Blog Post 5: Flannery O’Connor

In “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” Flannery O’Connor uses an interest key theme throughout her story which correlates with a lot of her work. In the majority of her famous pieces, O’Connor uses morality to engage the reader or to teach the reader something. However, in this emotional rollercoaster she ironically creates each character with some kind of flaw or objective in their morality. For example, she uses the grandmother as a key factor in foreshadowing at the beginning of the story when the grandma says she would never put their family in harm’s way of the misfit. Also, in this scene where the grandma says, “Oh look at the cute little pickaninny!” she said and pointed to a Negro child standing in the door of a shack. “Wouldn’t that make a picture, now?” she asked and they all turned and looked at the little Negro out of the back window.” (O’Connor, Pg. 9). This is a perfect example of how the grandma seems so sweet at the beginning and then clearly lacks a sense of morality by using racial slur. Then later down the road clearly lies and puts them in danger just to be manipulative and get her way. Each character in the story are either rude, disrespectful, a criminal, or has something that lacks some sort of common morality society holds for people. For example, when the daughter June Star says, “No I certainly wouldn’t,” June Star said. “I wouldn’t live in a broken-down place like this for a million bucks!” and she ran back to the table.” (O’Connor, Pg. 13). This is a great example of how rude and disrespectful the children are in the story.

Throughout the story she uses some characterization elements to present each character as regular people as they were viewed during the time period she wrote “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” However, at the end of her story she uses sympathy and emotional elements to create an engaged realistic experience for the reader. For example, the most significant piece of text from the story that relates to this would be the scene where “There were two more pistol reports and the grandmother raised her head like a parched old turkey hen crying for water and called, ‘Bailey Boy, Bailey Boy!’ as if her heart would break.” (O’Connor, Pg. 31). At this point in the story after everything the grandma has done and all of the ups and downs of the story, the reader begins to feel sorry for the grandma as she finally comes to the realization that the entire family was dead and her son has been shot. She begins to understand she is not going to live either although she continues to convince “The Misfit” he is good and the sympathy kicks in for the audience as they feel bad for the grandma and have a feeling was going to happen next.