentioned accounts, they nevertheless apply a mental effort into silencing the voice of reason in their minds, in this respect, so that they may continue to believe in the possibility of ‘miracles.’ This explains why, after having realized that there was no ‘secret panel’ in the house she wanted to visit, the Grandmother simply suppressed such her realization mentally, as it was causing her a great deal of emotional discomfort.

What has been mentioned earlier, however, is only part of the problem. Because it is in the very nature of just about any monotheistic religion to divide people into those that are being favored by God (‘chosen people’), on the one hand, and ‘infidels,’ on the other, religiously-minded individuals are by definition intolerant. There is another memorable episode in A Good Man Is Hard to Find by , where the Grandmother applies a derogatory term to a Black boy, she saw out on the street: “’Oh look at the cute little pickaninny!’ she (the Grandmother) said and pointed to a Negro child standing in the door of a shack” (2).

It never occurred to the Grandmother that there was something wrong about the fact that her remark implied the Black people’s sub-humanity – just as it never occurred to White slave-owners back in the past that by treating Black slaves as a soulless commodity, they were acting immorally. After all, the ‘good book’ does endorse slavery as a thoroughly appropriate state of affairs.

The fact that the Grandmother was a hypocritical person is also being revealed in the scene, where she begs the Misfit to spare her life: “Pray! Jesus, you ought not to shoot a lady. I’ll give you all the money I’ve got!” (7). If the Grandmother was indeed faithful to Jesus, as she believed she was, she would not be trying to hang on to life with all her might. After not all, according to Jesus, people’s physical existence is not worth even a penny, and it is namely the prospect of being able to reunite with the ‘savior’ in the ‘kingdom of heaven,’ which true believers are supposed to prioritize above everything else.

Enough, the Misfit was presenting the Grandmother with such a prospect – yet, she proved herself rather unenthusiastic, in this respect. Instead, the Grandmother was trying to appeal to the Misfit’s basic humanity so that he would not kill her: “I just know you’re a good man” (5). By doing this, Grandmother wanted to elevate the Misfit to her level, as she never doubted her own ‘goodness.’ However, as we pointed out earlier, Grandmother’s ‘goodness’ was in essence illusionary.

Therefore, there is nothing too surprising about the story’s conclusion. It appears that O’Connor wanted to say that the Misfit was just as ‘good’ as the character of Grandmother – in the sense of being evil, of course. The only difference between the two is that, as opposed to the Grandmother, the Misfit did not have a socially imposed reason to have his evilness hidden. This explains the symbolical significance of the Grandmother’s death.

One of the story’s discursive implications is that there is indeed a good reason to think of the situation when the self-righteous ‘lambs of God’ even today are continuing to affect the process of policy-making in America, is utterly inappropriate. After all, as it was shown by O’Connor, despite these people’s self-adopted posture as ‘lambs,’ they are viciously minded ‘wolves’ – much worse than those ‘sinners’ (intellectually advanced individuals/atheists) that they never cease criticizing.

It is exactly the reason why self-righteous bible thumpers do not have the right to position themselves as ‘authority figures’ – being intellectually marginalized individuals, they cannot benefit the society, by definition. Thus, there can be only a few doubts as to the discussed story’s overall progressiveness, as it does expose what account for the eventual consequences of one’s intellectual arrogance – even if this arrogance is being disguised as religion.

I believe that the earlier deployed line of argumentation, as to what can be considered the story’s discursive meaning, fully correlates with the paper’s initial thesis

Works Cited

O’Connor, Flannery 1953, A Good Man Is Hard to Find .

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IvyPanda. (2022, August 14). Religion-Based Morality in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” by Flannery O'Connor. https://ivypanda.com/essays/a-good-man-is-hard-to-find-by-flannery-oconnor-essay/

"Religion-Based Morality in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” by Flannery O'Connor." IvyPanda , 14 Aug. 2022, ivypanda.com/essays/a-good-man-is-hard-to-find-by-flannery-oconnor-essay/.

IvyPanda . (2022) 'Religion-Based Morality in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” by Flannery O'Connor'. 14 August.

IvyPanda . 2022. "Religion-Based Morality in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” by Flannery O'Connor." August 14, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/a-good-man-is-hard-to-find-by-flannery-oconnor-essay/.

1. IvyPanda . "Religion-Based Morality in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” by Flannery O'Connor." August 14, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/a-good-man-is-hard-to-find-by-flannery-oconnor-essay/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Religion-Based Morality in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” by Flannery O'Connor." August 14, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/a-good-man-is-hard-to-find-by-flannery-oconnor-essay/.

