“A Good Man Is Hard To Find” By Flannery O’Conner And The Unexpected Evil

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A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery OConnor and the Unexpected Evil

She wouldve been a good woman, said The Misfit, if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.

-Flannery OConnor

The following paper pivots a 1953s short story titled A Good Man Is Hard to Find, written by Flannery OConnor and sifts through different aspects of personification of a leading disposition, grandmother. As a matter of fact, the story attempts to explicate the particular demeanor of grandmother and its fatal consequences on the family the familys itinerary is slyly organized and demonstrates the limitations and extents of the southern region and nullifies the clichs along the way. The tale is acknowledged as southern gothic and is an amalgamation of different wired and somehow dark protagonists the overall narrative is laden with rhetoric and hidden meanings that, in turn make it challenging to comprehend the essence of characters. The stories highlights two extremes of meanness or say evil in which the grandmother can be asserted as petty mean meanwhile, the criminal Misfits meanness is explicitly interconnected with cruelty (Link, 2018). The grandmother is consumed by the notion of social status, disparity, selfishness, and absence of love, and therefore apparently, Misfit seems like the villain of the story, but a closer evaluation and the end of narration confirmed that grandmother was the evilest character.

Throughout the tale, different dialogues and foreshadowing highlighted the perceived politeness of grandmother, which is evident from her prevalent characters attributes. Such traits include selfishness, lordliness, talkativeness, and hypocrisy all such dynamics are precisely distinct from grandmothers conversational bit and pieces (Thuan 2017, 218). In order to develop and shift the connotation of the character, OConnor employs numerous gestures and terminology such as facial expressions and graciousness of grandmother. Gradually, politeness keeps changing, and by the pace of the story, grandmothers polite demeanor exhibits signs of lordliness and aristocracy. A similar tinge is visible in grandmothers chattering about class and prejudices regarding rich and poor people. The instances of courteous selfishness are also incorporated into almost every act of grandmother. Such traits infer the classiness yet morally dwindling side of grandmother.

Social status is a factor that requires attention and substantial initiative in order to be improved (Hani 2019, 247). However, A Good Man is Hard to Find proposed that an ostensible desire for maintaining a fabricated social status is detrimental and can be associated as a corrupt and imperceptible trait the same thing happened with grandmother. Grandmother always strives for looking impeccable, her attire and attitude all are emblem of perfectionism. Grandmother wants to look perfectly well-dressed and noble, stylish woman. Her passion for being flawless even surpasses the peril of accidents the story contends that when Baileys family left for vacation, grandmother dressed strikingly, so, in case of any unfortunate accident, her corpse would look like an aristocrat lady (OConnor 1953, 2). The very scenario highlights the superiority complex and morally means comparison of grandmother. She garbed with a white-dot-printed, white brimmed navy blue dress and donned a blue straw hat of sailor-style she also pinned a sachet-based purple spray of fabric violets. Through such elegant and extraordinarily eye-catching appearance, grandmother wants to ditch her daughter-in-law both in personality and uniqueness. Such yearning of dominance underlines ill-intention and low ethical attributes of grandmothers character and adds up in her villainous side.

On the other hand, A Good Man is Hard to Find, portrays grandmother as an extremely manipulating, selfish and hypocrite personality. At the start of the story, she wants to stay in Tennessee because of her relatives and therefore was reluctant to leave for Florida, and in due course, she seizes every chance to try to change Baileys mind (OConnor 1953, 2). Moreover, whenever grandmother feels uncomfortable with any happenings she employs her hypocritical skills to evade the situation without getting involved in explicit confrontation. However, grandmother adheres with her shrewd politeness, and instead of rebutting the idea of moving to Florida on rational grounds, she tried to steer Baileys intentions through infusing an air of terror through reporting criminal misconducts and indirectly permeates a sense of guilt in taking his family to an unsafe place. As a matter of fact, the fatality of Baileys entire family and grandmothers demise all purely associated with such undue manipulation, bragging, and selfishness of grandmother. Throughout the way from Tennessee to Florida, granny keeps retelling her grandeur past experiences to grandchildren that evoked them to see the house on the dirt road and to behold the secret panel grandmother told about. Bailey was not in favor of taking the vehicle on the dirt road, but habitually grandmother maneuvers the decision, and they finally heed towards dirt road that eventually brought a macabre fate upon the entire family.

