Prejudice Vs. Tolerance, God And Religion, Violence And Creulty Themes in A Good Man is Hard to Find - Essay Example

PREJUDICE VS. TOLERANCE, GOD AND RELIGION, VIOLENCE AND CREULTY Themes in "A Good Man is Hard to Find" Written By: "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," the title selection of O'Connor's 1955 collection, has received a great deal of critical attention. The story serves as an excellent introduction to O'Connor's fiction because it contains all the elements that typify O'Connor's work: a combination of humor and horror, grotesque characters, and an opportunity for characters to accept God's grace. Here the author narrates the story in juxtaposition with predominantly three prime themes viz. Prejudice vs. tolerance, God and religion and over all violence in relation to cruelty. To deal with the story it should be remembered that first the circumstantial evidences prevailing at the point of time. The socio-economic context is the most important scenario to understand the narrative of the story. The Civil Rights Movement Fueled with the speeches of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and with the deaths of several African-American activists, the civil rights movement was at its peak in 1955. (Brinkmeyer, 18-22). The story unfolds in this context. O'Connor's story is told by a third-person narrator, but the focus is on the Grandmother's perspective of events. The first and very important theme of this story is the conflict between prejudices vs. tolerance. The Grandmother proclaims "Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida and you read here what it says he did to these people. Just you read it. I wouldn't take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn't answer to my conscience if I did." (O'Connor, 137) on a different occasion she is dressed up "in case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady" (O'Connor, 138) shows the conservative nature of the woman which is nothing but an extended ego of her prejudices. Time and again her exclamations and statements narrates that she is not color blind in any sense. But once confronted with Misfit she appears more open and avant-garde with dialogues like "you shouldn't call yourself The Misfit because I know you're a good man at heart. I can just look at you and tell" (O'Connor, 147) or when she tells him "I just know you're a good man, you're not a bit common!" (O'Connor, 148) This is a nice gesture to overcome her prejudice and convey herself as an open minded lady who is in the heart a tolerant person by nature. The second theme of this story is the underlying faith in God and religion. The theological discussion at the end of the story, between the grandmother and The Misfit, has gotten a lot of attention from critics. Is she serious about him being her child Does he really believe in Jesus' miracles, since he believes there is no pleasure in life Religious beliefs, invoked only at a moment of dire need are nothing like the beliefs that people live by--or are sudden realizations the actual crux of religious belief There might not be any direct answers to these questions, but there is plenty of room for discussion. The "good man" of the title reverberates off the "good woman" of the last lines. The grandmother would have been a good woman, but during the earlier course of the story, the term "good man" is used quite loosely: the grandmother calls just about anyone she wants to please a "good man." She bemoans, with others, the lack of any real respect or goodness in the present day--people make this complaint all the time. (Gordon, 87) At the same time, she lies, and manipulates, and is generally a pain to everyone--she gets her entire family killed. At the same time, The Misfit does have some points: do punishments fit crimes What is "good" And what did Jesus really do, exactly Dialogues between Grandma and Misfit reveal in entirety the friction between them in terms if faith and a subdued inclination towards religion like "Pray, pray," the grandmother began, "pray, pray . . ." To this Misfit relies "I never was a bad boy that I remember of," The Misfit said in an almost dreamy voice, "but somewheres along the line I done something wrong and got sent to the penitentiary. I was buried alive," and he looked up and held her attention to him by a steady stare." (O'Connor, 149) O'Connor is one of the key figures in the Southern Gothic literary mode, which uses key elements of Gothic literary style (brooding, obsessive villains; passionate emotions expressed in decayed or abandoned ancestral homes; a prelude to the horror genre), but places them in a Southern American setting. In so doing, O'Connor examines American attitudes about class, violence, religion, and family relationships. Critics were initially intrigued with O'Connor's use of violence in her stories, uncommon for a writer" not to mention a woman" (Hendri, 5) in the 1950s and 1960s, yet they recognized her ability to draw characters with clarity. With descriptions like "the old lady mumbled, not knowing what she was saying and feeling so dizzy that she sank down in the ditch with her legs twisted under her" and "Hiram and Bobby Lee returned from the woods and stood over the ditch, looking down at the grandmother who half sat and half lay in a puddle of blood with her legs crossed under her like a child's and her face smiling up at the cloudless sky" and with the dint of cruel dialogues like "there never was a body that give the undertaker a tip" and "take her off and thow her where you shown the others," (O'Connor, 152-53) the author really proves her point while dealing in violence and cruelty. The questions this story brings up are complex. Some other Themes might involve the significance of landscape, the disjointed conversation (people seem unable to listen to each other), and the levels of deceit that various characters display. The themes consisting of Prejudice vs. tolerance, God and religion and over all violence in relation to cruelty reflects the nature of the world that the author believes exist. Flannery O'Connor's short story "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" is a narration where no one in this story is particularly appealing or sympathetic. The grandmother is the focal point, and she does have a revelation towards the end. The Misfit is clearly an advisory--he kills the whole family. But good and evil are not entirely distinct here: this is what makes these stories so compelling. References: O'Connor, Flannery. 1985. Flannery O'Connor: Collected Works. National Book Trust Brinkmeyer, Jr., Robert H. 1998.The Art and Vision of Flannery O'Connor, State University Press. Hendri, Josephine. 2000. The World of Flannery O'Connor. Allied Press. Gordon, Caroline. June 12, 1955. "With a Glitter of Evil." in The New York Times Book Review Read More