Absence of Faith - Flannery O'Connor's A Good Man is Hard to Find - Essay Example

Order 528539 Topic: Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find" Absence of Faith__________________________________ Introduction Flannery understands the working of the pairs of opposites well—good and evil, how they function in tandem to outsmart the influence of each other. How an individual succumbs to evil and then through the divine relationship, emerges out of darkness. All of her stories have sad or tragic endings and yet have some philosophical justifications for those happenings.

The foundation stone of all her stories is Christian spirituality. But the level of progression of each character is different and they react to situations as per their understanding of the challenges they face. The divine spark is within the heart of all characters and no one amongst them is permanently good or bad. They react as per the demand of the circumstances to the best of their ability and judgment. Absence of faith is the root cause of all evils and suffering of humanity and to remain established in connectivity to the Divine Power is the final solution to find permanent happiness.

In every story one finds the undercurrent of Flannery’s anguish that society’s morals and faith have crumbled. Flannery advises humankind to make a fight out of life with Christ in the heart which is more important than the cross on the neck. She is a classic Catholic wedded to modern consciousness. Flannery controls the readers through the strength of the topic of her stories and beauty of the language which is so essential to explain the messages related to the subject of divinity. She is not alarmed about the absence of faith in some of her characters.

She takes delight in their gross misunderstandings of life situations, but remains with them through their suffering. Only one who has the perfect understanding of the working of the divine can create such characters. She is neither preachy not self-righteous. She has the perfect understanding of the Roman Catholicism and its mysticism. . Why then some of her characters show aggression and evil tendencies that indicates total absence of fait? Why some of them are directionless and destination less wanderers, and grope for faith and absolution?

Flannery provides the answers in the stories in her own cryptic style. Her characters are complex but believable. You may chance to come across such characters while interacting through day to day activities. Divinity is to seek light by marching through darkness. Perfect discipline and permanent peace is not available in this secular world. Under such circumstances humankind needs to carry on with the available discipline. Moreover, Flannery makes her characters understand that destiny plays its part in the shape of things that come in one’s life.

Man is also the creator of his destiny as well as the victim. Hand of God is always there to help an individual, but his own acts also play the role. If such actions are good the sailing in life is smooth, but if the intentions and judgments are wrong and filled with prejudices, the concerned individual has to suffer the consequences. Faith or absence of faith of the characters is no guarantee for the happy endings of Flannery’s stories. She goes by the practicalities of life. In the practical life, where is the happy ending for each and every individual?

Happiness is part of life; similarly tragic endings are also part of life. Encounter with good actions lead one to the path of faith; similarly encounters with bad actions also make an individual grope for faith. The state of absence of faith with an individual should not lead one to conclude that it is one’s permanent state. Given the favorable circumstances, an evil individual is likely to change. An individual behaves in the way he behaves, due to the circumstances that he is placed in. In her stories most of the characters reflect her life-experiences in Southern Georgia, of the 1940-50.

Black prejudice and high level of religious fanaticism were the hallmarks of life during that period. Her characters live in the family farms and their contacts with the world outside are minimal. Flannery must have passed through the stages of faith and absence of faith in her personal life and there are strong reasons for that. On account of physical disability (suffering from lupus and confined to the crutches) she depended on her mother for support. But she had the intrinsic moral courage to take potshots at the condition of her own life and the sarcasm one sees in stories like "Good Country People" and "The Life You Save May Be Your Own”, is the outcome of that mindset.

Therefore, many of her characters accept the reality of the station of life that they are paced in as the part of their life, good or bad. Flannery is true to the nature of her characters and she never betrays them and their faith! In all her stories a family theme and a religious theme run through concurrently. Conditions of faith and conditions of absence faith run through the lives of her characters on parallel tracks. Conclusion: Some of the characters articulate the importance of faith through their own experience-based interpretation.

Of the many such characters two merit special discussion. One is the grandmother and the other is the Misfit. In the story, “A Good Man Is Hard To Find,” Flannery writes, how the grandmother has lost faith in the present generation as she recalls the good old days. “In my time,” said the grandmother, folding her thin veined fingers, “children were more respectful of their native states and their parents and everything else. People did right then.”(p.4) The grandmother has great faith in the traditional values and how the children should be brought up and she gives her opinioned statement when she says, “The children have been to Florida before.

You all ought to take them somewhere else for a change so they would see different parts of the world and be broad. They never have been to east Tennessee.”(p.2) The level of understanding of Misfit is entirely different and he has authored his own articles of faith for him. Flannery terms Misfit a “prophet gone wrong.” He doesn’t care for faith in the traditional sense and that is totally absent in his personality. Works Cited O’Connor, Flannery; A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories, Mariner Books, August 23, 1977 .