O'Connor, Flannery - Mitchell Owens (essay date winter 1996)
Mitchell Owens (essay date winter 1996)
SOURCE: Owens, Mitchell. “The Function of Signature in ‘A Good Is Hard to Find.’” Studies in Short Fiction 33, no. 1 (winter 1996): 101-6.
[In the following essay, Owens contends that the grandmother's attachment of excessive significance to signatures in O'Connor's short story is a sign of her adherence to an archaic value system in the face of sweeping social change.]
Sometimes a man says things he don't mean.
(O'Connor 127)
In her fatal encounter with The Misfit, the grandmother in Flannery O'Connor's “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” confronts a particularly lethal manifestation of her changing social order. Throughout her life, this woman has been struggling with the shift from the ante-bellum values of lineage and gentility to those of a cash-oriented culture, and with the implications this shift has for the assumptions that underwrite her...
[The entire page is 2720 words long]
Join eNotes
Over 3,500 study guides, question and answer forums, literature criticism, reference content, and much more!
Navigate
Related Topics
