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A Good Man Is Hard to Find
The irony of the title is shown in the way that the grandmother uses the phrase "a good man" in the story. She uses it twice: firstly in her description of Red Sam and secondly when she meets the...
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find
The grandmother's main conflict in the story is with society. She is unhappy with the way men and women act, and she idealizes the past when she believes that men acted like honorable and honest...
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find
It sounds like you're getting ready to write an position paper, so be sure to begin with a strong thesis that states your opinion. I think you can likely find the most support for the...
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find
In any great piece of literature, there are multiple themes that develop. The task, therefore, is choosing one that applies well and which you can support with a variety of textual evidence. One...
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find
In Flannery O'Connor's celebrated short story "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," the unnamed grandmother is considered the protagonist and is the central figure of the story. The grandmother is the...
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find
Both of these stories by Flannery O'Connor are social critiques set in a changing American South, and both feature an elderly female protagonist who is in some way struggling with social change. In...
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find
The most obvious would be in the theme. Flannery O' Connor frequently wrote about grace, redemption, and salvation (these two stories contain characters who have epiphanies, as well). Both of...
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find
When discussing literary elements, it can be helpful to figure out the actual structure of the plot (the events that take place in the story). For example, O'Connor provides exposition at the...
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find
Flannery O’Connor acknowledged the influence of her Catholic faith on her writing. The characters in the story cannot be neatly separated into good or evil. Although the Misfit and his crew are...
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find
"A Good Man is Hard to Find" is ultimately about grace. Flannery O'Connor was a staunch Catholic, and the theme of unearned grace is a running idea throughout her work. Her characters are often...
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find
Gothic qualities are those we associate with things we normally repress, particularly our awareness of death. The Gothic often has an eerie, unreal, dream-like (or nightmare-like) quality: what we...
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find
In "A Good Man is Hard to Find," O'Connor writes a story that expresses her Christian theology that God's grace can pour down on any of us. The grandmother shows that she has been brought up as a...
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find
With a question such as this one, I would suggest you think very carefully about the characterization of the grandmother across the course of the story. Keep in mind, "A Good Man is Hard to Find"...
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find
Race isn't just a peripheral theme in the story; in many ways, it serves to characterize the grandmother and to illustrate her hypocrisy. The grandmother believes herself to be both a fine lady and...
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find
One of the biggest themes in "A Good Man is Hard to Find" is the idea of genuine moments of grace. Moments of grace only happen under the most uncomfortable of circumstances. Though the grandmother...
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find
The grandmother in Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find" likes to think of herself as a well-bred "lady" and a religious person, but readers are able to determine early in the story that...
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find
Although the grandmother relies on religion to save her in the end, she doesn't exhibit any tenets of Christlike behavior when her own life doesn't hang in the balance. She proves herself to be...
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find
Figurative language is language that goes behind the literal and factual to add color and interest to a story. In "A Good Man is Hard to Find," O'Connor uses the figurative device of simile to...
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find
In Flannery O'Connor's world of fiction, grace is often obtained from an act of evil, or through the agency of violence that acts as a catalyst for spiritual epiphany. In the case of the...
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find
The grandmother in this story is definitely a racist, as she believes that white people are above black people. She uses racial slurs like "pickaninny" and "nigger," which are words that demean the...
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find
The misfit says that the grandmother needed to have a gun pointed at her head every day of her life, because that's the only thing that could have convinced her that she wasn't God's gift to the...
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find
The grandmother is finally showing care for someone other than herself. Throughout this entire story, the grandmother is selfish and acts superior to everyone around her. She has no real concern...
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find
In "A Good Man is Hard to Find," southern gentility is presented as snobbish and ignorant in the character of the grandmother. She idealizes the old south, looking down on racial minorities and...
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find
It is notable that the majority of the characters in Flannery O'Connor's short story that do not have names are women. The grandmother is sometimes called the old lady, but she has no first name or...
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find
Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find" is a fine example of Southern Gothic literature because it reunites the elements that withstand this genre from the rest. 1. Southern traditional...
