A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor

In â€Å"A Good Man is Hard to Find†, by Flannery O’Connor, the theme is grace, the idea that nothing we do can save us from our own faults. In the beginning of the story, the grandmother talks about how you cannot even trust anybody in the world, while she is actually being more untrustworthy than those of the world. After reading the story, you can see how her actions and her words are ironic because she is actually lying and cheating the family. Analyzing the characters, setting, and irony of the story, we can see how trust is a major issue throughout the story and how they have a rather dysfunctional family.In â€Å"A Good Man is Hard to Find,† the characters are important because their thoughts and actions mold together and make the story what it is. If there were one character missing, the story would not be the same. The mother is a character that hardly plays any role, and hardly ever says anything. Also, in the wreck, the mother was the only one who got hurt. The main thing the mother does is take care of the baby. With that being said, the character of the baby is mostly just to take up the mother’s attention. Also, taking some of the grandmother’s attention when she holds the baby in her lap for only a few minutes during the ride.June Star is Bailey’s daughter. Throughout the story, we learn that she is a rather disrespectful little girl. She makes rude remarks to everyone like â€Å"I wouldn’t live in a broken-down place like this for a million bucks† (O’Connor, 408) to Red Sam’s wife when talking to the baby. For the most part, she is just a bothersome little girl. Her brother, John Wesley, is almost just as bad. During the story, he mostly torments the grandmother and kicks the father’s seat repeatedly throughout the whole car ride. He, along with June Star, is disappointed when they realize there were no fatalities in the car accident.Red Sam is the restaurant owner wher e the family stopped to eat. Red Sam states, â€Å"a good man is hard to find† (409), when explaining to the grandmother about the men who never paid their tab. He wants to see the good in everybody, but explains, â€Å"Everything is getting terrible. I remember the day you could go off and leave your screen door unlatched. Not no more. † (409) Bailey is the grandmother’s only son. He is June Star and John Wesley’s father, also the driver of the car. Bailey likes to think that he is in control of everything, when in reality he is not.He lets the grandmother persuade him into going to Tennessee instead of Florida, where he had primarily intended on taking his family. Bailey and John Wesley are one of the first the get shot after the accident. The grandmother in the story is rather manipulative. From the beginning to the end, she is constantly nagging and talking the family into different plans. Not only is she this way towards the family, but she also trie s to talk the Misfit out of killing her and tries to convince him that he is a good boy. She does so by saying things like â€Å"You’ve got good blood! I know you wouldn’t shoot a lady!I know you come from nice people†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (415). Also, the grandmother is very conceited; an example would be when the narrator says, â€Å"In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once she was a lady† (406). The grandmother is so tied up with herself that she doesn’t want to admit when she is wrong, when on several occasions in the story, she is wrong. The Misfit is a character who comes along towards the end of the story. Arthur Bethea describes â€Å"The Misfit† is an anti-Christ. Jesus loved children, whereas children make the anti-Christ Misfit ‘nervous’† (247).He, along with his two-gang men, has escaped from prison and now on the loose. They come along after the accident, looking like they are going t o be good Samaritans, when actually they turn out to be murderers on the run. Along with the role the characters play in the story, the setting is also essential in which it starts in the house, moves to the car, and ends in the woods. At the beginning of the story, all the characters are in the house in an unknown city, debating on where they will go on vacation. Of course, the grandmother does not want to go where Bailey has planned.After they argue and figure out where they will go, they get in the car and head for Tennessee. While riding in the car, the grandmother starts remembering her childhood and demands that Bailey go to an old plantation she remembered. Putting them off track, they end up on a dirt road in Georgia where the grandmother realizes but does not say that they are in the wrong spot. After having a car accident, they family ends up in a ditch in the middle of nowhere. Little by little, each character is taken into the woods and do not return. In the woods is whe re the story ends, where the Misfit and his gang members ultimately kill the whole family.The characters and the setting are both important, and they come together to create irony that is shown throughout the whole story. At the beginning of the story, the grandmother tells us â€Å"The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed towards Florida† (405) this being her reasoning for not wanting to go to Florida. Little did they know, along the way, the grandmother would get them lost and lead them right into the Misfit’s path. Before coming intact with the Misfit, the grandmother had nothing good to say about him and judged him