A Good Man is Hard to Find by Mary Flannery OConnor - Research Paper Example

A Good Man is hard to find Introduction Several readers think “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is a cynical tale, not making concessions in the way it brings out human pettiness and manipulation. Others see the short story as a black comedy worthy of twisted cartoons or the Cone brother’s short film. To some they view it as arising depiction of the mysterious ways God works through via beings above and over their wills. Mary Flannery O’Connor published “A Good Man is Hard to Find” in the year 1953 by Flannery O’Connor. It was a part of a collection with a similar name;A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories, it is her best-known story. Flannery’s second published work, the group established a major voice in American literature mainly Southern literature, up to the time she died in 1964, at the age of 39. Flannery’s novels were viewed as critically less fortunate. The story made her famous as a modern master of the short story. During OConnors lifetime, her work initiated different reactions in those who read them. Many scholars and critics found the work consistently grotesque in their description of debased repulsive characters and their spectacular displays of violence. Many times "A Good Man is Hard to Find," were the center of discussions. It was for that reason, the story about which the author herself spoke most often.Flannery saw all of her fiction, including those of the short story, as realistic but ultimately hopeful. Her inspiration as a writer came deeply felt in Roman Catholicism, of which she claimed informed all of her stories. According to (Fitzgerald 90)Flannery said that the stories she had written were hard since there is nothing difficult or less sentimental than Christian realism.A continual theme all through her work was the deed of divine grace in the imperfect, revolting and funny world of human beings. In Flannery O’Connor’s short story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” she shows that a good man is through characterization of The Misfit, the grandmother, and Bailey. Background Mary Flannery O’Connor born in Savannah, Georgia in the year 1925. She thenrelocated to Atlanta with her family while she was a teenager (Gooch). The family, however, after the father was diagnosed with lupus moved to Milledgeville, Georgia. The fatherdied three years later; she was fifteen years by then.O’Connor, as a young woman, began classes at Georgia state College for women. A wishful writer since childhood, she worked for the student newspaper and literary magazine, she also wrote stories. The stories that she wrote secured her a place in the University of Lowa’s Writer Workshopfor a master’s program. In the university, she sharpened her craft and began publishing fiction. O’Connor published her first story at twenty-one, “The Geranium,” publication that earned her awards and a contract for her first book. In 1947, O’Connor received a degree; she started working as a teaching subordinate at the University of Lowa. It is here O’Connor began writing her novel, Wise Blood. O’Connor continued writing her novel Wise Blood at Yaddo; she was a respected artist’s colony in Saratoga Springs in The New York, however, and her publisher disliked the first drafts she wrote. O’Connor chose a new editor and submitted portions of the book for publication in the prominent journals(Gooch). After O’Connor had left Yaddo, she lived in New York City and briefly in Connecticut. At twenty-five, O’Connor’s health began to deteriorate, she was diagnosed with lupus. Fearing that she might die after three years like her father she, she moved from the city and went to her mother in Georgia. There in Georgia she tended a variety of birds and upheld a complicated regimen of treatments for her lupus. O’Connor wrote diligently and often gave lectures about writing(Renner 123-132.). O’Connor published Wise Blood in 1952. The book was firmly criticized for being an affront to Christianity. However, O’Connor talent and skills of writing did not go unnoticed. O’Connor published her second novel, The Violent Bear It Away in the year 1960 and 1955 her first group of short stories;A Good Man Is Hard to Find.Although critics were impressed with her work her second novel The Violent Bear It Away suffered more. Despite all this O’Connor reputation grew, she continued to write, lecture and teach until she died at the age of thirty-nine in 1964. O’Connor’s second volume of short stories, Everything That Rises Must Converge, was published in 1965. O’Connor fame and popularity has increased since she died; many people have named her on of the best short-story writers in the twentieth century. O’Connor’s most famous book in Southern Gothic literature “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” pays attentionto eccentric characters, local color unusual events and unsettling depiction of life in the South American. The history of the Southern figures prominently, and stories usually revolve upon the tragic history of slavery; tarriance feelings of defeated regional pride of Civil War. At first glance, in Southern Gothic literature, people, places, and events seem normal but