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Southern Gothic Research Paper

Decent Essays

Southern Gothic was shaped to explore the past of the American South and also criticize the moral blindness of an era. Macabre Situations, Violence, Social Structure, Being an Outsider and so many more traits are used in this type of genre of short stories. Some of the stories that we have read in class that fit the genre traits of the Southern Gothic tradition would be “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor, “ The Possibility of Evil’ by Shirley Jackson, and “A Rose For Emily” by William Faulkner. The authors of all these stories portrayed the traits of southern gothic by describing the characters in a certain way giving us a chance to identify the themes inside every story.
In “A Good Man is Hard to Find” a grandmother lead her family to a different place so she could show her grandkids some place back in her hometown. She persuaded her son and his family into taking a detour and it didn’t end so well. This man who they called the misfit had escaped from jail caught up with them at the wrong time and killed every last one of them. One main trait in the story would be Good vs. Evil. The grandmother tried to convince the misfit that he was a good man just so he wouldn’t kill her. Another trait that played a big part in this short story would be, Being an Outsider. This goes for the Misfit because …show more content…

One trait that was portrayed in this story was social structure. Miss Strangeworth acts like she is the leader of the whole town so she doesn’t treat people how they should be treated. She treats them as if they are inferior to her. One last trait that was described in the story would be being an outsider. Even though she lives in the same town as other people she brings out the bad in them by writing them disturbing letters but she is too good to see the bad in

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