The Lecture “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” by Flannery O’Connor is about the suspense and selfishness the grandmother conveys when she convinces her family to go on a trip to Tennessee instead of Florida just for her own interests. The way she convinced them to take a trip to Tennessee is by telling them that the Misfit had escaped the penitentiary. In the lecture it states “Then, in what ends up being a fatal act of selfishness she brings her cat along on the trip even though she knows Bailey doesn’t like to travel with the cat”. The grandmother has such a big ego that anything she does not want to happen, she will get an idea on how to avoid it. Also, in the lecture it says “Along the way she regales them with a story from her youth when she was courted by Mr. Edgar Atkins Teagarden. She would have done well to marry him, she says, because he became a very rich man. Through the Grandmother ’s nonstop chatter we see how superficial, small-minded, ignorant, hypocritical, and self-satisfied she is”.
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2 thoughts on “Angel Gomez Discussion 8”
I agree with your analysis, I believe that the author tends to present the darkness of human nature, also people can be in the wrong part even if they seem they are in the right part. the speeches by the grandmother and the misfit are not supposed to take seriously because she is manipulating him, as she manipulated family members several times, in many parts of the story Southern Christianity is found in the character’s motivation or set a cultural tone for the setting.
Your discussion further shows how the grandmother’s selfish actions caused the downfall of the whole family. Her insistent nagging and rude behavior towards people caused her family to get harmed. This is prominently seen when the cat causes the car to crash which further leads the family to be confronted by the Misfit. Even then her continuous talking, got them killed when she confirmed the identity of the Misfit. If she had not said his name, her family would have a higher chance of survival.