Flannery O ' Connor And Joyce Carol Oates

Another virtue the grandmother lacks is courage. Courage is “The state or quality of mind or spirit that enables one to face danger with self-possession, confidence and resolution” (Courage). When The Misfit arrives, the grandmother is nothing but a coward. She exhibits no self-possession, “Alone with The Misfit, the grandmother found that she had lost her voice” (O’ Connor 1116), displayed here when she can’t even speak. She also has no resolution to the situation but to give The Misfit her money, “‘I’ll give you all the money I’ve got!’” (O’ Connor

These are elements of random foreshadowing that helped the reader understand why the grandmother believed so strongly that a good man is hard to find. This would be a prelude to the horrific events that would later unfold when the grandmother encounters the misfit who by all intense purposes was not believed to be a good man.

Flannery O’Connor introduces her reader’s too unique short stories. They are “Good Country People” and “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, having too similar characters in different setting, but with the same symbolic meaning. The comparison between Hugla from “Good Country People” to the grandmother in “A Good Man Is Hard to find” is interesting, because they both suffer the same fate. In every short story O’Connor has created a intellectual individual who comes to a realization that their beliefs in there ability to control their lives and the lives of other are false. They enviably become the vulnerable, whereas they assumed it would be different. O’Connor has placed two misguide characters, that deem themselves to be manipulative and compulsive. At the end up of each short story they become vulnerable. Hugla from “Good Country People” and the grandmother from “A Good

During the story when The Misfit encounters the family seeking the old familiar plantation, he becomes like a Christ figure to the old southern woman. The grandmother is scared for her life but she still believes there is some good in the man. During this event, the

Religion was a recurring theme in her work, and the main characters of her first and second novels were preachers of sorts. O’Connor is best known for her short stories, specifically the book, A Good Man Is Hard To Find. This story uses the theme of sin. The grandmother makes it known that everyone is guilty of something, as she tells the Misfit that no person is without sin. This is an example of O’Connor using her faith within her writings. The grandmother also brings up praying to Jesus, when confronted by the Misfit, another Religious example in her work. O’Connor also uses the theme of family in many of her works. This is shown through A Good Man Is Hard to Find by showing the family’s relationship. Although the relationship was not tight-knit, the theme of family of is prevalent.

In the beginning, the grandmother is reading the newspaper where she then learns about the Misfit who escaped prison. The grandmother says, “I wouldn’t take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn’t answer to my conscious if it did” (O’Connor 485). This quote foreshadows as the accident happened with her guidance on the road it is what led them to steer off the main road. They were on and into the arms of who they call the Misfit and his

Flannery O’Connor was a short story author from Savannah, Georgia. She has produced many critically acclaimed pieces and has won several awards for them. Two distinct pieces she wrote are titled The Life You Save May Be Your Own and Good Country People. While both of her stories are unique, the underlying storyboard and character creation process that O’Connor used is the same throughout her stories. Her stories usually involve one or more self-centered woman, a younger person who become the victim of egregious crime, and a conniving male driven by his own motives. Good Country People and The Life You Save May Be Your Own do not stray from this rule. In either story, the narrative is driven around a shocking tragedy that is very unexpected. Even though in the tragedies committed in the book always have a belligerent and a victim, it is not easy to discern who amongst the two are the antagonist and the protagonist. In either of these narratives, the tragedy that occurred within the stories blurs the line between antagonist and protagonist.

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.

With the shock of coming face-to-face with death, she starts to let go of her power-hungry and deceptive behavior and decides to act out of love and humility. Her head has become clear, and more than ever she becomes aware of the situation. All her shallow and hypocritical thoughts seemed to have dissipated, and she sees the Misfit as a child of God just. The grandma notices a voice crack in the Misfit’s voice and thought he was about to cry; she murmurs, “Why you're one of my babies. You're one of my own children” (O’Connor 458-459)! The grandmother calls the Misfit one of her kids despite the crimes he has already committed; God’s spirit may have entered the grandmother and is attempting to offer redemption to the Misfit since she has now accepted it. The still figure of the grandmother is described as “her legs crossed under her like a child’s and her face smiling up at the cloudless sky” (459). God has given the grandma salvation now, and her spirit has a journey to heaven via the cloudless sky. O’Connor shows the protagonist to be hypocritical, but the protagonist found salvation and appeared happy after accepting God and feeling love towards the Misfit; the Misfit appeared to reject God when he shot the grandmother in the chest after she was trying to lend him a hand. The grandmother was able to find salvation through the violence the Misfit brought.

In this paper Flannery O’Connor wrote “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and “A Life You Save May Be Your Own.” Many similarities can be found in these two famous short stories. One can infer based on these

6. The significance of the grandmother's to receive grace when she said to Misfit “why you're one of my babies. You’re one of my children because she used to manipulate people to get what she wanted and she never cared about people except herself, but at the end she did concern for someone other than herself maybe for the first time in her life. She thought if she said, Misfit, that he would have pity on her and not killing her the same way he kills Bailey family. For instance, when she heard the sound of the gunshot she just called "Jesus" and "Bailey Boy" later she tried to sermonize him to ask God for forgiveness while she never asked God for that.

At first, Connie felt embarrassed for her grandmother, but her perception of grandmother change to guilty. For example, in page 7, “I am so embarrassed that even though the woman next to me is shooting daggers at me with her eyes, I just can’t move to get her.” (Ortiz) When Connie talks about the woman next her is staring at her, she knew that she supposed to take her grandmother but she can’t because of her embarrassment. Another example is on the page 8, “that if it wasn’t for the old woman whose existence you don’t seem to value, you and I

“From the outset of the narrative, members of Connie's family recognize their powerlessness and thus their difference from her. Her mother and sister are not attractive, so they do not really count; and her father, who spends most of his time at work, is weak.” (Urbanski 1). Connie did not look anything similar to her family, she is much prettier and has a better personality. Connie did not want to be like the rest of her family, she wanted to be better and prettier than her sister and even her mother. Her family was still in the early sixties trend, while Connie despised the way they acted and dressed. Even Connie’s taste in music pulled her further from her family. Her mother despises the way the admires herself, yet her father is not talked about much. “Connie’s father doesn’t care where she has been, and her mother, who the story implies was much like Connie when she was younger, takes only perfunctory interest in where she’s going”(Coulthard 507). Although she is always fighting with her family, she never meant for her actions to affects them in the way they did. She even clinged to them for security in her most traumatic times.

In the Christian religion God allows anybody who prays and ask for grace into heaven which would include people like the grandmother and Misfit. The grandmother at the time of her encounter with the Misfit attempts to bring religion into play and tries to convince the Misfit to pray and not shoot a lady. The grandmother at this point was only worried about her own well being and was trying to use her manipulation abilities to allow herself to go free from the situation. The grandmother was bad in her own way, so her trying to enstow grace upon the Misfit is

“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.