In O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find," the reader discovers each character's sense of morality and their security within it. It was interesting the way O'Connor introduced each character in the story. In the beginning the children and Bailey seem to hold more importance, but turn to be little more than flat characters. The Mother and baby were rarely even called upon, unlike the Grandmother whom held most of the attention. By the climax it is clear that the Grandmother and The Misfit are the key characters.
In the opening descriptions, O'Connor uses extreme foreshadowing when explaining the Grandmother, "In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady." O'Connor uses such an great juxtaposition almost forcing the reader into a dark mindset; something bad is going to occur.
The whole rest of the story revolves around the normalcy of the road trip saturated with more slight hints of a downfall. At lunchtime in Red Sam's the Grandma gets into a discussion about people these days and how, "A good man is hard to find" and "everything is terrible." Also providing foreshadowing for the impending car crash.
When The Misfit and Grandmother converse after the accident is when the character's morality truly appears. At the point of life and death, the Grandmother discovers her complete trust in God instead of herself. The Misfit exclaims his views.
Grandmother- "If you would pray, Jesus would help you."
The Misfit- "That's right"
Grandmother- "Well then, why don't you pray?"
The Misfit- "I don't want no hep, I'm doing all right by myself."
The Grandmother comes to the utter realization of her weakness and his strength in those few words. Her trust in man diminished, and his trust in himself only grew. As a reader, witnessing this Grandmother's life and trust fall to pieces is disturbing and sad. The worst part is how The Misfit's moral code still stands strong while you just watch this Grandmother loose all faith in herself and the world. Seriously, a good man is hard to find.
O'Connor did use a lot of foreshadowing in "A Good Man is Hard to Find". The biggest indicator to me was when the grandmother mentioned to her son at the beginning of the story about the newspaper article she read about the Misfit. When I first read this short story last year I knew the family would meet the Misfit somehow during the duration of the story. I agree that the story was based around the grandmother so a lot of the foreshadowing happened around her.
ReplyDeleteIntersting. I would be willing to debate with you on the issue of the grandmother trusting in God. When the Misfit is getting ready to shoot her, she keeps telling him to pray. I honestly believe that this is for her own sake rather than God's. Even at the beginning of the tale, she has threads of hypocrisy and self-righteousness in her character, always complaining about the good ol' days. It is not until the end of the tale when she claims that the Misfit is "her child" meaning that she has empathy and true religious love towards him. The Misfit says she would have "been a better woman if someone had been there to shoot her every moment of her life." At my community college, I learned that O'Connor uses a violent realization to shape true character into those characters that do not see past themselves. "Revelation" is another short story that emphasizes this theme. The sad thing is that the Misfit does not see this.
ReplyDeleteYou say that the conversation between the grandmother and the Misfit shows the triumph of his self-centered mindset and a loss of faith in humanity. The failure of the grandmother's faith and belief in God to protect her seems to be a prominent, repeated detail in the ending of the story, even to the extent that right before here death the grandmother herself abandons her previous tactics and pleas with the Misfit on a personal, emotional level rather than with religious reasoning. It's possible that this story has atheistic subtexts, showing that faith and religion are in reality useless for protecting oneself and the people one loves.
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