In Response to "A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor

I absolutely love the moment of realization in a story, when the author gives that final cue you need to realize what he/she has been keeping from you until now.  In this story, that moment of realization happened for me just after the grandma says she recognized the man, but didn't know where she recognized him from.  In this story, that moment of realization was immediately followed by dread and fear.  When a character that the reader (me, in this case) has barely met evokes such a reaction, the author has definitely done something right.  I think the fact that I knew so little about the Misfit before his encounter with this family is what made him scarier.  I had no idea if he was going to actually fix the car or shoot them all at any moment.  My worries were proven right when he shot the grandma three times for touching his shoulder on page 1212.  The manner in which he has the rest of the family killed is equally chilling.  The point of view prohibits the reader from seeing what exactly is going on in the woods, which allows the reader's imagination to run wild.  Neither the grandma, nor the Misfit seem very concerned with the shots fired in the trees and this made it even less clear what precisely was going on.  I still had a small piece of hope that the family might be alive until the Misfit shot the grandma.  Until this moment, the reader is left to imagine what horrible fates may or may not have befallen the family already, and what may happen to the grandma next.  In this way, O'Connor does a marvelous job of feeding on one of our greatest fears" fear of the unknown.

"A Good Man is Hard to FInd" is creepier the second time

"A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Conner was very disturbing for me to read, but I found it to be even more so the second time I read it.  I think this happened because the first time around, there were a few things mentioned that I though were a little off, but the second time through, they hold intense moments of foreshadowing what was to come at the end of the piece.   For instance, it is mentioned that "they left Atlanta at eight forty-five with the mileage on the car at 55890" (617).  The first time, I thought this sounded like a police report sort of way to write out details.  Then I read that it was the grandmother who wrote this information down (617) and just kept reading, thinking it was odd and that maybe something bad was going to happen.  But after I knew what actually happens at the end- it really was a crime report!  That was creepy because it was like the grandmother was writing the future, and she was the one to suggest the path that was dangerous, so the irony is there as well as foreshadowing.  Also, it is mentioned that the grandmother thinks " in case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once she was a lady" because of the 'feminine'  way she was dressed (617).  At first, I read this as the woman being vain and the stereotype of an old-fashioned lady who always wanted to keep up her appearances.  The second time- foreshadowing! In a really gruesome way, too. 
In another thought, I strongly disliked the characters.  The older children are rude, and make stuck-up remarks about things like Tennessee being "' a hillbilly dumping ground"' and that the girl "'wouldn't live in a broken-down place like this [the restaurant/house] for a million bucks!"' (619).  Snobby!  The author did a good job of portraying these kids as mean through use of their dialogue. I also do not appreciate the grandmother's actions.  She seems selfish and unreliable by the end of the story.  At first, I thought she may be a nice person, one who even amidst a rude family still wanted to do things like tell stories and make jokes (as on 618).  But when the criminals catch them, the woman really seems to just look out for herself instead of trying to save her family (though such a horrible situation, who knows how one would react).  The woman pleads with the terrible man, that he is "a good man" and so on and shouldn't kill her (623).  Through use of dialogue, the author, rather than portraying the woman as cunning in her attempts to escape death, shows the woman to be frantic.  I think this sense comes from the repetition often occurring in the woman's speech (623-626).  The end was confusing to me.  I hated the criminals, and it disturbs me to think about them too much, because the ring-leader is too weird in the things he says- it was ambiguous and creepy (623-627).  The whole story was overall very disturbing.

Light Writing and Dark Happenings in A Good Man is Hard to Find

At the beginning of A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor I felt prepared for a juvenile story. The writing style is child-like in nature as is its protagonist, the old lady. As I was reading it I noticed very simple sentence structure, a basic vocabulary, and scarce use of commas. Everything sounded so plain that I expected maybe some cute hijinks to happen but nothing too serious. But lo, the power of understatement I was about to realize. 

The antics of the old lady in the beginning are put together with the care and gentle insult of a tale about a dear old family member. As I read through the story I couldn't help but smile at the quirky details that made me feel for the woman. I mean, for God's sake, she stows her cat away in a basket for their family road trip...this is comedic insanity. Her rationale is laughable too--trying to convince her son to travel to another state by mentioning a bandit supposedly on his way towards the one they plan to visit? 

The story begins to show its darker side at the car crash. More specifically, when the old lady begins to have doubt. For the first time she becomes embarrassed about her actions, what people are going to think about her, and this is when the whole world goes off kilter. The cat's kicked, latches itself to her son who is driving, the car flips, the mother is thrown out of the car with the baby, on and on. 

To make matters worse, the grandmother's skewed logic rings true in a cruel twist of fate--they meet the notorious Misfit. The story becomes heavily dialogue based and we are no longer in the realm of nostalgic stories and memories--we've reached the present where nothing is fixed. The Misfit plays a perfect Colonel-Kurtz-mixed-with-Batman's-Joker villain. He wonderfully plays off of the old lady's old-school racism at times, for instance remarking "Nome, I ain't a good man...but I ain't the worst in the world neither. My daddy said I was a different breed of dog from my brothers and sisters". Later on in his monologue he also shines through his simple, straightforward rebellion that seemed so radical through others' mouths: "I found out the crime don't matter. You can do one thing or you can do another, kill a man or take a tire off his car, because sooner or later you're going to forget what it was you done and just be punished for it". 

Tying the story off with the murder of an entire family was never an option in my mind at the beginning of the story. And through this simple tone I find the story becomes even more haunting. Good job, ol' Flanny boy. 

