A Good Man Is Hard To Find Literary Analysis

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Flannery O’Connor’s “ A Good Man Is Hard to Find” takes the reader on a trip to Florida with a typical southern family consisting of a father and a mother, their children, and a grandmother, and her cat. Unfortunately this family never makes it to Florida; they happen to run into a criminal call the Misfit and his two sidekicks. This run in with the Misfit ends with the unfortunate dead of the whole family. However the grandmother’s conversation with the Misfit seems to be the main focus of the story. O’Connor appears to write the story to explore the idea of finding ones true Christian grace, yet it is a debatable topic. O’Connor writes the ending of a “Good Man Is Hard to Find” with the idea that the reader would interpret that the grandmother…show more content…
The grandmother does find a certain amount of grace, but it is not true grace. The grandmother displays an act of pretend grace only in order to try to save herself. The manipulative personality she has is still there, but she adds religion in the mixes to make it seem like she cares for something bigger than herself. For instance when she said, “"Jesus!" the old lady cried. "You've got good blood! I know you wouldn't shoot a lady! I know you come from nice people! Pray! Jesus, you ought not to shoot a lady. I'll give you all the money I've got!"”(365) it is not that she cares so much about praying for the Misfit to be a better man, but she trying to save herself. If she had truly found grace, we would have saw her feel more true compassion and reasoning when it came to dealing with the Misfit. The line that most discuss when speaking of her when it comes to grace is when she said to him “your one of my babies” (366). Even though she calls him her child, it does not show she realize we are all the same; however, she is trying to provide the proof he needs to believe in order that her life will be
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