A Good Man Is Hard To Find Literary Analysis

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Flannery O’Conner was a Southern American writer and essayist who wrote two novels and over thirty-two short stories. While being an important voice in American literature, she often wrote in a Southern Gothic style and relied heavily on regional settings and grotesque characters. A Good Man is Hard to Find is just one of the thirty-two short stories that O’Conner wrote. In this thrilling tale, a family of four and their grandmother go out on a road trip from Georgia to Florida for vacation, but are involved in an accident which leaves them stranded in a ditch on the side of the road in the middle of a deserted area. While waiting for help, the family flags down a car which is carrying three men in it- all of whom are carrying guns. The grandmother recognizes the leader of the group as the Misfit, an escaped murderer who the grandmother had warned the family about prior to leaving for Florida.…show more content…
The Misfit’s sidekicks end up taking the family into the woods and murders them one by one. Pleading for her own life, the grandmother tries to talk some sense into the Misfit, and when she goes to comfort him and calls him “one of her children,” he then reacts violently and shoots her three times in the chest, killing her. He and his sidekicks then drive off. O'Connor's fiction is often called "Southern Gothic," and many of the elements of A Good Man is Hard to Find are of "gothic" fiction, but with a distinctively Southern vibe. There's a looming sense of darkness, suspense, and foreboding about the story, which is established through the story’s characters, setting, and
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