Irony In A Good Man Is Hard To Find

In “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” the Grandmother is the protagonist. She is the focus of the narrative and the character whose reactions we encounter the most. More importantly, the third person narrative focuses strongly on the grandmother’s point of view, which establishes her in the reader’s mind much more than any other character. Nevertheless, the grandmother views herself as a rather dignified and traditional woman who appears to judge everyone, but manages to constantly overlook her own flaws. This appears various times such as when she conveys her ideas about the upcoming vacation and June Star states “She has to go everywhere we go” (O’Connor 567), in which merely displays the Grandmother as unwanted by the family. This can be compared to that of the Misfit in the story who also appears to be unwanted by his family. Despite this, the Grandmother continuously positions herself in the family’s everyday activities while imposing her judgment every chance she gets. Moreover, she is censorious of her son and daughter in law for not allowing their children to “see different parts of the world and be broad” (O’Connor 567). She is also critical of her grandchildren for not being like children “In my time” (O’Connor 569) who “were more respectful” (O’Connor 569). By doing this, O’Connor presents a strong characterization of the woman and her virtually unbreakable mindset. However, this story reflects on how through any conflict you can find the good in others, but sometimes it is too late for them to realize their own mistakes. Eventually, the Grandmother confronts evil in the form of The Misfit and seems to show a completely different side of

In the short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” there is irony all through the pages. It shows how you should follow your gut instinct when you think you shouldn’t go somewhere, when you know something bad is going to happen. In the story it also talks about how the grandmother wore her nice clothes in case of an accident, she wanted to look like a lady in case anything bad was to happen. The grandmother was constantly talking about the good in people, but was she a good woman?

The term “a good man” is usually referred to it as a worthy person that has done a marvelous deed. A person look can be deceiving and it is very difficult to know whether that person is generous or malicious. In a short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor, the audiences are focus primary on the grandmother interactions toward The Misfit, a wanted criminal. The story is set to be in one big irony about a family vacation from wrong. There is a numerous irony throughout the story, but the most irony scene is the interaction between the grandmother, who's the protagonist of the story, and The Misfit, who’s a wanted criminal and the antagonist. Throughout the conversation between the family and The Misfit, the audiences will

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.

Flannery O’Connor’s philosophy of writing was directly related to her life and roots as a Southerner, a Catholic, and a woman. One of the Southern traditions that O’Connor used most in her writing was local customs and manners which make people laughable. “Exaggeration of characteristics and of incidents is one cause of our laughter in O’Connor’s stories” (Grimshaw 89). She would regularly expose the hypocrisy of character’s thoughts by exaggerating their ridiculous actions in moments of distress causing readers to feel both horror and humor at the same time. Also present in most of O’Connor’s work, is her Catholic faith with regards to her vision of grace and the devil. Her view of faith was complete in the sense that it had a beginning, middle, and end, but she wrestled with Protestantism and depicted hypocrisy and intolerance when she found them (Grimshaw

To the uninitiated, the writing of Flannery O'Connor can seem at once cold and dispassionate, as well as almost absurdly stark and violent. Her short stories routinely end in horrendous, freak fatalities or, at the very least, a character's emotional devastation. Working his way through "Greenleaf," "Everything that Rises Must Converge," or "A Good Man is Hard to Find," the new reader feels an existential hollowness reminiscent of Camus' The Stranger; O'Connor's imagination appears a barren, godless plane of meaninglessness, punctuated by pockets of random, mindless cruelty.

There are two deeper meanings hidden in this text though that even good can have some bad in it and what the Misfit and Grandmother represent (in a larger view point). The Grandmother appears to be trying to be a good Christen women by trying to turn the child around to remember god, the deeper meaning to this is that she is scared of dying and will try anything to live another day even trying to accept the child as her own, which leads her to her own demise. This shows that while there may appear to be good in everyone there is also bad. The Grandmother is a great example of this because she tries to appear like a good Christen women by helping the child to find god by asking him to pray when her actual motive was to get him to let her live. The quote, “"She would of been a good woman," The Misfit said, "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life."