without knowing the slightest thing about him.Not until later, when coming face to face with him, she automatically changed her tone when she knew that her life was in jeopardy. Another example of irony would be dealing with the cat. At first, the cat was not supposed to come along on the trip. With the grandmother being so hardheaded, she br ought the cat along anyways. The cat jumped up, which is when the accident happened. If the grandmother had just done as Bailey said and left the cat, then the accident may not have ever happened. After analyzing the characters, setting, and irony of â€Å"A Good Man is Hard to Find,† we see how these elements are essential for this story.We can see how certain behaviors of certain characters, like the Grandmother, lead to dangerous circumstances. If only the Grandmother would not have thought she was superior and had to have everything her way, the entire ruckus would not have happened. Work Cited Bethea Arthur F. â€Å"O’Connor’s A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND. † Explicator 64. 4 (2006): 246-249. Academic Search Premier. Web. 18 Feb. 2013 O’Connor, Flannery. â€Å"A Good Man is Hard to Find. † Literature 8th ed. Eds Laurie Kirszner and Stephen Mandell. Boston:Wadsworth, 2013. 599-621. Print. A Good Man Is Hard to Find By Flannery O’Connor Courtney BarnesPage 1 Intro to Lit. Prof. Rupp Feb 18 2013 You’ve Got Good Blood Literary Analysis of â€Å"A Good Man is Hard to Find† By Flannery O’Connor â€Å"You’ve got good blood. † â€Å"I know you come from nice people,(504) cried the grandmother. â€Å"Pray! †(505) she pleads using grace and religion to plead to the better nature of what she thinks is still a good man. The story â€Å"A Good Man is Hard to Find† is about a family on vacation to Florida. The family takes a detour down a dirt road to look at an old plantation house that the grandmother tells a story about.She describes the house in such an intriguing way that most of the family is very eager to see it. However on the way the grandmother realizes that the house isn’t in Georgia at all but in fact in Tennessee, where she was longing to go instead of Florida. This startles her and she begins knocking things around and the cat jumps out of the basket landing on Bailey’s neck causing the car accident that leaves them stranded on the lonely road. When a passing car stops to help the grandmother quickly recognizes one of the men as â€Å"The Misfit†, a dangerous man who has escaped from prison.The grandmother confronts him and he tells her â€Å"It probably would have been better for your family if you had not recognized me at all lady. †(504) While the Page 2 Grandmother and the Misfit have a conversation about being a good man and how even a man who has turned bad can in fact be good again, the two men that came with the Misfit start breaking apart the family into small groups taking them into the woods to be shot and killed. While her family is being murdered in the woods behind her the Grandmother is pleading for her dear life shouting â€Å"I know you wouldn’t shoot a lady! (507) She continued on conversing with the Misfit knowing her family was being brutally murdered, trying to persuade him back to a go od man. She asks him what he did to go to prison in the first place and he tells her he don’t remember, but they tell him that he killed his dad and they must be right because they have the papers to prove it. As he goes on describing what has happened to him and what they done to him the reader gets the impression that he was wrongfully convicted. The Grandmother goes on telling him to pray, pray, pray. If you would pray† â€Å"Jesus would help you† (507) She goes on telling the Misfit that God has the power to fix things and to bring people back from the dead. She stresses over and over again during the time of their conversation the importance and power of prayer. If you dig deeper into the meaning of the story you can also see that the Grandmother is also pleading and praying for her own forgiveness and life. After all it is her fault that her families fate had become this. The outcome of the story was all consequence of the direct actions of the Grandmother. If she hadn’t suggested visiting the old plantation and made up things to entice the family to want to go then they never would have been on that road. If she wouldn’t have brought the cat the accident wouldn’t have happened and if she wouldn’t have spoken of recognizing Page 3 â€Å"The Misfit† murderer then he wouldn’t have killed her and her family. She unknowingly led her family to their tragic deaths. In the story the Grandmother is but of course the prominent character. By showing imperfections in her character the author shows the biased property of grace that she possesses.The Grandmother is portrayed as a typical southern woman of this era. She even dresses very sophisticated for a car trip. She wants to make sure she is recognized as a woman. If she was in an accident â€Å"anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once she was a lady. † The main theme of the story is religion. The plot intends to symbolize the spi ritual grace passed from one human being to another with no regard to kindness or evil at all. You get a clear understanding of this in how the Grandmother misinterprets the word â€Å"good†. Grace is clearly used when the Grandmother say’s to the misfit â€Å"why you are one of my babies.You’re one of my own children! †(508) This was used to show him and get him to understand that they are both human