Analysis

A detailed Summary of Analysis

Flannery O'Connor's story "A Good Man is Hard to Find," is about a family taking a trip to Florida that all get killed by an escaped convict, how calls himself the Misfit, and two of his friends. In this story the reader may assume some of the men in the story is the man the title refers to, but as the story unfolds, and the family continues on their journey, every man on the story displays a considerable fault. With Regard's to Flannery O'Connor's short story "A Good Man is Hard to Find" this essay will analyze the narrator's Irony, main characters, foreshadowing, and some symbolism.

There are several ironies dispersed in O'Conners short story. At the beginning, the grandmother is opposed to go to Florida on vacation, but when the time arrived to depart, she is the first passenger seated in the car. Another example is the entire time she is trying to change her son Bailey's mind, she used a prison escape as the primary reason not to proceed to Florida, and ironically, they confront the fugitive in a strange twist of fate. In another instance, the grandmother insists on taking her cat on vacation with her and her justification for having to take the cat is that the cat could brush against on to the burners, turn them on an

Along with many ironies, this story also has much foreshadowing and symbolism, O'Connor uses much foreshadowing in this story. An example of this is in the first paragraph, when the grandmother tells Bailey, her only son she lives with, to read a part of the news paper that say's, "Here this fellow that calls himself the misfit is a loose from the federal pen" (pg. 354). Now, the first time a reader is reading this they night assume that the family will meet up with the Misfit. This is a writing technique that some writer's use to give the reader small clues of who they might meet up with in the later part of there stories. Another thing forshadowing can add to a story can clue the reader in on what will happen to the characters. A good example from O'Conners story is when she is describing what the grandmother is wearing then adds this line, "In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady" (pg. 355). One might assume that the family would have an accident while on their trip. On the other hand the reader could think that one or more of the other characters would die. At the end of the short story the reader finds out that both of these do infect come true.

Now the Misfit is a man that was put into prison for killing his own father. Now, he does not remember or want to believe what he did. He tells the grandmother no matter what anyone does they will forget what it is they have done and eventually be punished for it. Even though the Misfit can execute an entire family there is a small amount of emotion expressed when his two friends come back from the woods and see the grandmother lying in a pool of her own blood. One friend say's, "some fun" and the Misfit reply's, "It's no real pleasure in life" (A Good Man is Hard to Find pg. 365-366). The Misfit may not believe in the way the grandmother lived but he showed a small amount of care in what she believed.

The main characters are the grandmother, Bailey, and the misfit. The grandmother is an important, if not the most important character. She is a woman that manipulates both family as

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Approximate Word count = 1420
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English