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Samiul Islam Andrew Bales ENG 101 14th May 2010 O’Connor Assignment Flannery O’Connor was born in Georgia and lived most of her life there. Flannery went to Georgia State and she has been writing since childhood. She has been writing stories and worked for newspapers. These stories landed her a place in university of Iowa to do her masters. At a young age of 21 she published her first story which got much recognition and she received awards for her work. This of Corse means that good work never goes unnoticed, and so she was offered a contract for her first novel, Wise Blood, that she began writing.
O’Connor’s father passed away when she was fifteen with lupus, and so genetically she unfortunately inherited this disease. With the disease eating away she was still writing away, with another novel she released called, The violent Bear it Away. Both novels suffered and weren’t recognized as her good work. Flannery’s novels may have suffered but her short stories received numerous awards and her popularity began to grow even after her death. One of her most famous short stories published was, “A Good Man is Hard to Find. This short story shows how a grandmother’s view of herself as moral superiority leads to the death of not only herself but her family too. In the story, the grandmother being one of the main characters, shows signs of being very ignorant and highly confident in her own opinions and views, to a point its believable that its merely false confidence. She goes by a false moral code of assuming, that if she looked like a lady by wearing a pretty hat, it is simply the highest achievement one is able to achieve.
This view is ironic since after an accident occurs her hat breaks apart. The grandmother also shows signs of hypocrisy, especially when she criticize the world for being immoral and dishonest, but she sneaks her cat into the car which leads to a car accident, lies to the children about a hidden panel in a house, and also doesn’t correct her mistake of the incorrect location of the house. Near the end of the short story, the family encounters the misfit after a car accident which leads to he climax of the story. The misfit gets his trusty companions to kill the husband, wife and the kids and he kills the grandmother himself. Before killing the grandmother, she tries to get him to change his moral views by saying he’s a “good man” (O’Connor 656). At the end before the grandmothers killed she tells the misfit that he is “one of her children” (O’Connor 659). At this point it shows she was inspired by the misfit’s consistent moral views and begins to question her contradicting views.
Soon she realizes that all her views weren’t superior and understands the equality of all and that she doesn’t have superiority over others. O’ Connors present life seems to have had a high influence on the short story, A Good Man is Hard to Find. Starting from the setting of Georgia to the main character, “the misfit” there seems to be a lot of similarities between Flannery’s life of reality and her fictional short story. As a Georgian woman she starts the story off at location in Georgia.
Others things that show similarities with the story and her life, is the misfit. During her writings of the short story, an article appeared in the Atlanta paper about a small-time robber who called himself “The Misfit” ( Fitzgerald 987), although the name was inspiring enough to use in her story the real description of this robber doesn’t fit the profile of the misfit in her story, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find. ” What does reveal to show the description of the misfit in her story is another man who seemed to have gotten her attention as a more killer-like appearance.
The physical appearance of a man named, James Francis “three-gun” Hill, fits that of “The Misfit” in O’Connor’s story. In reality James hill lead to break a record of “twenty- six kidnappings in four states, an equal number of robberies, ten car thefts, and a daring rescue of four Florida convicts from a prison gang”(Fitzgerald 988). To Flannery, James hill appealed to her as a more intimidating person to describe in her story. In all, O’Connor’s life seems to have had an influence in this great short story, A Good Man Is Hard to Find.