A Good Man Is Hard to Find

Flannery O’Connor utilizes irony throughout her classic short story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” in various ways. Situational irony occurs when the grandmother tries to persuade Bailey against...

Allusion and irony are the two significant literary devices employed by Flannery O'Connor in "A Good Man is Hard to Find." Allusions are references to other works, historical figures, or historical...

At the end of the story, the Misfit and his criminal associates have dispatched the rest of the family, and The Misfit has taken the bright yellow shirt with blue parrots that Bailey had been...

You could answer this question regarding conflict in two ways. You could examine this question in terms of the characterization of the protagonist, the grandmother. She is the central character in...

Throughout the story, the grandmother has made it clear that she is the type to judge other people quite freely. She feels that she, unlike so many others around her, is a lady, and she laments the...

For the first time in her long and selfish life, the grandmother has finally realized that she's a part of something bigger. As a deeply judgmental woman, an unrepentant racist, and an...

When formulating any thesis statement, or literary argument, it is important to make sure that you create a statement that is debatable. Observations and facts are not debatable, so the first step...

Flannery O’Connor was a deeply devout Christian and a seriously committed Roman Catholic, and so it is not surprising that her religious views affected such works as her famous story “A Good Man Is...

At the end of "A Good Man is Hard to Find," the grandmother undergoes, in her terror and panic, a profound epiphany as to the shared humanity between herself and her murderer, reaching out to the...

When the family stops at The Tower for barbecued sandwiches, Red Sammy and the grandmother have a conversation about how difficult times have gotten. Red Sammy tells her, "A good man is hard to...

The exposition includes the background information regarding the Grandmother and her family, which includes her son, Bailey, his unnamed wife, and their children, John Wesley and June Star. The...

The "mother" in the story is unnamed, a non-entity as you put it, because her identity is unimportant. Like the grandmother, who is likewise unnamed, the mother is a representation of her...

The grandmother has an epiphany, an illuminating realization of truth, because, as the Misfit identifies in the end, she finally "had...somebody there to shoot her." It took being in a...

The Misfit is aptly named. For here is a man who doesn't feel as if he belongs anywhere. No matter where he goes, no matter what he does, he'll always feel out of place. Not surprisingly, the...

There are three major situational ironies in "A Good Man is Hard to Find." Situational ironies occur when events in a story work out differently than characters or readers might anticipate. In the...

The key to this question is that first of all, it hasn't been established that the grandmother does the right thing at the end of the story. That is a highly debatable point. Consider the following...

When the family stops at Red Sammy’s BBQ place for lunch, Red Sammy and the grandmother talk over their shared values and disdain for contemporary attitudes and mores. Despite the fact that Red...

Jesus throws everything off balance by causing the Misfit to question his murderous lifestyle and even, perhaps, to feel twinges of conscience over his chosen path. The Grandmother and the Misfit...

The Misfit claims that he was raised well and that his life turned when he was put in prison for the murder of his father. However, he also remembers his father dying 1918. There's a certain...

An external conflict in the story is between the Misfit and his gang and the Grandmother and her family. When the family's car ends up in a ditch on a back road that the Grandmother mistakenly...

Through characterization Flannery O'Connor creates humor as she depicts comedic characters with regional dialects and ridiculous physical appearances. For instance, Bailey's wife is described as...

Similar to the grandmother, who calls herself a lady but actually behaves pretty terribly, Red Sammy calls himself "a good man." He does this because he sells gas on credit to boys who work at the...

The grandmother in "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" places a great deal of value on outer appearances in defining what constitutes a "good" man. She exemplifies this in her own dress, making sure to...

The grandmother calls the Misfit a good man because she is trying desperately to save herself. She uses the protections that have served her throughout her life. She tries to offer the Misfit...

Of the grandmother, The Misfit says that "She would of been a good woman [...] if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life." He realizes that she was not a very good person...

The two characters who most believe that "a good man is hard to find," as Red Sammy says to the grandmother, are both quite deceived about their own goodness, and the title helps to draw attention...

An escaped convict, the man who calls himself "The Misfit" renamed himself because he could not make what he had done align with the punishment that he had been given. But, there is a deeper...

O’Connor’s style is often described as Southern regionalism/realism. Her stories are often categorized somewhere between the Southern Gothic and contemporary genres. Her plain style is infused with...

In her 1960 essay, "Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction," O'Connor defines the literary grotesque as follows: In these grotesque works, we find that the writer has made alive some...

In addition, the conversation also provides an element of foreshadowing, as their discussion of the Misfit soon turns into an actual encounter with him for the family.

It seems possible to me that the Misfit kills the grandmother last because she is actually giving him an opportunity to explain his life to someone. No one seems to have been interested in his...

At first glance The Misfit's motivation for killing the family seems to be solely that the grandmother identified him. When she does he says, "Yes'm... but it would have been better for all of you,...

Since "A Good Man is Hard to Find" is a gothic comedy, the grandmother fits the archetypal Alazon role: a character who thinks she's better than she really is. The Misfit is a stock grotesque:...

The Misfit is a character of surprising depth. He is first introduced to the readers as a vague fear, one that represents the possibility of violence in the world. Then, at his first appearance, he...

The Misfit apparently does not need much motivation at all. Hurting and killing others has become a way of life for him. He is insensitive to the lot of others. He does not value anything, least of...

The Misfit thinks that Jesus "'thown [sic] everything off balance" because Jesus was subjected to a terrible punishment even though he hadn't done anything wrong. The Misfit tells the grandmother,...

The speaker of O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find" writes near the conclusion of the piece: "She would of been a good woman," The Misfit said, "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every...

As far as this particular story is concerned, I think it centers around themes of sin and grace. These are two of the central themes of Christian teachings: that the world is in some way fallen but...

The tension in the story rises higher and higher as we, and the grandmother, realize that her family is being murdered by the Misfit's henchmen, one by one. The Misfit begins to tell his story, how...

Flanner O’Connor was known – justifiably – for a somewhat cynical perspective with respect to the superficial judgments people make regarding the character of those they deem worthy or “good.” Her...

The grandmother represents people who enjoy cultural privilege. She is white, and she is likely from an upper-middle class background. As such, she has a very particular stance on the past—she...

The Misfit does not have a phrase in this story that he repeats again and again. Therefore to answer your question it is important to identify what the most important thing is that the Misfit says...

According to Victor Lasseter in his article "The Children's Names in Flannery O'Connor's 'A Good Man Is Hard to Find,'" the children were named after two of the most notorious outlaws of...

One of the central conflicts in Flannery O’Connor’s short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find (1953)” is between the grandmother’s convenient perception of Christian grace and the demanding way in...

When discussing the Misfit, it is important, first of all, to take into account the radical nihilism which shapes his perspective on the world. As he expresses in his conversation with the...

In "A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor, the author portrays the children as obnoxious in a way that fits in with the "meanness" of rest of the characters. Lack of kindness is a large...

The grandmother tries to appeal to the Misfit's nonexistent sense of morals by claiming to see in him his "good blood" and by asserting that she "knows" he "come[s] from nice people." She delivers...

The grandmother's mention of the Misfit serves as foreshadowing and irony and adds to the characterization of the grandmother. The grandmother is a manipulative and rather selfish woman who does...

Evaluating the mood of a story is somewhat subjective. One can, however, look closely at specific language to analyze the way it might influence readers' emotions. The first sentence of the story...

We never directly learn that the Misfit has a favorite saying, but he says twice the one we most associate with him, with variation. It's the last sentence of the story and sums up the Misfit's...