A good man is hard to find - Essay Example

An Analysis of the Short Story, “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” by Flannery O’Connor A Good Man Is Hard to Find is a short story by Flannery O’Connor. The most predominant techniques used in the story are imagery and foreshadowing. This work seems hard to understand within its first reading but the second reading gives the reader a clear picture of what the story entails. My essay seeks to point out how the writer has used imagery to foreshadow the events in the story. Just at the beginning of the story the protagonist, grandmother, argues with her son, Bailey not to take them for a trip in Florida since there is an escaped murderer who allegedly has headed that direction.

She says, “I wouldn’t take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it” (O’Connor). Interestingly, it is the same grandmother who convinces the family to branch there on their way to since she wants to revisit a house. They unfortunately meet their untimed deaths at the hands of this Misfit. There is also something attractive in the way O’Connor describes Grandmother’s dressing. Despite her dislike of the idea of going to Florida, she is the first to get into the car wearing “a navy blue dress with a small dot in the print.

Her collar and cuffs were white organdy trimmed with lace and at her neckline she had pinned a purple spray of cloth violets containing a sachet” (O’Connor). I think this dress symbolizes how a body is prepared for burial; dressed in their best attire. It is the grandmother’s reason for her glamour that removes any doubt on the coming events, “in case of an accident anyone who sees her body on the highway will know that she is a lady” (O’Connor). O’Connor makes the protagonist to ignorantly speak of her coming death.

The death of the whole family is also foreshadowed in the “passed by a cotton plantation with five or six graves…” (O’Connor). The numbers of the graves coincide with that of the family members, with O’Connor doubting if the baby can have its own grave or share one with its mother. Later the grandmother remembers one of her visits to an old plantation in Tennessee, neighboring “Toomsboro.” The word toomsboro brings to mind a tomb, an image that symbolizes death. The family faces the tombs at the end.

Ironically, the house grandmother yearns to visit is not in the area they get a car accident. And when Wesley asks to know the plantation whose owners were buried in the five or six graves, grandmother says “gone with the wind.” This only shows what awaits the family in the end. After death, their souls will be “gone with the wind” (O’Connor). Grandmother also speaks to Bailey about this Misfit and “what he did to those people,” his victims. They later meet Misfit and he does the same to them.

June Star also says thus of the grandmother, “she wouldn’t stay at home for a million buck…she has to go wherever we go.” Everyone taken to the forest by Bobby Lee and Hiram never comes back. It reaches a point when the only member of the family remaining is the grandmother. But just as in June’s words, she soon gets the same fate as the rest and follows them in death. Moreover, in her conversation with the Misfit, grandmother asks, “what did you do to get sent to the penitentiary that first time?

” the Misfit’s answer is interesting: “Turn to the right; it was a wall, looking up again at the cloudless sky. Turn to the left, it was a wall. Look up it was a ceiling; look down it was a floor” (O’Connor). This description of a cell foreshadows the graves which the family members are to lie in. They are bound to lie in graves with walls from every direction, that is, once the Misfit finishes with them. I find this story full of imagery, a technique mostly used for foreshadowing.

Some of the most vivid images are the grandmother’s dress, graveyard, and the cell. These are vividly described to help the readers get a clue of what happens at the end of the story.Work CitedO’Connor, Flannery M. A Good Man Is Hard To Find. 1955. Web. 8 Dec. 2011