“A Good Man Is Hard to Find” (1955)

Flannery O’Connor

Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964)

   American Southern writer of short stories and novels known for their depiction of spiritual insight in extreme situations Born in Savannah, Georgia; Georgia State College for Women; started writing stories and drawing cartoons; devout Roman Catholic all her life Received M.F.A. from University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop  Contrast between polished, neat form of stories and grotesque, unsettling content

O’Connor with Self-Portrait

Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964)

 Novels:

Wise Blood

(1952);

The Violent Bear It Away

(1960); Short Story collections:

A Good Man Is Hard to Find

(1955);

Everything That Rises Must Converge

(1965)  Developed lupus after first novel, returned to Milledgeville, GA, to her mother’s farm— raised peacocks and wrote

Doubles

  An unsettling story of a grandmother’s unlikely recognition of a serial killer as being like one of her own children O’Connor’s most famous story because it dramatizes profound modern fears of actually encountering the random violence we see daily in the mass media

Grandmother

  Sees herself as “a lady”: “in case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady” (¶12) Racist: “Oh look at the cute little pickaninny!” (¶18)  Nostalgic for the antebellum South: the old plantation (¶45)

Grandmother

 Childish and domineering: Complains about going to Florida but is first in the car    Antagonistic relationship with son Bailey: hides cat in basket in car; Bailey “glared at her” when she asked him to dance (29) Full of clichés: “Europe was entirely to blame for the way things were now” (44) Superficial: writes down car’s mileage (11)

G & Misfit, Phases 1-3: Celebrity

   Phase 1: G reads about M in the newspaper ( ¶1) Phase 2: G meets M in person and feels “as if she had known him all her life but she could not recall who he was” (¶75) Phase 3: G recognizes M: “You’re the Misfit! I recognized you at once!” (¶82); M: pleased, but says better if you had not

G & M, Ph. 4: Lady/Gentleman

  G appeals to class: “You wouldn’t shoot a lady, would you?” (¶86); “I know you come from nice people” (¶88) M: “I would hate to have to”; “Yes mam,” finest in world (89); but good manners appear absurd in this situation :  “Good afternoon” (74); “I pre-chate that, lady” (92); “I’m sorry I don’t have on a shirt before you ladies”; we borrowed these (99)

G & M, Ph. 4: Lady/Gentleman

   G: “I just know you’re a good man”/ “not common” (98) M: No, I’m not—but not worst; I thinker (99) G: You could be honest, “live a comfortable life” (104)

G & M, Ph. 5: Religion

   G: Notices his thin shoulder blades. “Do you every pray?” M: “Nome” (106-107); “I was a gospel singer,” etc.

G: “Pray, pray” (110)  M: I was sent to the penitentiary, but I forget why (113): he can’t remember

G & M, Ph. 5: Religion

    G: If you pray, “Jesus would help you” M: Yes but “I don’t want no hep” (118-21) G: Alone with M., says “Jesus, Jesus” M: “Jesus thown everything off balance”; I call myself Misfit “because I can’t make what I done wrong fit what all I gone through in punishment” (129)  This is also the family’s experience of the Misfit’s violence

G & M, Ph. 5: Religion

   G: appeals to religion, class, offers money (131) M: Jesus shouldn’t have raised the dead: “He thown everything off balance”; now it’s either/or: If Jesus is true, then you follow him; if not, then do “meanness” (134) G: “Maybe He didn’t raise the dead” (135)

G & M, Ph. 6: Connection

   M: “I wasn’t there. . . . if I had of been there I would of known and I wouldn’t be like I am now” (136) “His voice seemed about to crack and the grandmother’s head cleared for an instant” G: “Why you’re one of my babies. You’re one of my own children!”  G reaches out and touches M on shoulder; M shoots her 3 times (136)

G & M, Ph. 7: Aftermath

   G in puddle of blood, “her face smiling up at the cloudless sky” (137) M: “She would of been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life” (140) M: “It’s no real pleasure in life” (142)

Misfit & Bailey

  Last words between G. & Bailey: “Mamma, wait on me!; “Come back this instant!” (96-97) Misfit puts on Bailey’s shirt (123); “The grandmother couldn’t name what the shirt reminded her of.”  Misfit becomes linked to G.’s son

Accident

 “We’ve had an ACCIDENT!” shouted 3X by children. Accident is turning point  Grandmother is doubly the cause  Her idea to see the plantation, invents idea of “secret panel”—and she forgot it was in Tennessee  She hid the cat in the basket

Accident

 Accident throws her life off balance: her being a lady doesn’t protect her from random violence; in fact, her nostalgia for plantation life leads to her death   Plantation graveyard with 5 or 6 graves (22) “Gone With the Wind” (24)

Grandmother & Misfit: Doubles

 Grandmother recognizes Misfit as like a son, in need of her love  Misfit seems to recognize what the Grandmother has achieved (“She would of been a good woman”), and his need for her— but rejects love, choosing “meanness” instead

O’Connor’s comments

  “It is the extreme situation that best reveals what we are essentially”; “the man in the violent situation reveals those qualities least dispensable in his personality.” “I have found that violence is strangely capable of returning my characters to reality and preparing them to accept their moment of grace.”

O’Connor’s comments

 “I often ask myself what makes a story work . . . and I have decided that it is probably some action, some gesture of a character that is unlike any other in the story. . . . This would have to be an action which was both totally right and totally unexpected”

O’Connor’s comments

 “The Grandmother is at last alone, facing the Misfit. Her head clears for an instant and she realizes, even in her limited way, that she is responsible for the man before her and joined to him by ties of kinship which have their roots deep in the mystery she has been merely prattling about so far. And at this point, she does the right thing, makes the right gesture.”

O’Connor’s comments

 “I prefer to think that, however unlikely this may seem, the old lady’s gesture, like the mustard-seed, will grow to be a great crow filled tree in the Misfit’s heart, and will be enough of pain to him there to turn him into the prophet he was meant to become. But that’s another story.”