Introduction
Violence is a theme employed by Flannery O’Connor in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” to highlight the shortcomings and crimes of human nature. The Grandma and the Misfit are two figures that represent two opposing moral perspectives, with the former being violent and the latter being hypocritical. O’Connor demonstrates via their encounters how violence can change people and reveal their true selves.
The writer also criticizes the fragile and frequently erroneous notion of morality that society has created. The author emphasizes the significance of seeing past the obvious and appreciating the complexity of human nature through doing this. Thus, the writer decries society’s hypocritical or frail conception of morality while embracing violence as an essential instrument for exposing human nature.
How Violence Reveals Hypocrisy in O’Connor’s Short Story
Grandma is presented as greedy and hypocritical at the beginning of the novel. She cares more about her pleasure and comfort than the safety of others. However, as the family encounters a horrific situation, Grandma has a spiritual awakening and learns more about the purpose of life. For instance, when the Misfit threatens to kill her, the Grandma pleads for her life by saying, “I know you’re a good man. You don’t look like you have common blood. I know you must come from nice people!” (O’Connor 9).
This statement exposes the Grandma’s duplicity as she begs the Misfit for favors to preserve her life. Yet, as the Misfit ultimately murders her, the Grandma changes and comes to understand what kindness means. She reaches out to the Misfit and says, “Why, you’re one of my babies. You’re one of my children!” (O’Connor 13). This quote shows Grandma’s newfound understanding of life and how violence has transformed her.
In turn, characters like Misfit live by their moral standards and are not constrained by what is deemed moral by society. He is a cold-blooded killer who enjoys killing defenseless individuals. Nevertheless, the story’s conclusion signals the start of the Misfit’s change. After killing Grandma, he becomes aware of the harm that violence does to other people and stops enjoying it. He says, “She would have been a good woman…if somebody had been there to shoot her every minute of her life” (O’Connor 13).
The Misfit’s grasp of violence’s transforming potential and how it can bring out the best in people may be seen in this quotation. Then, Misfit additionally recognizes the pain associated with murders, saying that “it’s no real pleasure in life” (O’Connor 13). His recognition of Grandma’s potential for goodness highlights the ambiguity of morality and how it is constructed by society.
Conclusion
Hence, the author criticizes society’s false or weak morals while endorsing violence as a necessary tool for revealing human nature. “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor promotes violence as a vital tool for exposing human nature and criticizes the shallow and false morality that society has created. O’Connor demonstrates how violence has a transformational force and reveals human weaknesses and crimes via Grandma and the Misfit characters. The author’s more significant issue of morality emphasizes the ambiguity of society’s production of ethics and its verbalized definition. The need to see beyond the obvious and understand the complexity of human nature can be seen as the central theme throughout the work.
Work Cited
O’Connor, Flannery. “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” The Avon Book of Modern Writing, 1953. Web.