A Good Man Is Hard to Find
- Submitted by: ddawson09
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- Category: English
- Date Submitted: 02/14/2010 06:21 AM
- Pages: 3
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This is a summary of a story by Flannery O’Connor, entitled “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”. I am going to do some free writing on the topic of the grandmother as she relates to the “gothic tradition” of writing.
Gothic Tradition in itself means to write in a way that is somewhat dark and grotesque but also humorous and true at the same time.
“A Good Man Is Hard to Find” is a short story that starts out somewhat humorous but foreshadows a tragic ending. The story contains elements of southern “Gothic Tradition”, a fictional setting that fills its stories with foreshadowing and grotesqness and replaces the wondering thoughts with reality. However, southern “Gothic Tradition” keeps the disturbing elements of Gothic works, whether in the form of a deranged character, scary woods, or a sense of coming doom. A southern-Gothic story may call up ghosts of the past, as Bailey’s mother does when she dresses in her Sunday best so she be identified as a lady when she is found dead on the side of the road, and when she persuades her family to visit an old run-down plantation with a secret panel of a family’s hidden silver.
The behavior of the characters shows how the values of the world are breaking down. John Wesley and June Star are brats with smart mouths, but their parents do nothing to discipline them. Although Bailey’s mother realizes that the world is not the same, “People are certainly not nice like they used to be” (O’Conner paragraph 35) she is oblivious of her own issues: She nags, she lies, she is too focused on her looks, and she uses offensive racist terms such as “nigger” and “pickaninny." She also assumes that Edgar Atkins Teagarden would have been a good man to marry simply because he held Coca-Cola stock, and she is mad that America sends money to Europe after World War II. The Misfit, of course, thinks the only worthwhile thing to do in life is to “enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can—by killing somebody or burning down his house or...
Gothic Tradition in itself means to write in a way that is somewhat dark and grotesque but also humorous and true at the same time.
“A Good Man Is Hard to Find” is a short story that starts out somewhat humorous but foreshadows a tragic ending. The story contains elements of southern “Gothic Tradition”, a fictional setting that fills its stories with foreshadowing and grotesqness and replaces the wondering thoughts with reality. However, southern “Gothic Tradition” keeps the disturbing elements of Gothic works, whether in the form of a deranged character, scary woods, or a sense of coming doom. A southern-Gothic story may call up ghosts of the past, as Bailey’s mother does when she dresses in her Sunday best so she be identified as a lady when she is found dead on the side of the road, and when she persuades her family to visit an old run-down plantation with a secret panel of a family’s hidden silver.
The behavior of the characters shows how the values of the world are breaking down. John Wesley and June Star are brats with smart mouths, but their parents do nothing to discipline them. Although Bailey’s mother realizes that the world is not the same, “People are certainly not nice like they used to be” (O’Conner paragraph 35) she is oblivious of her own issues: She nags, she lies, she is too focused on her looks, and she uses offensive racist terms such as “nigger” and “pickaninny." She also assumes that Edgar Atkins Teagarden would have been a good man to marry simply because he held Coca-Cola stock, and she is mad that America sends money to Europe after World War II. The Misfit, of course, thinks the only worthwhile thing to do in life is to “enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can—by killing somebody or burning down his house or...