eventually reveal themselves to being strange, horrific and disturbing. O’Connor, themaster of thegenre, maintained a tone of realism in her novelsand stories. O’Connor’s prose for instance, emphasizes the truths of her character’s actions and deeds rather than their quick peculiarities. Despite the often apocalyptic, the surreal of her writing, O’Connor’s works always contained believable actions and choices. Shebasis the story in reality by deemphasising the eerie, disquieting sound of the backdrop and concentrating instead on the relationships and events that drive the narrative. Analysis The Elusive Definition of a “Good Man” The grandmother involves the characterization “good” in a random manner, making less distinct of the definition of a “good man” until the name entirely loses its meaning. Later Red Sammy angrily complains of the general untrustworthiness of people, the grandmother labels him as a good man. Red Sammy ask the grandmother why he let two strangers charge their gasoline, Red Sammy is apparent been victimized, and the grandmother tells him that it is because he is “a good man”. In this situation, her definition of “good” seems to include poor judgment, blind faith and innocence, none of which are “good”. She also uses the name “right” to the Misfit, this happens after she recognizes him. The grandmother asks Misfit whether he would killa woman, even though Misfit never says that he would not do it, shoot a woman. According to the grandmother, being a lady, is such an important part of what she considers moral.The answer that Misfit gives proves that he does not adhere to the similar moral codes as she does have. Out of desperation the grandmother calls him a good man, as though convincing to some kind of expressed value that the Misfit would not want to refuse or deny. Her understanding and definition of the term “good” is inclined, resting entirely on her argument that he does not have “commonblood”. The grandmother’s individual usage of the label “good man” reveals that “good” does not merely mean “moral” or “kind.” According to the grandmother, a man is considered “good man” if the values he portrays is in agreement with her opinion. Red Sammy is “good” because he blindly trusts people and mounts desirous about more innocent times, both of which the grandmother can associate. Misfit is considered to be “good” b shoot a lady. This is a refusal that would be in keeping with her moral code. Her assumptions however prove to be false. The only thing “good” in Misfit is his consistency in living out his moral code “no pleasure but meanness”. The Unlikely Recipients of Grace In the short story, the grandmother and the Misfit, both are recipients of grace. Despite their many weaknesses, sins, and imperfections. BasedonChristian divinity, humans are granted salvation through God’s favor or grace, which God freely confers on even the least predictable recipients. In other words, God can allow theevent the wrong people to go to heaven, which he does by letting them have His grace. The grandmother is an unlikely prospect for receiving grace. She lies to her grandchildren, influences her son, and supports steadily on the inadequacy of the present and superiority of the past. The grandmother has no self-awareness and seems oblivious to the world around her. Definite of her moral superiority, she believes that she is the proper person to judge the goodness of others and also the most appropriate person to instruct other people on how they should lead their lives. However, she has a built-in moral weakness. She orders the Misfit to pray, for instance, despite the fact that sheis incapable to formulate a coherent prayer. She makes up her mind about Jesus’ rising from the dead as she becomes more afraid of what might happen to her. The Misfit is an unremorseful manslayer. Both “evil” people in their way, they are each improbable receivers of grace. Although, grace, settles on both of them, suggesting that even those people like the grandmother and Misfit also have the likelihood to be redeemed by God. In the story, the grandmother, moved by the Misfit’s wish to know what Jesus did and did not do, goes through a moment of grace when her head suddenly clears, and she exclaims. The Misfit is not the grandmother’s child. This point out the fact that she realizes that they are both human beings. The comment that she makes seems inappropriate, considering the circumstances, however this is actually the grandmothers’ most crystal clear moment in the story. She has clarity and, most significant compassion. God has granted her grace before she dies. The Misfit also is open to grace at this moment. Even though he had earlier claimed that there was “nopleasure, but meanness” in living, he at the momentcontradicts that there is any pleasure in life at all. Killing has stopped to bring him happiness, this suggests that he, too, may have the possibility to change. Nostalgia Red Sammy, the grandmother and the Misfit’s longing for the past implies that they have all believe that a “good man” was much way simpler to come by long ago and that following goodness in the present day is much difficult and also pointless.The grandmother, during a car trip, thinks about an old admirer, Edgar