Through several glimpses of the story, it is affirmed that the grandmother is overly swooned by worldly and materialistic objectivity that she does not know the meanings of love. In this regard, OConnors influence in southerner and catholic approach deems prevalent. Flannery OConnor believes in the presence of contemporary consciousness that, in turn, elaborates on the facades of unhistorical loneliness and of the onus of culpability (Mitchell 2014, 211). Through such implications, the author pivots the idea of original sins and weird and grotesque protagonists and their banal and horrific action however, all such stories mandatorily include a moment of grace. In this regard, it can be deduced that the character of grandmother in the story is strange and bizarre, and because of her misconduct and sinful personification, she experienced a moment of guilt and therefore granted with a biblical moment of grace (Mitchell 2014, 211). It is represented that at the end of the story, when Misfit was about to shoot grandmother, she experienced a significant moment of epiphany and a moment of grace in which she considers Misfit an equal human being worthy of equal love and respect (Renner 1982, 123). However, feminist critics raised several questions on the implied brutality of the scenarios and conclusion moreover, OConnor condemned by many for tarnishing the visage of womanhood (Rea, 2017), but no matter what, OConnor justifies the wrapping up exceptionally effectively.

To put it briefly, A Good Man is Hard to Find based on different characters through which the implications of social goods and evils are explored. The character of the grandmother is critical and central somehow, her inner darkness is compared to the exposed criminality of Misfit. Grandmother pursued petty meanness on a day-to-day basis, and for the sake of her selfishness and maneuvering, she unintentionally paved the path for the morbidity of her family and got killed simultaneously. It is elaborated that, however, grandmother was not entitled and acknowledged culprit, and she never committed murder or robbery sort of delinquencies, yet her meager, banal sins caused similar devastating consequences. Misfit killed Bailey, his wife, children, and grandmother with the help of a gun, but long before that grandmother had already murdered them all through her absurd vanity, selfishness, and futile social status perception. All such factors and unfortunate deaths of Baileys family make grandmother a pre-eminent villain and bad guy of the story, and in the end, audiences accuse grandmother instead of Misfit for all hullaballoo and gruesome happenings.

Work Cited

Hani, Mohamad. Analysis of Social Problem in A Good Man Is Hard to Find by  Flannery OConner. English Community Journal, vol. 2, no. 2, 2019,  doi10.32502/ecj.v2i2.

Le Thi Bich Thuan. Character Analysis Through Politeness in A Good Man Is Hard to  Find by Flannery OConnor. International Journal of Applied Linguistics  English Literature, 2017, doi10.7575/ijalel.

Renner, Stanely. Secular Meaning in A Good Man Is Hard to Find. Twentieth-Century  Literary Criticism, Vol. 132, 2003.

Mitchell, Mark. The Melancholy Tyrant Democracy and Tyranny in Flannery  OConnors A Good Man Is Hard to Find.. Perspectives on Political Science,  vol. 34, no. 4, 2013, doi10.1080/10457097.2013.776343.

OConnor, Flannery.A Good Man Is Hard To Find. London Womens Press, 2001. Print.

Link, Alex. Means, Meaning, and Mediated Space in A Good Man Is Hard to Find.  Southern Quarterly A Journal of the Arts in the South 2007 Summer 44(4) 125- 38. Journal Detail University of Southern Mississippi., 2018.

Rea, Robert. Flannery OConnors Murderous Imagination Southern Ladyhood in A  Good Man Is Hard to Find. Southwest Review. Vol. 102, Issue 2., 2017.

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