A Good Man

"A Good Man Is Hard to find" is regarded as one of O'Connor's best stories and has drawn much critical attention. Most discussions of "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" have focused on the story's extreme violence. O'Connor herself justified the use of terror to shock spiritually complacent modern readers: "To the hard of hearing you shout and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures." While many critics accept this rationalization, others are less comfortable with the story's abrupt descent into brutality. For some commentators, the jarring shift from comedy to tragedy takes unfair advantage of a group of characters whose depiction verges on caricature. More recent interpretations of the tale range from structural and political analysis to an examination of its classical and medieval literary influences.
Flannery O’Connor’s personal views on the justification of religion and the resulting world or corruption and depravity are apparent in her short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find”. She analyzes the basic plight of human existence and its conflict with religious conviction. The first two-thirds of the narrative set the stage for the grandmother, representing traditional Christian beliefs, to collide with The Misfit, representing modern scientific beliefs. The core of symbolism and the magnet for interpretation is at the end, the conversation between the grandmother and The Misfit. The conversation represents the examination of the clash between animal and metaphysical human nature and the Misfit is the literary depiction of the outcome of that clash.
The grandmother is based on conventional Southern women. She dresses in her Sunday best so that no one would be mistaken as to her status as a lady, an issue at the heart of every true Southern woman. She related stories of old mansions and of the little ‘pick ninny’ by a door. This was not a racial comment because for it to be there would have to be an intent to insult an African American and there was...