A Good Man is Hard to Find
The persuasive use of irony is evident in the short story, Flannery O'Connor's " A Good Man is Hard to Find." The author uses irony to talk about the villain of our society and how they do not always live up to the expectations. The Misfit in the story is not all evil because he really did not want to kill the family. He had to kill them because he had to protect his freedom. "It's no real pleasure in life." (330)The setting of the story is centered on a typical family's travel to the state of Florida. However, along the way, they suffer a horrible automobile accident, and the villainous, escaped convict known as "The Misfit" murders the family. The initial sentence in the story is a protest by the grandmother. The grandmother's intentions were to persuade the family plans of traveling to Florida instead a trip to Tennessee. Consequently, from the initial dialect, and many to follow, the grandmother presents one demand after another which carries throughout the story to ultimately seal her family's fate and her own. The grandmother's first attempts to defend her self-indulgent demands by proclaiming to Bailey, her son, "I wouldn't take my children in any direction
Upon leaving for the vacation, it is the grandmother who is first in the car ready to go, on their precarious trip to death. In contrast, her encounter with the Misfit illustrates that she was the least prepared for death. When stopping in at The Tower for lunch, the grandmother and Red Sammy, the owner, converse about the present repulsiveness of the world. After hearing their chat, it seems ironic that Miss O'Connor chose the story's title. Contradictorily, the grandmother announces her opinion by saying, "People are certainly noticed like they used to be." (323). Red Sammy comments: "A good man is hard to find. I remember the day you could go off and leave your screen door unlatched. Not no more." (323). This quote basically explains the irony in the title of the story, and also tells us that Red Sammy, along with the grandmother, supposedly lived in a better era where people were more trustworthy, and respectful. The grandmother, although sincere, is ignorant of her hypocrisy. She has already expressed some of the flaws she possesses in relation to her day an age by referring to a little black boy as a "pickaninny," and continues to highlight this flaw through passing judgment, making the remark that he probably doesn't have any britches. Ironically, her compliant is further strengthened in the eyes of the reader by the author's method of presenting the argument or complaint through a cha
Some common words found in the essay are:
Red Sammy, O'Connor's Hard, Tennessee Consequently, Pitty Sing's, Misfit Ironically, Pitty Sing, Miss O'Connor, Gone Wind, God Hard, Tennessee Georgia, red sammy, mentioning misfit, throughout story, murders family, hands misfit,
Approximate Word count = 950
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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