beings. The Grandmother believes that because the Misfit is a good man that he cannot shoot a lady, his conscience just won’t allow it. This is where she misinterprets â€Å"good†. The Grandmother is the portrait of blind faith that so many of us operate daily from. She beliefs with all her soul that somewhere in this man is good if she digs deep enough she can bring it out in him. Despite all the bad things he has done, even in killing her family she appeals to the good side of him.Page 4 We all want to belief in the good of mankind. In the fa ce of evil it’s that very hope and belief that bring back the balance of good to evil in the world. The story focuses on Christian beliefs and values depicts sin and punishment, belief and disbelief, good and evil. The Grandmother is representative of good and godliness. She reminisces on how times were good in her younger days and you could trust people The Misfit represents evil. At one point he symbolizes himself with Christ as they were both punished for crimes they did not commit.Christ died for the sins of others; however the Misfit murdered innocent people. The children in the story also play an underline role that you have to pay close attention in order to catch. They are the symbol of the breakdown of respect and discipline of future generations. In a way the story foreshadows into the way the world will be if we don’t teach our children respect for people and heritage. The Grandmother also plays a foreshadowing role when she warns her family of the Misfit an d his crimes, â€Å"here this fellow calls himself the Misfit is a loose from the Federal Pen and headed to Florida. (497)†¦. giving the reader the first clue that the family will eventually run into the Misfit. Page 5 The author’s symbolism throughout the story represents faith/lack of, and death. When the family stray’s from the course in which they set out on where they eventually are murdered symbolizes how people often stray from their faith in Jesus. Even the town â€Å"Toombsboro† is a symbol of death. The graveyard on the plantation is a concrete symbol of death. â€Å"It was a big black battered hearselike automobile,† symbolizes death has arrived.The author brings the reader to the conclusion that modern society is drastically changing for the worse. Every day we see the evil growing and prevailing in our society. And in the story the author suggests that if everyone would find Jesus our society would once again operate on Christian morals , values and beliefs. If we teach our children about spirituality and respect while holding them to the up most standards we would be fixing the future of our nation. Works Cited â€Å" A Good Man is Hard to Find† Flannery O’Connor / Literature and its writers 6th edition 1955 A Good Man Is Hard to Find By Flannery O’Connor Courtney BarnesPage 1 Intro to Lit. Prof. Rupp Feb 18 2013 You’ve Got Good Blood Literary Analysis of â€Å"A Good Man is Hard to Find† By Flannery O’Connor â€Å"You’ve got good blood. † â€Å"I know you come from nice people,(504) cried the grandmother. â€Å"Pray! †(505) she pleads using grace and religion to plead to the better nature of what she thinks is still a good man. The story â€Å"A Good Man is Hard to Find† is about a family on vacation to Florida. The family takes a detour down a dirt road to look at an old plantation house that the grandmother tells a story about.She describes the house in such an intriguing way that most of the family is very eager to see it. However on the way the grandmother realizes that the house isn’t in Georgia at all but in fact in Tennessee, where she was longing to go instead of Florida. This startles her and she begins knocking things around and the cat jumps out of the basket landing on Bailey’s neck causing the car accident that leaves them stranded on the lonely road. When a passing car stops to help the grandmother quickly recognizes one of the men as â€Å"The Misfit†, a dangerous man who has escaped from prison.The grandmother confronts him and he tells her â€Å"It probably would have been better for your family if you had not recognized me at all lady. †(504) While the Page 2 Grandmother and the Misfit have a conversation about being a good man and how even a man who has turned bad can in fact be good again, the two men that came with the Misfit start breaking apart the family into small groups taking them into the woods to be shot and killed. While her family is being murdered in the woods behind her the Grandmother is pleading for her dear life shouting â€Å"I know you wouldn’t shoot a lady! (507) She continued on conversing with the Misfit knowing her family was being brutally murdered, trying to persuade him back to a go od man. She asks him what he did to go to prison in the first place and he tells her he don’t remember, but they tell him that he killed his dad and they must be right because they have the papers to prove it. As he goes on describing what has happened to him and what they done to him the reader gets the impression that he was wrongfully convicted. The Grandmother goes on telling him to pray, pray, pray. If you would pray† â€Å"Jesus would help you† (507) She goes on telling the Misfit that God has the power to fix things and to bring people back from the dead. She stresses over and over again during the time of their conversation the importance and power of prayer. If you dig deeper into the meaning of the story you can also see that the Grandmother is also pleading and praying for her own forgiveness and life. After