dotted outline of a black cat sitting within a basket in front of an older woman wearing a sundress

A Good Man Is Hard to Find

by Flannery O’Connor

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What is the significance of extensive animal symbolism in the story?

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As a writer from Georgia, Flannery O'Connor's stories often reflected on the religious values of living in the South in the 1950s. However, in order to really grab the attention of readers, the characters O'Connor wrote often met a gruesome and/or shocking end.

"In my own stories I have found that violence is strangely capable of returning my characters to reality and preparing them to accept their moment of grace. Their heads are so hard that almost nothing else will do the work."-O'Connor (1963)

O'Connor's short story, A Good Man Is Hard To Find, is no different. Throughout the story, O'Connor uses literary devices (metaphors, similes, imagery, etc.) mixed with animalistic references to show the flaws of the characters. Each character is reacting to the world around them not reflecting. Like animals, they are not considering values or the meanings of their actions.

In the end, the family traveling to Florida is murdered by the Misfit. Throughout the story, the characters follow their basic instincts and ignore their spiritual side. For the characters, especially the Grandmother, to move beyond their base animalistic tendencies and consider the moral value of their lives O'Connor had to write gruesome the ending.

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O'Connor was a Roman Catholic writer. In Christian theology, humankind is a "creature" created by God, just as the animals are. But, unlike the other animals, humans are also made in the image of God, and we contain with us the divine spark. In the seventeenth century, for this reason, humans, or "man," can often be found described as the "great amphibian," halfway between angels and animals, because we were perceived as a mix of the earthly and the divine.

In "A Good Man is Hard to Find," O'Connor places reminders of how much humans can be like animals or creatures. She describes, for example, the chained monkey at Red Sam's, who chatters much like the grandmother does, and then jumps into a tree to feel safe.

Likewise, the Misfit compares himself to a dog while talking with the grandmother, but in a way that suggests that he is more than an animal in his human desire to ask questions about his existence:

My daddy said I was a different breed of dog from my brothers and sisters. 'You know,' Daddy said, 'it's some that can live their whole life out without asking about it and it's others has to know why it is, and this boy is one of the latters.

At the end of the story, the two characters who are identified with higher functioning animals—the grandmother with a monkey, the Misfit with a dog—both transcend their animal natures for a few seconds as they experience God's grace. The grandmother, especially, has a moment of feeling the divine spark light her up as she is able to love the Misfit as her own son before he kills her.

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I would add that the animal motif suggests O'Connor's fascination with the grotesque.  Many of her stories, including "Good Man," are concerned with our flawed nature as a result of orginal sin, a fall from grace.  Using images that show her characters as bizarre in appearance, which is an aspect of the grotesque, is one way of communicating this theme.

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I am not aware of much animal symbolism in A Good Man is Hard to Find.  I looked the story over and just found the mother being described like a rabbit because of the hankerchief on her head.  Also, the grandmother carries the cat, they find a monkey at the service station, and the Misfit says he's the same breed of dog as his brothers and sisters.  Any animal reference could go along with the fact that O'Connor views the characters with detachment.  She does not give the reader characters they can get connected with, and this style increases the dark and ironic tone of the work.

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