"A Good Man Is Hard To Find" A Literary Analysis
Author Flannery O’Connor’s (1925-1964) life was cut short at the very young age of forty-two years old, but before she passed from Lupus she managed to produces two novels Wise Blood (1952) and The Violent Bear It Away (1960) as well as thirty-one short stories. In her brief time on this earth, she was regarded as one of America’s most celebrated fiction writers of the mid-twentieth century. Born in Savannah, Georgia, she was the only child of Catholic parents; she attended a conservative primary and high school. When she was thirteen the family moved to Milledgeville, Georgia where her mothers’ family had lived for generations because her father had fallen ill with Lupus. While attending college she started writing for a literary magazine until she graduated in 1945 going on to attend a fellowship she had accepted to the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa, finally graduating with her master of fine arts degree in 1947. O’Connor got too ill to work and retired to her the family farm just outside of Milledgeville with her mother, where she raised peacocks and did minimal work until she passed in 1964. (O’Connor, 1953, p. 362) Her stories make you question your spirituality and your faith in God. “O’Connor’s Catholicism differs from the prevailing Protestant fundamentalism of the South. This provided fertile ground for the spiritual crises her characters endured.” (O’Connor, 1953, p. 365) The characters are very relatable, you have more than likely met people just like the characters in her books and short stories, and they always had a shocking ending.
O’Connor’s short story “A Good Man is Hard To Find” was written in 1953 and makes use of some great literary points. The story, narrated in third person, clearly sets the plot from the first few sentences. The story portrays a family planning a vacation to Florida, centered on a paranoid over baring...