all it is her fault that her families fate had become this. The outcome of the story was all consequence of the direct actions of the Grandmother. If she hadn’t suggested visiting the old plantation and made up things to entice the family to want to go then they never would have been on that road. If she wouldn’t have brought the cat the accident wouldn’t have happened and if she wouldn’t have spoken of recognizing Page 3 â€Å"The Misfit† murderer then he wouldn’t have killed her and her family. She unknowingly led her family to their tragic deaths. In the story the Grandmother is but of course the prominent character. By showing imperfections in her character the author shows the biased property of grace that she possesses.The Grandmother is portrayed as a typical southern woman of this era. She even dresses very sophisticated for a car trip. She wants to make sure she is recognized as a woman. If she was in an accident â€Å"anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once she was a lady. † The main theme of the story is religion. The plot intends to symbolize the spi ritual grace passed from one human being to another with no regard to kindness or evil at all. You get a clear understanding of this in how the Grandmother misinterprets the word â€Å"good†. Grace is clearly used when the Grandmother say’s to the misfit â€Å"why you are one of my babies.You’re one of my own children! †(508) This was used to show him and get him to understand that they are both human beings. The Grandmother believes that because the Misfit is a good man that he cannot shoot a lady, his conscience just won’t allow it. This is where she misinterprets â€Å"good†. The Grandmother is the portrait of blind faith that so many of us operate daily from. She beliefs with all her soul that somewhere in this man is good if she digs deep enough she can bring it out in him. Despite all the bad things he has done, even in killing her family she appeals to the good side of him.Page 4 We all want to belief in the good of mankind. In the fa ce of evil it’s that very hope and belief that bring back the balance of good to evil in the world. The story focuses on Christian beliefs and values depicts sin and punishment, belief and disbelief, good and evil. The Grandmother is representative of good and godliness. She reminisces on how times were good in her younger days and you could trust people The Misfit represents evil. At one point he symbolizes himself with Christ as they were both punished for crimes they did not commit.Christ died for the sins of others; however the Misfit murdered innocent people. The children in the story also play an underline role that you have to pay close attention in order to catch. They are the symbol of the breakdown of respect and discipline of future generations. In a way the story foreshadows into the way the world will be if we don’t teach our children respect for people and heritage. The Grandmother also plays a foreshadowing role when she warns her family of the Misfit an d his crimes, â€Å"here this fellow calls himself the Misfit is a loose from the Federal Pen and headed to Florida. (497)†¦. giving the reader the first clue that the family will eventually run into the Misfit. Page 5 The author’s symbolism throughout the story represents faith/lack of, and death. When the family stray’s from the course in which they set out on where they eventually are murdered symbolizes how people often stray from their faith in Jesus. Even the town â€Å"Toombsboro† is a symbol of death. The graveyard on the plantation is a concrete symbol of death. â€Å"It was a big black battered hearselike automobile,† symbolizes death has arrived.The author brings the reader to the conclusion that modern society is drastically changing for the worse. Every day we see the evil growing and prevailing in our society. And in the story the author suggests that if everyone would find Jesus our society would once again operate on Christian morals , values and beliefs. If we teach our children about spirituality and respect while holding them to the up most standards we would be fixing the future of our nation. Works Cited â€Å" A Good Man is Hard to Find† Flannery O’Connor / Literature and its writers 6th edition 1955 A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor In â€Å"A Good Man is Hard to Find†, by Flannery O’Connor, the theme is grace, the idea that nothing we do can save us from our own faults. In the beginning of the story, the grandmother talks about how you cannot even trust anybody in the world, while she is actually being more untrustworthy than those of the world. After reading the story, you can see how her actions and her words are ironic because she is actually lying and cheating the family. Analyzing the characters, setting, and irony of the story, we can see how trust is a major issue throughout the story and how they have a rather dysfunctional family.In â€Å"A Good Man is Hard to Find,† the characters are important because their thoughts and actions mold together and make the story what it is. If there were one character missing, the story would not be the same. The mother is a character that hardly plays any role, and hardly ever says anything. Also, in the wreck, the mother was the only one who got hurt. The main thing the mother does is take care of the baby. With that being said, the character of the baby is mostly just to take up the mother’s attention. Also, taking some of the grandmother’s attention when she holds the baby in