In “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”, I believe the story in its interior is about deceit and ignorance can go hand in hand. O’Connor uses the grandmother as a way to show how manipulation and deceit toward her own family, people who you’d never turn on, to see a plantation home. Devices such as irony, foreshadowing, and symbolism are all used to tell the story but do play a part in the interior of the story. We see that the grandmother is obsessed with her vanity and views the past, specifically ignorant, racist parts of the past, to paint a better image of herself for others. Manipulative people like to be seen in a more positive light and will do many things to seem better than others. With all of her lying and ignorant comments, the topic of trust was brought up numerous times almost making her family’s death bound to happen. Without the lying, they would’ve been safe. The Misfit was symbolism for the opposite of a “good man”. Even in the grandmother’s last efforts to save herself, she is manipulating the Misfit and is only stopped when being shot and killed. The Grandmother wasn’t as good of a woman as she thought she was. The interior of the story shows that people no matter how true they believe their words are, do not practice what they preach.
Daily Archives: October 16, 2022
In “A good man is hard to find,” the grandmother’s actions and opinions are interpreted as prejudice. She is described as religious, talkative, and discriminatory, which is perceived every time she innocently refers to the people and her surrounding. The audience can sense the interior side of the story when the grandmother emphasizes the importance of judging somebody by their appearance, the way she idealizes the fugitive criminal- Misfit. First, she tries to point out some positive observations about his identity, and then she faithfully attempts to declare his innocence to convince somehow he is a good man. Still, the criminal has already accepted he is guilty, and a bad man so ends up killing the old lady. Even though The grandmother is represented as a “Lady” who is morally superior and caring, her actual character is that she is a hypocrite and dishonest which lead her family to a tragic ending. This is a clear message: You can judge a book by its cover.
A Good Man Is Hard to Find was full of suspense towards the end. In my opinion the interior of the story was based on deceit and punishment. The grandmother was very deceitful, conniving and misleading. I honestly feel if the grandmother didn’t say a word the whole trip they wouldn’t have wounded up in the predicament they were in. The grandmother pretty much lied multiple times for the family to do as she says. She went as far into making up a story to get them to a destination that was somewhere else. When the thought of her sending her family to the wrong location came about in her mind, she didn’t even have the compassion in her heart to let them know. This led her family to be killed, which I felt was punishment for her actions, because she was the last to die. She had to listen to the gunshots that killed her family, in which she still thought of herself and tried to convince the Misfit to allow her to keep her life. Her trickery didn’t work this instance and she came to the realization of how she should’ve been when it was too late.
A Good Man Is Hard to Find is a story about a family who decides to go on a road trip to Tennessee but are killed along the way. On the surface the story seems to be about a family whose road trip is ended short due to tragedy. However, the story is really centered on the grandmother, the protagonist, and how her hypocrisy and ethics led to the downfall of her family. First, her standards are extremely hypocritical. She cared about her appearance and how people saw her on the surface but around her family she didn’t mind lying to get what she wanted. Her blatant racism is also a stark contrast from her outwards appearance. Furthermore, it was her lying that led the family to their death. She lied about the fact that there was treasure in an old plantation to manipulate the children into convincing their father to driving there. Later, she realized that the plantation was actually in Tennessee and everything goes downhill from there. She is the reason that the her family was killed.
In “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, on the surface, O’Connor writes about a small family meeting a serial killer on the loose while on a trip to another state. The interior of this story is that the grandma is very racist and extremely narrow-minded, she thinks that she’s the main character of everyone’s life. She believes she is a good manipulator and even hid the cat her son doesn’t like in a suitcase. The grandma is very ignorant and selfish, and I would say she is the reason she and her family died to the killer. On her trip, she ironically finds herself with the killer and attempted to manipulate the killer into not killing her. She attempted to do the same thing she does with her family by trying to soft-talk the killer and feed him lies. She was saying how a good person he is and mocking him, saying he wouldn’t shoot a lady. All these arrogant acts led to a tragic ending for her and her family’s lives.
