Amalia Lima Discussion 8

In the story of Flannery O’Connor “A good man is not easy to find” at first glance, you can see the story of a not very close-knit family that was unlucky enough to run into a maniac in the middle of a dirt road somewhere in Tennessee. From the very beginning of the story, we understand that something terrible is going to happen. “Chekhov’s gun” in the form of a message that a dangerous criminal has escaped from prison does not bode well for the whole family, which is going to a long journey. The whole story seems to slow down, leading us to that very tragic moment.

The protagonist of the story is the grandmother of the family. Loving to manipulate the family and an extremely superficial lady. In the end, because of her love of manipulation, and doing as she wants, the whole family ends up in a fatal situation.

If we consider this story from the point of view of an ancient Greek tragedy, then it has undeniable similarities. In the end, the protagonist must die, and through sufferings finds catharsis. According to the author, she uses violence to bring the hero back to reality, to catharsis. And the antagonist finally says: “If it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.”

So what is the story about? From the articles of this week we can see that there are different interpretations. One of them, as mentioned above, she finally receives her sight, clears herself before the death and grace descends on her and she touches the outcast, as the author says, “like the mustard-seed, will grow to be a great crow-filled tree in the Misfit’s heart, and will be enough of a pain to him there to turn him, into the prophet…”.

First, I want to say that reading the story caused me a storm of emotions, extremely mixed emotions, indignation, fear and anger. And I’d like to express my feelings about that. It seems to me that what happened between the grandmother and the “prophet” can hardly be called a blessing.

I think that this story is about the fact that evil exists, and very often it triumphs. I definitely felt it when reading the story. And in real life, we often see pure evil. But how to treat it? The story also often touches religious aspects. After all, it is religion, and in our case the Bible, that gives us a moral measure and orders good and evil. And it seems to me that the author is trying to rethink the current approach to it. It’s not enough to ask the killer to pray, you need to find another way out.

Also, evil masterfully finds an excuse for itself. Evil has suffered, it has had a difficult childhood. We see all this even today. I will refrain from today’s examples, but the Misfit is an excellent personification of the Third Reich (reparations, the attitude of the rest of Europe as a misfit after the First World War) in my opinion.

As a result, what this work makes me overthink, that “kind missionary work” may no longer work, and through the cruelty of the story, we must return to reality, understand that evil is real and we need to be able to deal with it. How? Using the example of grandmother’s final conversation, we see exactly how this should not be done.

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