Shaniyah Chisolm Discussion 8

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.