her lap for only a few minutes during the ride.June Star is Bailey’s daughter. Throughout the story, we learn that she is a rather disrespectful little girl. She makes rude remarks to everyone like â€Å"I wouldn’t live in a broken-down place like this for a million bucks† (O’Connor, 408) to Red Sam’s wife when talking to the baby. For the most part, she is just a bothersome little girl. Her brother, John Wesley, is almost just as bad. During the story, he mostly torments the grandmother and kicks the father’s seat repeatedly throughout the whole car ride. He, along with June Star, is disappointed when they realize there were no fatalities in the car accident.Red Sam is the restaurant owner wher e the family stopped to eat. Red Sam states, â€Å"a good man is hard to find† (409), when explaining to the grandmother about the men who never paid their tab. He wants to see the good in everybody, but explains, â€Å"Everything is getting terrible. I remember the day you could go off and leave your screen door unlatched. Not no more. † (409) Bailey is the grandmother’s only son. He is June Star and John Wesley’s father, also the driver of the car. Bailey likes to think that he is in control of everything, when in reality he is not.He lets the grandmother persuade him into going to Tennessee instead of Florida, where he had primarily intended on taking his family. Bailey and John Wesley are one of the first the get shot after the accident. The grandmother in the story is rather manipulative. From the beginning to the end, she is constantly nagging and talking the family into different plans. Not only is she this way towards the family, but she also trie s to talk the Misfit out of killing her and tries to convince him that he is a good boy. She does so by saying things like â€Å"You’ve got good blood! I know you wouldn’t shoot a lady!I know you come from nice people†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (415). Also, the grandmother is very conceited; an example would be when the narrator says, â€Å"In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once she was a lady† (406). The grandmother is so tied up with herself that she doesn’t want to admit when she is wrong, when on several occasions in the story, she is wrong. The Misfit is a character who comes along towards the end of the story. Arthur Bethea describes â€Å"The Misfit† is an anti-Christ. Jesus loved children, whereas children make the anti-Christ Misfit ‘nervous’† (247).He, along with his two-gang men, has escaped from prison and now on the loose. They come along after the accident, looking like they are going t o be good Samaritans, when actually they turn out to be murderers on the run. Along with the role the characters play in the story, the setting is also essential in which it starts in the house, moves to the car, and ends in the woods. At the beginning of the story, all the characters are in the house in an unknown city, debating on where they will go on vacation. Of course, the grandmother does not want to go where Bailey has planned.After they argue and figure out where they will go, they get in the car and head for Tennessee. While riding in the car, the grandmother starts remembering her childhood and demands that Bailey go to an old plantation she remembered. Putting them off track, they end up on a dirt road in Georgia where the grandmother realizes but does not say that they are in the wrong spot. After having a car accident, they family ends up in a ditch in the middle of nowhere. Little by little, each character is taken into the woods and do not return. In the woods is whe re the story ends, where the Misfit and his gang members ultimately kill the whole family.The characters and the setting are both important, and they come together to create irony that is shown throughout the whole story. At the beginning of the story, the grandmother tells us â€Å"The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed towards Florida† (405) this being her reasoning for not wanting to go to Florida. Little did they know, along the way, the grandmother would get them lost and lead them right into the Misfit’s path. Before coming intact with the Misfit, the grandmother had nothing good to say about him and judged him without knowing the slightest thing about him.Not until later, when coming face to face with him, she automatically changed her tone when she knew that her life was in jeopardy. Another example of irony would be dealing with the cat. At first, the cat was not supposed to come along on the trip. With the grandmother being so hardheaded, she br ought the cat along anyways. The cat jumped up, which is when the accident happened. If the grandmother had just done as Bailey said and left the cat, then the accident may not have ever happened. After analyzing the characters, setting, and irony of â€Å"A Good Man is Hard to Find,† we see how these elements are essential for this story.We can see how certain behaviors of certain characters, like the Grandmother, lead to dangerous circumstances. If only the Grandmother would not have thought she was superior and had to have everything her way, the entire ruckus would not have happened. Work Cited Bethea Arthur F. â€Å"O’Connor’s A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND. † Explicator 64. 4 (2006): 246-249. Academic Search Premier. Web. 18 Feb. 2013 O’Connor, Flannery. â€Å"A Good Man is Hard to Find. † Literature 8th ed. Eds Laurie Kirszner and Stephen Mandell. Boston:Wadsworth, 2013. 599-621. Print.