A Good Man is Hard to Find

"A Good Man is hard to find" was written by Flannery O'Connor. This author demonstrates what happened during her life time that influenced her to write this story. The reason why this story is so interesting, it is because during O'Connor life's time, southerners were very prejudice towards people of other races and styles. They believed that people who were less fortunate were inferior to them; therefore, those inferior people were labeled as different things and placed into different social classes. The story revolves around a family consisting of a grandmother, Bailey Variant, Red Sam, John Wesley and the Misfit, a bank robber and a bloody killer who claims to go to jail for something he did not remember that he committed. In Flannery O'Connor's short story "A Good Man Is Hard To Find" is one of O'Connor's most highly regarded works of short fiction. Because it exhibits all of the characteristics for which she is best known: a contrast of violent action with humorously and carefully drawn characters including a philosophy that underscores her devout Roman Catholic Faith. The writing of Flannery O'Connor can seem at once cold and dispassionate, as well as almost stark, and violent. According to Norman, "Her short stories routinely end in horrendous, freak fatalities or, at the very least, a character's emotional devastation" (17-20). In "A Good Man Is Hard To Find," O'Connor's imagination appears a barren, godless plane of meaninglessness, punctuated by pockets of random, mindless cruelty.Her writing is filled with meaning and symbolism, hidden in plain sight beneath a seamless narrative style that breathes not a word of agenda, of dogma, or of personal belief. In this way, her writing is intrinsically esoteric, in that it contains knowledge that is hidden to all but those who have been instructed as to how and where to look for it. Flannery O'Connor is a Catholic writer, and her work is message-oriented; yet, she is far too brilliant a stylist to tip her hand. Likewise, all good writers crass didacticism is abhorrent to her. Nevertheless, she achieves what few Catholic writers have ever achieved: a type of writing that stands up on both literary and the religious grounds, and succeeds in doing justice to both.

The contradictions of violence and faith in her fiction distinguish her among Southern writers and make one wonders who she was and where she was from. O'Connor's life greatly influenced her work. In many of her stories, she included rural settings from her homeland. Her writing, often deep, dark and violent always had a flip side, but it was also humorous. Flannery O'Connor remained a powerful voice in today's literature. Flannery had been a devout Catholic all her life. She was raised in a predominately Protestant geographical area. According to Holman, "O'Connor's tories combine her Southern Cultural heritage and its people behind her religious and biblical imagery as well as violence." (pages 74-76) There seem to be no middle ground for her. She also exposes the deceit and hypocrisy in religious institutions through her characters.

The rural Southern U.S. is the setting for "A Good Man Is Hard To find." O'Connor does not give exact locations, state or town names on her piece of literature, but most of these stories take place in a rural landscape. According to research, "A Good Man is hard to find" might have taken place between Southern Georgia and Florida on the highway. Nevertheless, many of the main characters are women in the story. According to Byars, "the title story, O'Connor's most famous stories take place in a number of states, as a family travels by automobile toward a vacation." (pages 34-35).Though, most of the stories are not time-dated, they generally take place in the nineteen forties and early fifties. In the story, there are two main revelations that involved the grandmother and the Misfit. Byars claims that as impeding death draws nearer to the grandmother, her pristine Catholic facade breaks down, and she begins to understand the Misfit and his pure, harsh evil. This awareness increases as she pleads to no avail for him to be a Good Man. "In death the grandmother's face of smiling innocence suggests the state to which she has been restored, and the "defenseless" appearance of the Misfit......." lets the reader know that he can no longer fully deny God. Flannery O'Connor considered herself a "Catholic peculiarly possessed of the modern consciousness." Issues of religious belief are foremost in all of her works.They are Georgian stories of estrangement, epiphany, and she preferred to phrase it, a "moment of grace." Others authors termed her work as the "mystery of personality," especially applied to this collection: A Good Man Is Hard To Find." The stories are of violence and ethical confusion, often featuring female main characters and important female secondary characters. Like others of her previous works, there are reflections on the landscape, and a primitive, almost grotesque struggle for significance. "A Good Man is hard to find" showed us that human being are not naturally evil and also forgiveness comes from within.

Also, according to Flannery O'Connor, human have no forgiveness in their hearts and toward each others; especially in times of pain and agony. Then, O'Connor points out that salvation is individual and the environment make a personal evil or good.In the end, the story reflects the reality of every human being. It simply tells us that every man has good and bad inside of them. Most of the times, we can only see one side of the coin and people turn out to be the way they are based on the balls that life throw at them.

Bibliography

Byars, John. "Prophecy and Apocalyptic in the Fiction of Flannery O'Connor." The Flannery O'Connor Bulletin 16 (1987): pages 34-37

Holman, C. Hugh. "Her Rue with a Difference." The added Dimension: The Art and Mind of Flannery O'Connor.Ed. Melvin J. Friedman and Lewis A. Lawson. New York: Fordham UP, 1966. pages 73-77.

McMillan, Norman. "Dostoevskian Vision in Flannery O'Connor's Revelation" The Flannery O'Connor Bulletin 16 (1987): pages 16-22