A Good Man Is Hard To Find Analysis Essay

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Seemingly just a story about a family road trip gone awry, Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is much more complicated than it appears. The theme, how appearances can sometimes be illusions, is focused mostly on the two main, contradictory characters - the grandmother and the Misfit. O’Connor writes from an outside perspective, introduces the story with the grandmother’s opposing opinion about the Misfit, and even favors the grandmother throughout the narrative. However, by the conclusion of the story, it is evident that O’Connor made the Misfit the most redeemable character - contradictory to all appearances. To enhance the deception throughout “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, O’Connor writes her story from an outside perspective. Even though this gives the reader a neutral sense of each character, O’Connor contradicts this notion by favoring the grandmother until the conclusion, when the purpose of the short story is revealed by the Misfit. For instance, the very first sentence…show more content…
Within the first paragraph, O’Connor establishes that the narrator knows, to some extent, what the grandmother is thinking and feeling. She also begins to establish the juxtaposition between the Misfit and the grandmother by mentioning how the grandmother condemns the Misfit’s previous actions. For instance, the grandmother discusses how the Misfit “escaped from the Federal Pen” (1269). She condemns his actions by saying, “you read here what it says he did to these people. … I wouldn’t take my children in any direction with a criminal like that on the loose. I couldn’t answer to my conscience if I did” (1269). By including this in the very first paragraph of the narrative, O’Connor sets the reader up for the battle of morality and character that takes place at the very end of “A Good Man is Hard to
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