Flannery O’Connor is an American novelist from Georgia who wrote the Southern Gothic stories in the middle of the twentieth century. The fiction genre is dedicated to revealing and ironically judging the American South’s moralities. O’Connor became one of the most famous Gothic writers with stories full of dark, violent events and personal drama, described in grotesque details. Moreover, many of O’Connor’s short stories include the Catholic context, questioning the divine force, the good, and the evil. Indeed, A Good Man Is Hard to Find has religious statements, and the main character, the grandmother, represents a typical Christian. This paper aims to identify and discuss O’Connor’s understanding of the good and the evil in the religious context, based on the A Good Man Is Hard to Find plot and characters.
The story’s analysis is to proceed through the five key points outlined below. Firstly, the author’s perception of the Catholic values and religion must be studied, and examples from the other short stories are provided. Biographical factors or events that impacted O’Connor’s work on A Good Man Is Hard to Find can be included in this point as well. Secondly, the characters such as the grandmother and The Misfit will be studied based on their portrayals and phrases. Thirdly, their dialogue before the grandmother’s death needs to be discussed from the perspective of Catholic values. For example, The Misfit’s self-identification as “ain’t the worst in the world neither” provides evidence of how people perceived the evil (O’Connor 42). Fourthly, the role of the setting, the road in Florida, and the accident that made the whole family stop their journey, need to be identified with the details of nature’s description and the characters’ phrases. Lastly, the story’s plot and religious thesis can be studied through how Catholic values were treated in the Southern states in the 1950s.
Reference
O’Connor, Flannery. A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories, edited by Lisa Alther, The Women’s Press, 1980.