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Good Example Of Essay On Flannery O’connor: A Good Man Is Hard To Find

Type of paper: Essay

Topic: Literature , Grandmother , Story , Men , Misfit , Man , People , Connor

Words: 1250

Published: 03/08/2023

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First published in the year 1953, this short story symbolizes lots of characters and themes, which characterized the typical O'Connor’s story. In most instances, she banked on available resources to induce certain themes to her stories. These resources could be the people she encountered or the books she read such as journals and newspapers. For instance, the obsessive assassin (Misfit) who massacres a whole household as evident in this novel is from two convicts who intimidated residents of the Atlanta region in the early 1950’s. As a result, it is, therefore, important to discuss how significant the title of this story is, in relevance to the characters that consider themselves good. Whether the term “good” loses meaning as this story ends and if the subject is about nonexistence of good men. The title certainly seems to be true according to the storyline; it clearly comes out when the guy who owns the barbecue where they stopped to eat, and the grandmother are talking about the presence of good men and how few people are trustworthy these days. Both unanimously accept that, without a doubt, good men are not easily found (O'Connor 5). However, characters used offer a dissimilar perception on what kind of a man is “good,” making the title look ironical as well. Themes of conviction can also attach to this story’s title as predominant to various O’Connor’s stories. They ended their discussion about exactly how the realm has turn out to be a place where people are no longer trustworthy; their grandmother approves that “virtuous men” can not easily be found in such a society. She says this for she is certain she is a respectable critic, but from the look of things, her arguments are based on fortune, prominence, and external looks of a person which are not significant elements of determining whether a person is good or bad. Other than this, she is a Christian but hardly shows love and compassion to anyone else not up to death struck that she recognizes that a good man has only been difficult to find for she has failed to identify good aspects in people. This title is hence significant in that it relates to the characters view to determine if finding a moral man is difficult (Holliday par 3). In her story, the grandmother ( name not provided) deliberates herself as being virtuous for being Christian and valuing religion. Red Sammy after being conned gasoline by two people the grandmother refers to him as moral. His wife goes ahead to state that this world is so full of wicked people except fo her husband. In this context, they try to make him look good and insinuate that he is among the few men who still have good qualities. Nevertheless, this is being gullible and not good as put by the grandmother. In fact, she comforts Red Sammy by telling him that he allowed himself get duped for his nobleness. At several instances in the plot of the story, the grandmother is quick to judge people as good or bad based on how they behave or how they look as seen in the case of Sammy. Just after the accident and Misfit and his cohorts appear, the grandmother seems to recognize him and from his politeness alone, she concludes that he is a good man and tells him that she knows he is a moral man without common kinship and comes from good people (O'Connor 9). Although it is possible that she misread Misfit’s personality to curry favor with him; there is no way she could term him badly, yet he was threating to kill her. Her reward is three bullets to the chest, and one wonders whether Misfit was really good as referred to by the grandmother. From the events unfolding in this story, it is very difficult to determine who is good or rather what the characters mean by the word “good.” When they get involved in an accident, and Misfit appears, the grandmother quickly speaks of him being good and not a bit common (O'Connor 10). Shockingly, Misfits confesses he is not a respectable man; he knows he has committed countless wrongdoings, and he can never be good. This affirmation provides an accurate description of what “good’ truly means in this story. The grandmother, on the other side, maintains that she is good, but this woman’s kindness is only seen once throughout this story when her death knocks and Misfit appears. There are chances she is pretending just to rescue her dear life, in a real sense, therefore, the grandmother is not good, and the meaning of the word good greatly changes. However, the true meaning of the word resurfaces when Misfits declines he is not good and goes ahead to shoot the grandmother. The subject in this story is not about nonappearance of decent men but somewhat how society in questions perceives and treats the word “good.” If according to the grandmother Redd Sammy was good by allowing himself get fooled then the world lacks good men because not everyone is susceptible. There are good men but how the society views them is what matters considering how they carry on themselves and behave. However, it is also possible to argue that the absence of good men might not be the only theme in this story, there are other several themes that are relevant to the events in this story; for instance, religion, as witnessed before grandmother, is shot by Misfit. At first, Redd Sammy is conned of gasoline making the people who con him look wicked. In another instance, Misfit does a lot of crimes and even considers himself bad when grandmother pleads with him before he shoots him. Additionally, Bailey is disrespectful to his grandmother; he does not even lift up his head when his grandmother is taking to him, that shows signs of disrespect and portrays him as not being good as well. From the title, and the series of other continuous events, it is clear that there are no good men in the society. This phrase can, therefore, be employed as the main theme min this book. In conclusion, this story, just like most O’Connor’s stories talks about the events that occur in modern lives. She has used several themes and styles to show clearly that indeed good men are hard to find in the current societies. Her characters conduct themselves in such a way that the events in the story justify the title of the book in several ways, right from the grandmother to Misfit and Redd Sammy and his wife. Nonetheless, it is not easy to settle that good men are hard to find based solely on the characters of the book as Misfit proves the grandmother wrong by saying he is not a good man.

Works Cited

O'Connor, Flannery. “A good man is hard to find and other short stories.” Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data. 2015. Web. 1 May. 2016. <http://www.boyd.k12.ky.us/userfiles/447/Classes/28660/A%20Good%20Man%20Is%20Hard%20To%20Find.pdf> Holliday, Stephen. “What is the irony in Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard to Find?” Enotes. 24 Jan. 2012. Web. 1 May. 2016. <http://www.enotes.com/homework-help/what-irony-good-man-hard-find-309651>

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