Student Question
In "A Good Man is Hard to Find," who is the most thoughtful character and what idea does the story emphasize?
Quick answer:
The most thoughtful character in "A Good Man is Hard to Find" is debated, but the grandmother emerges as a complex figure undergoing transformation. Initially shallow and manipulative, she ultimately shows grace and forgiveness to the Misfit, suggesting a deeper understanding of Christian values. The story emphasizes themes of grace, redemption, and the difficulty of finding true goodness, reflecting Flannery O'Connor's religious motifs and moral complexities.
Sorry, but I stand by my answer. Just because the grandmother is an obnoxious character does not mean she is not the deepest thinker. We know more about what she is thinking than anyone else, and just because her thoughts are odious does not mean they are not deep. True, the Misfit's thoughts are deep, because it is obvious that he has given a great deal of thought to religion, etc., but I believe the grandmother has undergone a transformation by the end of the story that allows her to see inside her soul and actually practice the Christianity that she says she believes. When she touches the Misfit, it shows that she has thought deeply about grace and forgiveness. Even thought she knows she is going to be shot, she realizes she must forgive.
Isn't it great that this story is so deep that it allows for lots of...
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good debate?
What do YOU think, algmerb?
The grandmother in O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find" is not a deep thinker. How many of her thoughts the reader gets has nothing to do with her being a deep thinker. That's faulty logic.
The grandmother is shallow and ignorant and bigotted and stupid. She spouts garbage at others every chance she gets and is a bully. She needs what The Misfit concludes she needs at the conclusion of her story: somebody holding a gun to her head every minute of every day to wake her up out of her idiot thought patterns, in which she is the only one who knows anything and the only one who is any good.
Th Misfit, who understands her better than anyone else in the play, is the deepest thinker. He understands just how warped the old woman and her thoughts (if you can call them thoughts--she certainly hasn't done any thinking of value) is.
This short story by Flannery O'Connor is narrated in the third person, so the narrator is what is referred to as "an omniscient narrator." Any of the thinking to which we are privy in this story, then, is through the viewpoint of the narrator. The deepest thinker, therefore, is the narrator in this story because we see everything through the narrator's vision.
However, if you must choose an actual character as the deepest thinker, you would have to go with the grandmother because her character is the focal point of the story. How she relates to the other members of the family in the car and how she relates to the Misfit when the family encounters him and his fellow criminals is what propels the drama of this story.
The author presents the grandmother as a very manipulative, quasi-religious woman, forcing her will upon her family. When the family encounters the Misfit, and they are all killed, the grandmother is left as the last one. She first tries to flatter the Misfit, then pleads with him, then tries to witness to him. This was her final mistake because the Misfit has issues with religion and shoots the grandmother, explaining that he is angry with God for not leaving any evidence of his existence. Before she is killed, the grandmother touches the Misfit, showing that she has afforded him grace and forgiveness. Her character has been transformed from the beginning of the story where she was concerned about people thinking she was a "good Christian" to actually becoming a good Christian, and offering grace, which is unmerited favor, and it is grace from God that saves all Christians, not works. The title, therefore, A Good Man is Hard to Find expresses a Biblical theme that:
"many are called, but few are chosen"
and that:
"it is easier for a rich man to go through the eye of a needle than to enter the kingdom of heaven."
Flannery O'Connor was a very religious Catholic and all of her stories have religious themes and motifs. You can read about her here on enotes.
In "A Good Man is Hard to Find," who is the deepest thinker among the characters?
In O'Connor's short stories, including "A Good Man is Hard to Find," no one is a deep thinker: all are flat, static "wingless chickens" who care only for the material world, not the spiritual one. Remember, O'Connor is a comic writer: a spiritual satirist. She believes in the opposite of what her characters do.
In her stories all have fallen from grace; all are blind to their spiritual doom. When reading O'Connor's prose one can feel the laws of attraction at work: good begets good; evil begets evil. Syntheses and concessions are pitfalls. Either one is Christ-centered or hell-bent toward the fumes of the gas chamber. Her poles are distinct and opposing, the slippery slope a descent to hell.
Her comic religious vision holds that a morally and socially degenerate (like the Misfit) is nonetheless spiritually a cut above the wingless chickens of privileged Christianity (the grandmother and her family). She shocks her readers by beginning with divine evil (the Misfit's murders) as a backdoor to what is divine good so that they may rediscover what is holy (to not take salvation for granted). Her goal, I think, is to prevent her readers from taking sides among her religious forms; instead, she calls for action--from them to be seekers instead of being found.
In the story it's the Misfit vs. the grandmother. While the latter characterizes the former as "a good boy," the Misfit acknowledges the modern man's spiritual predicament, an echo of Dostoevsky's "If there is no God, then anything is permissible," when he says:
Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead and He shouldn't have done it. He shown everything off balance. If He did what He said, then it's nothing for you to do but thow away everything and follow Him, and if He didn't, then it's nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can--by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him. No pleasure but meanness.
Instead of having her characters "follow Him," she has them all "enjoy the few minutes [they] got left" by "killing," "burning down" houses, and "other meanness." Not exactly deep thinking...