A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FINDBY FLANNERY O'CONNOR

            Flannery O’Connor is the author of this short story published in the year 1953. The author used the resources that surrounded her such as the people around her, the reading resources that were available and used them to write the short stories (O'Connor, 1993). The choice of the author on the characters that she used in the story portrays her opinion on humans as a fallen being. The story portrays the destruction of a very normal family by three convicts who had escaped. Grandmother character is one that cannot go unrecognized thus this paper will thus analyze grandmother’s character in the story and how it has enabled the author to build up her story.

Just as the name suggests, grandmother is Bailey’s mother and she lives with her son, Bailey and his family of two children, June star and John Wesley and their mother. The grandmother is a determined woman as she always gets what she wants. The author brings this character in the grandmother clearly in the story using so many instances. The story unfolds as the family plans to go on a trip but there are disagreements among them as they cannot decide on where to visit. The grandmother character is to blame for the conflicts that occur within the family and surrounding her. Bailey is the head of the family in the story and according to him; he wants to take his entire family to Florida. However the grandmother in the story who is Bailey’s mother does not want to go to Florida but rather proposes that they visit Tennessee(O'Connor, 1993). She justifies her proposal saying that the children had not had a chance to visit that location and that the escaped convict, who is known as Misfit in the story was last seen heading towards Florida and thus opposing their visit to Florida.

However no one believes and they all ignore her and the following day they all head to Florida. The grandmother however hides her cat in the car as she thinks that in leaving the cat behind he would die.  The cat ultimately leads to the accident that later leads them into stopping a car in which Misfit the escaped convict was leading to the death of the family(O'Connor, 1993). In this story therefore it is hard to ignore the conflicts that the grandmother has caused through her actions. It is true that it is hard to find a good man but it is however a person is regarded good or bad by her action as seen in the story.

            Everything that does not interest the grandmother, she wants to have it her way manipulating everyone to change plans to favor her. She opposes to go to Florida for mere reasons as her intentions were to visit Tennessee as she had some relations there. In making her selfish claims she however is tactful as shed uses indirect confrontations and she seizes any opportunity that she has to achieve what she wants. For instance she first uses frightening method where she reports of the escape of a criminal last seen in Florida with an intention to scare off Bailey to take them to Florida(O'Connor, 1993). When this method fails she pretends that she has no interest in going to Tennessee but since the children had not visited there and for their sake they should visit the place. The rest of the story also shows her manipulating her schemes out as she carries along the cat knowing very well, that Bailey would not agree to this but since she wanted this she decided to hide the cat in the basket secretly(O'Connor, 1993). Her wish to visit the old plantation is met by her telling the children a story about the plantation and since she could not convince Bailey to take them there she uses the children to do it. The entire story illustrates how selfish she is and in achieving her selfish gains manipulation is seen as her core scheme. It is as a result of this manipulative action which is bad that shows that she is as well a bad person who is at no any chance considerate about others.

            The grandmother was not a religious woman as per say but in her final moments when she saw that death was approaching she did have a moment grace. She uses religious preaching to manipulate Misfit into not killing her.

            Though she uses Jesus and even expressing of his love even to Misfit and assuring him that he was a good man, she did not receive mercy at the end as Misfit shoot her three times. The grandmother is a hypocrite and in the story she admits that Misfit is one of her product of hypocrisy and dead actions where they have used lips to spiritually confess but fail to do it in action as they are consumed by earthly pleasures and this makes her not a totally upright human being.

             The grandmother views herself as a lady who is well dressed up, respectable and well mannered. She is thus seen in the story dressing up so smartly so as to look nice so that even if she dies in the accident, anyone who shall see her shall see that she was a lady(O'Connor, 1993). Also in trying to stop Misfit into not killing him, she expects him to have mercy on her since she is a lady and he would not kill a lady.  This motive is bad as she is doing it for others to see the kind of lady she is.

            In conclusion, the author widely uses the grandmother character in his story as she clearly shows how a good man is hard to find. The author in the story has however not used any positive thing about the grandmother as she greatly shows on her selfishness character, manipulating character and her hypocrisy. However as the main character she has enabled the theme of how hard it is to find a good man to be well built up in the story.

 

 

            References

O'Connor, F., &Asals, F. (1993).A good man is hard to find. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.