“The great thing about irony is that it splits things apart, gets up above them so we can see the flaws and hypocrisies and duplicates. ”(Wallace). Wallace is saying irony splits things apart. To illustrate the idea of irony splitting things apart, are three short stories: Sherman Alexis’s “Because My Father Always Said He Was The Only Indian Who Saw Jimi Hendrix Play ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ At Woodstock,” Flannery O, Conner’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” and Gabriel Gracia Marquez’s “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings: A Tale For Children.”

Equally important, the grandmother in “A Good Man is Hard to Find” has the outstanding transformative moment shown at the end of the story. After the grandmother and Bailey’s family have an accident, the Misfit comes and it seems like he and his friends will rescue them. Unfortunately, they come to kill them and all members in the family died except the grandmother. The grandmother’s transformative moment occurs when she meets the Misfit and he wants to kill her which this situation changes the perspective of grandmother to be a really kind woman. At first, the grandmother staunchly beliefs in God as her moral code like the grandmother says to the Misfit that “If you would prey, Jesus would help you.”

Though the short stories “A Rose for Emily” and “A Good Man is Hard to Find” differ in plot, theme, voice, and many other aspects, both contain similar characters and settings. The authors of these highly acclaimed Southern Gothic works, have skillfully and eloquently created intricate characters and imagery that portray many elements of Southern life. Flannery O’Connor’s, “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” tells of the tragic events that take place during a family’s road trip to Tennessee, which ultimately ends in their unsightly demise at the hands of a notorious

Nancy, Grandmother, and Jennie are three female characters that are key figures into the development of the short stories which they fall in. In O’Conner’s “ A Good Man is Hard to Find,” Bontemps’s “ A Summer Tragedy,” and Faulkner’s “That Evening Sun” these three characters are known to be inattentive, fearful, and weary.

The grandmother in “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, considers herself to be a remarkable human being, above everyone else. This leads to the family she has to getting into the situation with The Misfit and thus developing the story.

Whereas O’Connor will have hints of existential philosophy with reference to the individual, she is ultimately influenced deeply by her Catholic upbringing. This ends up in the Grandmother being a highly religious character, perpetually asking the Misfit if he prays. Whereas on the surface it might seem obvious the grandmother is a more religious person than the Misfit , but in

Flannery O’Connor is one of the most controversial and well known modern day Southern Gothic authors in America. When she came into prominence in 1955 with her first collection of short stories titled A Good Man is Hard to Find, it was met with criticism for being overtly violent and grotesque. One reviewer from Time magazine said the short stories were “witheringly sarcastic” and “written in a style as balefully direct as a death sentence” (Simpson 44). The reviewer went even further on to call O’Connor “Ferocious Flannery.” O’Connor, unbothered by the criticism, replied to critics by saying, “Anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic” (Mystery and Manners 40). Critics also noticed her use of Christianity in the short stories, which only amplified accusations of them being sarcastic to which O’Connor replied, “I am tired of reading reviews that call A Good Man brutal and sarcastic...The stories are hard but they are hard because there is nothing harder or less sentimental than Christian realism...when I see these stories described as horror stories I am always amused because the reviewer always has hold of the wrong horror” (The Habit of Being 90). Although it is confusing to O’Connor’s critics as to why she infused violence and Christianity into her stories, there was a method to her madness: she simply wanted to show readers that violence and

The grandmother in “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” remains nameless and is portrayed as a very old-fashioned, self-righteous woman that is, “Seizing every chance” (O’Connor 1) to manipulate those around her for her own selfish reasons. She lives with her only son and his family in a southern setting in Georgia. She has an immense amount of pride and considers herself morally superior to others. The grandmother views herself as a “Lady” which is how she manipulates her family to satisfy her own selfishness. However, her idea of being a “lady” is a very skewed image in the way that morally and consciously, she is quite the opposite. She feels that because she is a “Lady”, she has the authority