Adkins Teagarden, who brought her a watermelon every weekend. The grandmother surmises she should have married him because he was a gentleman, and therefore considered him as a “good man”. Red Sammy and the grandmother review about the past, when the people they knew could be trusted. Red Sammy says straight-out “a good man is hard to find,” considering himself, gullible and foolish, to be among the dying breed. The Misfitalso remembers things that his father did and said as well as the inequity of his punishments for the crimes that he could not remember committing. In theagreement to these characters, the present is most frequent with unhappiness and unclearness, and things were very different long ago. For some point of view, this belief permits them to stop short of genuinely looking into their potential for goodness because they have convinced themselves that the world is no conducive to it. The Grandmother’s Hat The hat that the grandmother wears, with the intentions of displaying that she is a lady, represents her ill-conceived ethics. When the grandmother sets up for a car trip with the family, she dresses to be prepared for a car accident so that anybody who sees her dead body would recognize that she had been a lady. She seems very unconcerned with the fact that she is dead in this scenario and oblivious to the fact that other people and her grandchildren would likely have died too. As for the grandmother, the only thing that matters is her standing as a woman, an undignified concern that brings out her selfishness and weak moral conviction. When the grandmother gets involved in a car accident, the hat, similar to her moral convictions, fall apart. Just after she is thrown out of the vehicle, and the family is facing the Misfit, the brim of the hat falls off. She even drops the broken hat as her self-conception as a lady dissolves. In the short story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” the Misfit and the grandmother live by moral codes that affect their actions, decisions, and perceptions. A moral code is simply a set of behaviors and traditions that people act in accordance to what they view or reckon to be sensible to their lives. The term moral does not refer to being “good”, it signifies a code of conduct, at the same time the righteousness of a person’s morals is wholly unverifiable. At first glint the Misfit’s system seems to be foolish, it is the grandmother’s code that proves to be weak and discrepant. The grandmother has based her moral code on the traits that she believes make people “good.” The grandmother places high daze in being a lady, for instance, which emphasizes appearance over substance. Nevertheless, she recurrently cheats her family and even lacks a fundamental awareness of the world around her. Despite her declared love for Christian piousness, she is incapable of praying when she is in a crucial condition and even begins to question the power, ability and the immortal of Jesus. The Misfit, yet, adheres toa moral code that remains stable and consistent. From his past experiences as a convicted criminal, he firmlybelieves that the punishment is always not proportionate to the crime and that the crime, in the end, does not even matter at all. He as well harbors a sincere puzzlement about religion. Whereas the grandmother acknowledges faith weakly and implicitly, the Misfit disputes religious beliefs and thinks deeply of whether he should follow them or not. He has chosen to live under the supposition that religion is senseless and matches to his personalfaith: “No pleasure but meanness.” His moral code is never wavers and violent at long last; his is the one that prevails. Conclusion Flannery O’Connor’s catholic fostering influenced almost all her fiction, often earning criticism as a result of her stark, at times harsh portrayal of religion. O’Connor’s great grandparents had been of the first Catholics to dwell in Milledgeville, Georgia, and her family stood out in the prevailing protestant south(Gentry). O’Connor attended parochial school and often attended mass with her family. Even though her stories and novels are mostly macabre and violent, they are rooted in her belief in the mysteries of divinity and faith. Furthermore, her characters often experience extreme or jarring situations that pressure them into a moment of crisis that awakens or shakes their faith. Moments of grace that, Christian idea, are permeating, such as the grandmothers moment of grace in the story. According to O’Connor, writing was unresolvable concerning her Christin beliefs, and she believed she would not write were it not for her background. O’Connor’s said that thefaith in her way and case meant the engine that makes theperception run. In addition, she also attributed her desire to write to her Catholicism through writing a letter. Work cited Fitzgerald, S. The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery OConnor. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux., 1979. Gentry, M, B. Flannery OConnors religion of the grotesque. . Univ. Press of Mississippi., 1986. Gooch, B. Flannery: A Life of Flannery OConnor. Hachette Digital, Inc.. 2009. Renner, S. Secular Meaning in" A Good Man Is Hard to Find". College Literature. 1982. Read More