A & P by John Updike

When I first read the short story, I thought that this will be a story about a teenage admiration of a late adolescent (the protagonist, Sammy) and one of the three girls. After reading on, I could hardly decide. The protagonist's decision to resign from his cashier job at A & P was rather silly, but the readers were not directly introduced to his reasons behind making this decision. Even though the readers were brought into every bit of Sammy's thoughts of the three girls and his colleagues, this rather main point of his decision-making was not explicitly portrayed. While this omission intoduced ambiguity, which was rather annoying, it also indirectly characterized Sammy. As a 19-year-old teenage boy, he was easily distracted by the entrance of three girls in bathing suits, rather impetuous at his decision to resign without a plan and the portrayal of his strong ego at not correcting himself after he realized that the decision that he made out of a whim was a mistake. He was also rather confident as he thought that he could impress the girls by 'standing up' for them. He was rather naive to think that beauty and youth could triumph everything else, which he felt so strongly about that he voiced his resignation once that thought crossed his mind. However, like most teenagers, he finally managed to take an action and stood up for his thoughts rather than being a sarcastic observer that he always was, although his action was a rather wrong one.

All in all, even though the whole story is very real, there is a sense of oddity and irrationality in this story, which ironically parallels with reality, where the oddest yet most wonderful mistakes are often made.

Response to “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor

 This story by Flannery O’Connor, was at times very difficult for me to connect to, and at other times a very emotional read for me. The extreme violence, though difficult to read, strangely was not the part of the story that most affected me emotionally. Perhaps it was because O’Connor’s methods of having much of the violence occur out of sight made the extremity of the situation even more challenging to absorb, or perhaps not. Regardless, it was the instances of the grandmother’s forgetfulness and vulnerability, the instances of her being unguarded that made me feel the most upset, the most sympathetic, and the most angry. At one point, O’Connor writes, “a horrible thought came to her. The thought was so embarrassing that she turned red in the face and her eyes dilated and her feet jumped up, upsetting her valise in the corner” (1206). In this moment, when the grandmother realizes she has led the family down the wrong road, that the house she had convinced them to go look at was in another state, I felt her shame and discomfort, felt the reversal of her role from parent to child with her son as she knew she would be chastised and that he was already impatient. What is even worse is that her response leads to the accident, which causes such a devastating end. The randomness of the story is not only in the violence, but in the flawed workings of the grandmother’s mind, the workings that lead her and her family down just the wrong road into the path of violent criminals. Similarly, it is the grandmother’s revelation upon first coming into contact with the men, her exclamation of, “You’re The Misfit!” that seals her family’s fate (1208). In her recognition of the men, she makes it impossible for her family to be let go.  It is the grandmother’s mistakes that lead her family to their end, and for me, that was the part of O’Connor’s story that was the most difficult to read, the part that – despite the gruesome violence – left me most unsettled and upset, and wishing for the ability to rewind.

Reflection on Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find"

Even after reading Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” a couple of times I struggle to discriminate the exact emotions that it triggers in me. Not only does O’Connor put forward a violent and harsh depiction of life, but through the grandmother's character she also challenges what it means to find redemption and salvation. While this short story is full of conflicts, ironies and paradoxes, the ultimate irony is that the grandmother, a person who perceives herself as a superior and righteous person, seen as she says “in my time… children were more respectful of their native states and their parents and everything else. People did right then,” finds clarity and salvation through the “Misfit,” a person viewed by society as an unmoral “criminal.” 

While the grandmother thinks of herself as better than those around her, both on a material and spiritual level, both her behaviour and dialogue capture a profound sense of hypocrisy. She is critical and judgmental of those around her, yet lives oblivious to her own misgivings including not only lying about the “secret-panel” in the house but also being dishonest as she fails to admit that she mistook the location of the house that “was not in Georgia but in Tennessee.” But what really struck me about her hypocrisy was her selfishness towards the end of the story where while she says “You wouldn’t shoot a lady, would you?” multiple times, she never tries to save her family and actually seems completely unaware that they are being killed.

The Sadism in a "Good Samaritan" Nature

William Carlos William's short story The Use of Force quite a striking piece. The work is narrated by a doctor during an earlier time period who is on a house call and trying to figure out if a little girl has diptheria or not. However, the choice of an internal monologue presents the reader with a darker side to this medical professional's nature. 

While at the beginning everything seems normal the tone becomes increasingly sadistic throughout the story. The doctor, once seemingly annoyed, begins to order and take pleasure in the control over this little girl: he angers at her father's reluctance to hurt her while holding her, calls for her wrists to be held, and brutally forces a wooden spoon in her mouth to open it up. He finally admits "I too had gone beyond reason. I could have torn the child apart in my own fury and enjoyed it. It was a pleasure to attack her. My face was burning with it".

One could say that the most frightening part of the story is the contrast in between the doctor's appearance and inner pleasure. Just after admitting his pleasure in fighting her he narrates the outward rationale that the parents (and other logical patients) see: "the damned little brat must be protected against her own idiocy...others must be protected against her. It is a social necessity...but a blind fury, a feeling of adult shame, bred of a longing for muscular release are the operatives. One goes on to the end". Now the reader is fully cognizant of the new sexual tension on the doctor's end, a need to lay claim over his prey. The very act of forcing the spoon down her throat illustrates a prime example of penetration, too. And in the end, it is all the better to him that she resists--he wants the fight.