Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard to Find"

Wow what a story! I can’t say I enjoyed this reading but it was catching. I would have to say, however, this is the kind of story I read a lot of: James Patterson and Ted Dekker who write about psychotic, evil people. I like to read something with a mystery to try and figure out what is going to happen next. I can see where the perspective of antitheses used by O’Connor in response to her “sacramental view of life” is evident in this story. Life, which is considered to be sacred and valued given by God, is taken so quickly without as much as a thought by the villains in this story. The characters are exposed to the evil of “the Misfit” and his gang. Even though they were aware of this man’s persona and never thought they would be confronted by it, they found themselves right in the middle of their presence. No amount of pleading or encouragement of being able to be a “good man” by the grandmother made any difference to the misfit.

I was completely appalled as most people would be at the manner in which the men murdered the family. They seemed to never have had any chance against these men, and to kill the children in such a manner. They were even asked politely if they would go into the woods with them, naïve to the evil in which they were surrounded by. However, it just proves the wickedness that exists in this world, even during the early years in which this piece of literature was written.

I did find O’Connor’s use of “victim and assailant” idea in this story as she also used in Wise Blood. The Misfit tells how he grew up being told by his father of “being a different breed of dog” and continues with the different activities he had fulfilled in his life: gospel singer being one of them. He states he can’t remember why he was sent to the penitentiary but from that point on was “buried alive”. He sounds to have possibly been a “good man” caught up in the wrong circumstances but then treated as a criminal from that point on. The idea of if you are going to be treated as one, you might as well act like one. He seemed to be unhappy in his way of life as he stated in the end “it’s no real pleasure in life” he just didn’t know any other way to live. He had been labeled as a bad boy and a criminal and that is how he saw himself.

Some of her use of irony is shown by the grandmother trying to get the family to change their trip so as not to run into this escapee. As with most of us, she probably didn’t really think they would but was using the idea to get her way. Then, by a simple mistake of her own, they found themselves on this wrong dirt road eventually face to face with the dreaded man. The other characters did not seem to comprehend the plight they were in either by the display of disrespectfulness by Bailey toward his mother and the comments by Wesley and June Star toward the men calling one a “pig”, those whose hands their lives were in.