Words: 793
“A Good Man Is Hard To Find” Lorean Gibson South University Online “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” “A Good Man Is Hard To Find”, in my opinion, is based on the main character, a bossy and racist grandmother, her rude grand kids, her impatient son , his wife and baby, all of whom ends up getting killed while on vacation by a serial killer that escaped from jail. This story is drenched in the southern gothic tradition, ironic situations, and has racial comments made by the grandmother. A Good Man Is Hard To Find” has all the characteristic of a gothic piece: there is a victim who is helpless against his torturer; which is shown in the story by the family not being able to get away from the Misfit and his crew and two by two losing their life. There is also a victimizer (Misfit) who is associated with evil and whose powers are immense , which is shown by his escaping the Federal Pen and killing all six members of the family without anyone being the wiser.
The impenetrable walls (physical orpsychological) used to heighten the victim’s sense of hopeless isolation is shown by their being killed in the middle of nowhere on a deserted dirt road with a overturned vehicle, and finally, the victim (grandmother) is in some way entranced or fascinated by the inscrutable power of her victimizer which is shown by the grandmother stating, “Why you’re one of my babies. You’re one of my own children ” and reaching out and touching him on the shoulder. Gothic Tradition, 2007-2009) Irony is shown throughout the story, such as the fact that the grandmother uses the misfit’s escape as a reason for them not to go to Florida and stated , “I wouldn’t take my children in any direction with a criminal like that a loose in it” and in the end she’s the one that waved the car down that the misfit and his crew was driving , therefore causing her son, grandkids , her daughter-in-law and herself to be killed by them.
The grandmother wears a “navy blue straw sailor hat with a bunch of white violets on the brim and a navy blue dress with a small white dot in the print, white organdy collar and cuff trimmed with lace and at her neckline she had pinned a purple spray of cloth violets containing a sachet. So in case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady”(DiYanni, 1955). When in actually she died ten feet below the main road, in a ditch, in the woods which is defiantly no place for “a lady”.
The grandmother constantly tells the misfit to pray when no where in the story is it mentioned that she prayed herself. June Star was disappointed that no one was killed and in the end she got her wish because they were all killed. The grandmother’s racial comments are stated when she says the following: “Oh look at the cute little pickaninny! ” 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……he didn’t have any britches on,” June Star said. He probably didn’t have any,” the grandmother explained. “Little riggers in the country don’t have things like we do. If I could paint, I’d paint that picture,” she said ….. she never got the watermelon, she said, because a nigger boy ate it when he saw the initials, E. A. T.! ” (DiYanni, 1955) After reading the first couple racial remarks, I was not as enthused about reading the story, but I continued since it’s a required reading for class. A Good Man Is Hard To Find” is written by Flannery O’Connor, who is said to be “a lifelong devout Roman Catholic from Georgia, who felt isolated from her peers because of her deep Catholic religious convictions in a Southern Protestant area (Reuben),who frustrated by her inability to “fit in,” decided to convey her religious beliefs in her writing, but did so in an unorthodox manner, appearing desperate to sway others to her way of thinking. ” (Ball, 2009) References Ball, J. (2009, May 26).
A Biographical and Psychoanalytical Analysis of “A Good Man is Hard to Find” Retrieved January 1,2010 from Associated Press website: : http://www. associatedcontent. com/article/1764942/a_biographical_and_psychoanalytical. html? cat=38 O’Connor, Flannery (1955) A Good Man is Hard to Find, In R. DiYanni (Ed. ), Literature: Reading Fiction, Poetry, and Drama (6th Ed. ) Boston, MA: McGraw Hill Saliba, D. R. (2007-2009). Gothic Tradition Retrieved January 11,2010 from Scepticthomas. com website: (http://www. scepticthomas. com/gothic/gothic. htm)