“A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor, is one of my favorite short stories. The story is about a family of six taking a road trip vacation to Florida in the early 1900’s. In the family there is the Grandmother, who is against going to Florida and would prefer going to Tennessee , her son, Bailey, his wife, and their three children, June Star, John Wesley, and the baby. Grandmother thinks that going to Tennessee would be beneficial to the children so that they could see where they came from. She also says that there is an escaped convict on the loose named the Misfit on his way to Florida , and that they should not go on that direction because he might run into the family. On the way to Florida the family wanted to stop by an old house that they saw from the road and explore it. While driving towards the house, the cat jumped out of her basket and onto the father, causing him to get into an accident. The family is not badly injured and stay by the car hoping that someone will come along to help them. As it turned out someone did come along, although the people who came were not who the family would have expected. It was the Misfit and his “gang” of friends. The Misfit talks with the family a bit, mostly with the Grandmother, and ends up killing the entire family.
Mary Flannery O’Connor was born into an Irish Catholic family in Savannah, Georgia. She was the only child of Edward F. O'Connor and Regina Cline O’Connor. Her father was later diagnosed with lupus in 1937 and died on February 1, 1941. The disease was hereditary in the O'Connor family. Flannery was devastated, and almost never spoke of him in later years. O'Connor attended the Peabody Laboratory School , from which she graduated in 1942. She attended Georgia State College for Women where she majored in
English and Sociology In 1946 Flannery O'Connor was accepted into the prestigious Iowa Writers' Workshop.In 1951 she was diagnosed with lupus, and ended up returning to her farm in Milledgeville. There she raised around 100 peafowl. Fascinated by birds of all kinds, she raised ducks, hens, geese, and any sort of exotic bird she could obtain, as well as incorporated images of peacocks often in her books. She was a deeply devoted Catholic living in the mostly Protestant American South. She collected books on Catholic theology and at times gave lectures on faith and literature, traveling quite far despite her frail health. She also had a wide correspondence, including such famous writers as Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop. She never married and had a very close relationship with her mother. She died on August 3, 1964, age 39, of complications from lupus and was buried in Milledgeville, Georgia.
This story is one of my favorite short stories that I have ever read. It is full of wit and humor as well as jam packed with foreshadowing. While reading the story I noticed that foreshadowing is a frequently reoccurring literary devices used in this story. Towards the beginning of the story the Grandmother automatically does not want the family to go to Florida , claiming that she is fearful of them coming upon The Misfit. “‘Here this fellow that calls himself the Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed towards Florida and you read here what is says he did to these people. Just read it.’” Here the Grandmother is giving her family a reason of why she does not want them to go to Florida, although this is not the true reason she does not want them to go, and is giving them a reason she thinks they might agree with. The Grandmother is foreshadowing later events of what will happen, although she has no idea of it, seeing as how the family does end up meeting with the Misfit
A second example of clear foreshadowing is when the Grandmother takes Ping Sing, the cat, along with the family on the trip, without telling anyone that the cat is there. “She didn’t intend for the cat to be left alone in the house for three days because he would miss her too much and she was afraid he might brush up against one of the gas burners and accidentally asphyxiate himself.” The fact that Bailey, her son and the driver, did not know that the cat was in the car with the family is the main reason he was so frightened when Ping Sing jumped out of his hiding place, and was the leading factor to the accident. Once again foreshadowing is involved; the Grandmother being the only one knowing the cat was there, and the cat being the cause of the accident.
The later events of the story, with the Grandmother recognizing the Misfit, and trying to reason with him, calling him a “good man” was all just another way the Grandmother was trying to have things go her way. From the very beginning of the story it was visible that the Grandmother was the type of person who liked things her way and who did everything possible to make it so. The way the O’Connor wrote this story was very ingenious; including many different personalities and having them all interact together. The only reason that all of these events had happened was because the Grandmother was not getting things to go her way, and she wanted to alter events so that they would go her way. O’Connor also wanted to make this a humorous story, so she gave each character very distinct attitudes, each with their own “out there” personalities.
This story has many components to it, all that have come together in such a way that greatly entertains, and cautions at the same time. This story teaches the reader to not always do only what they want to do, and to consult with the rest of the family. Family was a very important aspect in this story, and the Grandmother did a very poor job in the beginning of really appreciating her family, and how much they mean to her. O’Connor did this in order to show the reader that there are many important things in life, and prioritizing those things may be a life or dead situation.