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find
One of the most interesting aspects of "A Good Man is Hard to Find" is the use of foreshadowing. Of course, the story ends with the family's deaths at the hands of escaped convicts, including a man...
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find
Certainly, it appears that the Misfit, unlike the grandmother, has few delusions about himself: I call myself The Misfit...because I can't make what all I done wrong fit what all I gone through in...
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find
The Christian ideal of God's grace is a central theme in Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find." Despite being the worst, most unlikable characters in the entire story, the grandmother...
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find
"A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor has several examples of foreshadowing in it. Foreshadowing is when an author uses hints to suggest certain plot developments that will occur later...
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find
In comparing the main characters in Flannery O'Connor's short stories "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" and "Revelation," I am struck first as to how the women are similar. In "A Good Man Is Hard to...
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find
Stephen Bandy basically disagrees with Flannery O'Connor's explanation of her own short story. He agrees with D. H. Lawrence who says we should "trust the art but not the artist." He believes that...
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find
Are you referring to the essay written by critic Martha Stephens regarding Flannery O'Connor? If so, you can read this right here on eNotes. To summarize, Stephens divides the story into two parts....
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find
O'Connor's conclusion to this story is often considered a puzzling one with the grandmother's remark to the Misfit, "You're one of my own children." In fact, she is experiencing her...
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find
The Misfit chose his own name to represent the fact that his punishment did not fit his crime, as he did not actually commit any crime in order to get sent to prison. He was accused of murdering...
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find
Certainly, O'Connor criticizes prejudice in all its forms. The grandmother has a great deal of prejudice, mostly against people that she feels do not behave as proper ladies or as "good men." This...
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find
One facet of society which is heavily criticized in this short story is the character trait of hypocrisy. Consider the grandmother, who goes on the trip dressed in her finest clothes so that, upon...
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find
Flannery O'Connor was an American female writer of the mid-twentieth century, and her short stories, essays, and novels are often informed by her Catholicism and dissatisfaction with the...
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find
When answering this question, you must discuss each character’s unique traits and overlapping ones. The grandmother in O’Connor’s story and Connie in Oates’s certainly share similarities and...
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find
This is a very interesting question to consider. When we think of tone we need to examine the diction or word choice and the action that a story contains. In a sense, this great story is a mix of...
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find
Many of Flannery O'Connor's character defy cultural expectactions. For example, many of her women are strong, opinionated leaders, while the prevailing culture, especially during O'Connor's...
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find
You might go with the following: In Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," the grandmother's conception of morality has a great deal more to do with whether or not one agrees with her...
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find
The phrase, everyday use, could certainly imply lots of things. First, something that we put to everyday use, that we actually do use everyday, is something that must be fairly important in the...
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find
I can help you get started on this. The grandmother is a misfit within her family. She is a difficult person, and her family members easily become annoyed with her. Some specific details that show...
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find
In Flannery O’Connor’s short story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” the grandmother’s epiphany – or moment of enlightenment or revelation – is almost surely the moment when she reaches out and touches...
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find
Both Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find" and Joyce Carol Oates's "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" are unusual stories that have their turning points brought about by the...
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find
The cultural landscape is presented primarily through the eyes of the grandmother. Outwardly, she is concerned with her appearance, as noted by the details in her traveling attire: The old lady...
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find
O'Connor establishes the foundation of the irony very early in the story when she gives us the reason for the grandmother getting dressed up for the car ride: In case of an accident anyone seeing...
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find
One of the most striking similarities between the Misfit and the grandmother is their hypocrisy. The Misfit is clearly a criminal, yet declares that he calls himself “The Misfit” because he “can’t...
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find
The story's main epiphany occurs when the Grandmother has her first unselfish thought in the story, causing her to make a real human connection. At this moment, she says to the Misfit: "Why you're...
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find
The particular cultural movement that is important to the plot of the story is the increase in car travel—and especially the family vacation by car—during the 1950s. During World War II, gas was...
