Flannery Oconnors A Good Man is Hard to Find - Book Report/Review Example

Flannery O’connor’s genius has been shown throughout the short body of her storied work, and no where more so than in her short fiction, “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” In this short story, American author Flannery O’connor touches on a laundry list aspects long considered staples in the “American Experience”; racism, sexism, class struggle, crime and punishment, organized religion, family, faith, and the list goes on and on. By focusing on only four small literary devices and techniques that the author Flannery O’connor utilizes, a small window into her writing style can be looked through and then analyzed.

To examine how this short story in particular achieves a level of mastery “A Good Man is Hard to Find” showcases how Flannery O’connor opposes her dry, staccato writing style against flashing bursts of vivid color to achieve haunting descriptions of the characters and of the storied Georgian landscape. She also weaves in a sharp and slicing analysis of the shallow values of the American family by giving the Grandmother a strong southern, genteel woman’s attitude about proper etiquette, and unleashing that attitude upon the family.

Throughout the story the author seamlessly and continually employs the use of foreshadowing, much to the point of blatant prophesizing. Finally, the story uses an auto accident and an act of extreme violence to question everyone’s personal “road to salvation” and their own definitions of “faith.” . h in different colors, "her white cotton gloves a navy blue sailor hat with a bunch of white violets on the brim and a navy blue dress with small white dot on the print white organdy with lace and purple spray of cloth violets.

" (O'connor 2). Flannery O'connor sprinkles it into the description of the Misfit, and the result is short, yet eerily haunting, "He wore silver-rimmed spectacles he had on blue jeans that were too tight for him holding a black hat and a gun. He had on tan and white shoes his ankles were red and thin." (O'connor 9) It seems that the author lets the colors stand by themselves. She knows that the word "red" conjures up powerful images for her readers, and is content to let the colored words fall heavy on the readers like stones.

O'connor achieves mastery by letting her plain words and colors tell the story themselves.Flannery O'connor also uses her uniquely open language and style to question the ideals of southern propriety and that rare genteel southern charm that borders on maniacally overdone. The second page has grandmother painted in her most colorful and proper attire just, "in case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once she was a lady," (O'connor 2). The author boldly states that the southern raised grandmother would rather be dead than be "caught" by someone not living up to picture perfect image of a "southern belle.

" Just a few well chosen sentences from Flannery O'connor's Grandmother, voice aloud what a false and idealistic image of beauty and success the southern women felt they must live up to. Asking why her life is completely dependent on the attracting and subsequent marrying of a financially secure man, "the grandmother said she would have done well to marry Mr. Teagarden because he