“A Good Man Is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor is a story about a family that had unfortunate luck and got killed by a criminal on the surface. I think the story in its “interior” is about human behaviors and punishment. The grandmother is very arrogant and judgmental. She thinks of herself as a good person but in real life she is racist and superficial. It’s funny how all of her decisions, which her family followed by her manipulation, lead them to this terrible incident. She chose to take the cat and hide it which led them to the accident when the cat jumped on Bailey. The accident was on a road where there was almost no one to help them because she decided to take the dirt road to see the house she thought was in Georgia (she also lied saying there was a secret panel in this house to convince the kids to go there). And finally, she wanted to go to Tennessee instead of Florida trying to convince her son not to go there because a criminal that just escaped, the misfit. Ironically they ran into the misfit on this dirt road and they all got killed. The grandmother was also very selfish – when she realized the man is the misfit she called “You wouldn’t shoot a lady, would you?”. Looks like she didn’t care at all about her son, his wife, or her grandchildren, but herself. Right before the misfit shot her she told him he is one of her own children and reached out to him. She showed some emotion, but he shot her anyway. The misfit talks about punishment a few times, maybe because of the punishment he got (maybe for a reason or maybe not). Even the misfit noticed that she […]
Daily Archives: October 13, 2022
I think the interior of this story, like many ancient Greek stories, has its core rooted in the idea of fate. The story, “A Good Man is Hard To Find” is about a family that ends up being murdered on their way to vacation in Florida. However, the grandmother of this family leads them down the path, quite literally, that leads them to their murder. She is obsessed with the idea of dying, especially since she is close to death. She tries to avoid it, as most of us would, but she takes it to a different level with how all-consuming it is for her. She plans what she is going to wear in case she is found dead in it. And she wants to take unnecessary extra precautions to try to push death away as much as possible. However, it is proven to be unavoidable. The route she takes her family downs leads to their death, and she is unable to talk the murderer out of it. No matter what she did she couldn’t avoid it. Much like Odysseus, she couldn’t fight her fate.
This week’s read “A Good Man is Hard to Find” could be seen on the exterior as a chilling story about the murders of a family who just wanted to go on vacation. When we dive deeper, think about the story and maybe even reread it, you may notice that the interior is all about the coincidental theme of the story. From all the characters and including the title. “A Good Man is Hard to Find” so a bad man- The Misfit must be easy to find. The grandmother thinks there is no good left in the world, what a coincidence she is stuck with a grumpy and disrespectful family. What a coincidence that the grandmother dressed nicely so that if there was an accident and her body was left in the road, people would know she was a lady. And what a coincidence that the dirt road she tells Bailey to turn down leads them to The Misfit. The grandmother really thought she would be able to reason with a stone cold killer, maybe find something in common with him to get some sympathy but in the end she just gets left in the dirt, dead in her nice clothing.
