A good man is hard to find By Flannery O' Connor - Essay Example

Topic :A good man is hard by flannery to find O'connor “The good man is hard to find” is a book written by Flannery O” Connor which contains many short stories in one name. The book starts with a short story where in an unnamed grandma influencing her son to go to Tennessee rather than Florida for vacation. Here the Grandmother is shown to be very manipulative and even in the journey manipulates her son to divert to Tennessee instead of Florida. On the way to Florida the grandmother describes about a person called misfit, who have been a serial killer and spending time in imprisonment.

She during her talk also quotes that it is very hard to find a good man these days. The most interesting fact about Grandmother is that even though she looks good Christian from outside her honesty to religion is very weak. As the journey progress to Florida, grandma and her family meets with Misfit and his accomplice and confronts death threat. On meeting the misfit with weapon, Grandma try to influence misfit by taking him as son but unfortunately the whole family get killed by the convicts.

Here the Grandma thinks that she is very religious and misfit instead is ignorant and irreligious. The grandma tries to save herself by telling misfit that she considers him as her son. .However she gets killed from the hands of misfit who take the lady as opportunistic “We would normally expect that a grandmother should represent goodness while a serial killer should represent evil. O’Connor, however, seems to hold precisely the reverse in this case”(Bernardo). The readers here feel that Grandma is very honest and faithful in religious aspect and Misfit is very evil and atrocious.

But the author tries to make us understand that, it is not what you show outwards but what you are inward in belief is what matters to God. Here the old woman represents an unfaithful lady in spirituality and misfit being a murdered represents honest to his belief in being atheist. The author here shows through Grand mother that just looking well dressed and clean does not mean that one is true to God. It is what one believes by heart which makes them true devotee of God. The author here suggests that Godliness is a very important aspect in life and one cannot fake this feeling at any cost.

The old lady here was trying to show misfit that she is ardent believer of Jesus Christ and he can spare her from death. But misfit realized that the grandma is a non – believer and killed her by shooting thrice. In this short story the grandmother is acting very self – centered and thinks that she is better than anybody else. Here the old lady by meeting misfit a murderer get a chance to get salvation by getting killed by his hand.2 “The heroine of this story, the Grandmother, is in the most significant position life offers the Christian.

  She is facing death.  And to all appearances she, like the rest of us, is not too well prepared for it”(Voteller).The old lady being much elder to misfit is not a match to the wit of misfit and neither her grace match him .But in the end the grandma did the right thing by accepting misfit as her son and realizes that misfit’s growing up without spirituality have led him to do violence acts in his life. Work Cited Bernardo, Karen. "Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find"." www.

storybites. com. Story Bites, 1995. Web. 24 Apr 2011. . Votteler, Thomas. "Short StoryCriticism." www2.sunysuffolk.com. Gale Research Inc., 1990. Web. 24 Apr 2011. < http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/lewiss/Oconnor.htm>.