A Good Man Is Hard To Find Critical Analysis

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Ever since “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” was first published, it has been Flannery O’Connor’s best-known story. The story was first published in late September 1953 in Avon’s Modern Writing 1. In 1955, O’Connor then published her first collection with the same name, A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories. The short story is about a family who is going on vacation to Florida. They end up taking a turn down a dirt road, which causes them to have an accident and leaves them stranded. Unfortunately they are found by the Misfit, a convict who escaped from the Federal Pen; who prevented them from ever arriving to Florida, because he ends their lives. However, “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” illustrates many of the techniques and themes which were …show more content…
Both the grandmother and Misfit live by beliefs that affect their actions and way of thinking. Rather than ending the story with a happy ending, the author ends with the grandmother begging to live. Her inability to remain quiet is unfortunately the cause of the entire family’s death. Towards the ending the central theme that O'Connor writes this short story based on, the Grandmother versus the Misfit or good person versus bad person, is revealed. The problem in “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is not that everybody is guilty of something, but that no one in the story is willing to admit to being wrong. The grandmother does not see the wronging of her ways until she realizes that the Misfit is going to actually kill her. The short story ends with an impressive line from the Misfit when he says, “She would have been a good woman if it had been someone there to shoot her every minute of her life” (O’Connor 51). According to O’Connor, in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” the family’s wayward lives are given direction in their final moments, and they are at last on the right road (O’Connor